This was my first but not my last lapse into Finny's vision of peace. For hours, and sometimes
for days, I fell without realizing it into the private explanation of the world. Not that I ever
believed that the whole production of World War II was a trick of the eye manipulated by a
bunch of calculating fat old men, appealing though this idea was. What deceived me was my
own happiness; for peace is indivisible, and the surrounding world confusion found no reflection
inside me. So I ceased to have any real sense of it.
This was not shaken even by the enlistment of Leper Lepellier. In fact that made the war seem
more unreal than ever. No real war could draw Leper voluntarily away from his snails and
beaver dams. His enlistment seemed just another of Leper's vagaries, such as the time he slept on
top of Mount Katahdin in Maine where each morning the sun first strikes United States territory.
On that morning, satisfying one of his urges to participate in nature, Leper Lepellier was the first
thing the rising sun struck in the United States.
Early in January, when we had all just returned from the Christmas holidays, a recruiter from the
United States ski troops showed a film to the senior class in the Renaissance Room. To Leper it
revealed what all of us were seeking: a recognizable and friendly face to the war. Skiers in white
shrouds winged down virgin slopes, silent as angels, and then, realistically, herring-boned up
again, but herringboned in cheerful, sunburned bands, with clear eyes and white teeth and chests
full of vigor-laden mountain air. It was the cleanest image of war I had ever seen; even the Air
Force, reputedly so high above the infantry's mud, was stained with axle grease by comparison, and the Navy was vulnerable to scurvy. Nothing tainted these white warriors of winter as they
swooped down their spotless mountainsides, and this cool, clean response to war glided straight
into Leper's Vermont heart.
"How do you like that!" he whispered to me in a wondering voice during these scenes. "How do
you like that!"
"You know, I think these are pictures of Finnish ski troops," Phineas whispered on the other
side, "and I want to know when they start shooting our allies the Bolsheviks. Unless that war
between them was a fake too, which I'm pretty sure it was."
After the movie ended and the lights came on to illuminate the murals of Tuscany and the
painted classical galleries around us, Leper still sat amazed in his folding chair. Ordinarily he
talked little, and the number of words which came from him now indicated that this was a
turning point in his life.
"You know what? Now I see what racing skiing is all about. It's all right to miss seeing the trees
and the countryside and all the other things when you've got to be in a hurry. And when you're
in a War you've got to be in a hurry. Don't you? So I guess maybe racing skiers weren't ruining
