A Separate Peace

I said nothing, and Leper, having said so much, went on to say more, to speak above the wind and crackings as though his story would never be finished. “Then they grabbed me and there were arms and legs and heads everywhere and I couldn’t tell when any minute—”

“Shut up! ”

Softer, more timidly, “—when any minute—”

“Do you think I want to hear every gory detail! Shut up! I don’t care! I don’t care what happened to you, Leper. I don’t give a damn! Do you understand that? This has nothing to do with me! Nothing at all! I don’t care!”

I turned around and began a clumsy run across the field in a line which avoided his house and aimed toward the road leading back into the town. I left Leper telling his story into the wind. He might tell it forever, I didn’t care. I didn’t want to hear any more of it. I had already heard too much. What did he mean by telling me a story like that! I didn’t want to hear any more of it. Not now or ever. I didn’t care because it had nothing to do with me. And I didn’t want to hear any more of it. Ever.

Chapter 11

I wanted to see Phineas, and Phineas only. With him there was no conflict except between athletes, something Greek-inspired and Olympian in which victory would go to whoever was the strongest in body and heart. This was the only conflict he had ever believed in.

When I got back I found him in the middle of a snowball fight in a place called the Fields Beyond. At Devon the open ground among the buildings had been given carefully English names—the Center Common, the Far Common, the Fields, and the Fields Beyond. These last were past the gym, the te

There is no such grove, I know now, but the morning of my return to Devon I imagined that it might be just over the visible horizon, or the horizon after that.

A few of the fighters paused to yell a greeting at me, but no one broke off to ask about Leper. But I knew it was a mistake for me to stay there; at any moment someone might.

This gathering had obviously been Fi

I hesitated on the edge of the fight and the edge of the woods, too tangled in my mind to enter either one or the other. So I glanced at my wrist watch, brought my hand dramatically to my mouth as though remembering something urgent and important, repeated the pantomime in case anybody had missed it, and with this tacit explanation started briskly back toward the center of the school. A snowball caught me on the back of the head. Fi

“How’s Leper?” he asked in an offhand way.

“Oh Leper’s—how would he be? You know Leper—” The fight was moving toward us; I stalled a little more, a stray snowball caught Fi

Someone knocked me down; I pushed Brinker over a small slope; someone was trying to tackle me from behind. Everywhere there was the smell of vitality in clothes, the vital something in wool and fla

The fight veered. Fi

When he had surrendered I bent cheerfully over to help him up, seizing his wrist to stop the final treacherous snowball he had ready, and he remarked, “Well I guess that takes care of the Hitler Youth outing for one day.” All of us laughed. On the way back to the gym he said, “That was a good fight. I thought it was pretty fu

Hours later it occurred to me to ask him, “Do you think you ought to get into fights like that? After all, there’s your leg—”

“Stanpole said something about not falling again, but I’m very careful.”

“Christ, don’t break it again!”

“No, of course I won’t break it again. Isn’t the bone supposed to be stronger when it grows together over a place where it’s been broken once?”

“Yes, I think it is.”

“I think so too. In fact I think I can feel it getting stronger.”

“You think you can? Can you feel it?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Thank God.”

“What?”

“I said that’s good.”

“Yes, I guess it is. I guess that’s good, all right.”

After di