A Separate Peace

I thought any prank was bound to fall flat here.

The Assembly Hall was used for large lectures, debates, plays, and concerts; it had the worst acoustics in the school. I couldn’t make out what Brinker was saying. He stood on the polished marble floor in front of us, but facing the platform, talking to the boys behind the balustrade. I heard him say the word “inquiry” to them, and something about “the country demands….”

“What is all this hot air?” I said into the blur.

“I don’t know,” Phineas answered shortly.

As he turned toward us Brinker was saying “… blame on the responsible party. We will begin with a brief prayer.” He paused, surveying us with the kind of wide-eyed surmise Mr. Carhart always used at this point, and then added in Mr. Carhart’s urbane murmur, “Let us pray.”

We all slumped immediately and unthinkingly into the awkward crouch in which God was addressed at Devon, leaning forward with elbows on knees. Brinker had caught us, and in a moment it was too late to escape, for he had moved swiftly into the Lord’s Prayer. If when Brinker had said “Let us pray” I had said “Go to hell” everything might have been saved.

At the end there was an indecisive, semiserious silence and then Brinker said, “Phineas, if you please.” Fi

“What own words?” said Phineas, grimacing up at him with his best you-are-an-idiot expression.

“I know you haven’t got many of your own,” said Brinker with a charitable smile. “Use some of Gene’s then.”

“What shall I talk about? You? I’ve got plenty of words of my own for that.”

“I’m all right,” Brinker glanced gravely around the room for confirmation, “you’re the casualty.”

“Brinker,” began Fi

“No,” said Brinker evenly, “that’s Leper, our other casualty. Tonight we’re investigating you.”

“What the hell are you talking about!” I cut in suddenly.

“Investigating Fi

I felt the blood flooding into my head. “After all,” Brinker continued, “there is a war on. Here’s one soldier our side has already lost. We’ve got to find out what happened.”

“Just for the record,” said someone from the platform. “You agree, don’t you, Gene?”

“I told Brinker this morning,” I began in a voice treacherously shaking, “that I thought this was the worst—”

“And I said,” Brinker’s voice was full of authority and perfectly under control, “that for Fi

A collective assent to this rumbled through the blurring atmosphere of the Assembly Room.

“What are you talking about!” Fi

“Never mind about that,” said Brinker with his face responsibly grave. He’s enjoying this, I thought bitterly, he’s imagining himself Justice incarnate, balancing the scales. He’s forgotten that Justice incarnate is not only balancing the scales but also blindfolded. “Why don’t you just tell us in your words what happened?” Brinker continued. “Just humor us, if you want to think of it that way. We aren’t trying to make you feel bad. Just tell us. You know we wouldn’t ask you if we didn’t have a good reason … good reasons.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Nothing to tell?” Brinker looked pointedly at the small cast around Fi

“Well then, I fell out of a tree.”

“Why?” said someone on the platform. The acoustics were so bad and the light so dim that I could rarely tell who was speaking, except for Fi

“Why?” repeated Phineas. “Because I took a wrong step.”

“Did you lose your balance?” continued the voice.

“Yes,” echoed Fi

“You had better balance than anyone in the school.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“I didn’t say it for a compliment.”

“Well then, no thanks.”

“Have you ever thought that you didn’t just fall out of that tree?”

This touched an interesting point Phineas had been turning over in his mind for a long time. I could tell that because the obstinate, competitive look left his face as his mind became engaged for the first time. “It’s very fu

The acoustics in the Assembly Room were so poor that silences there had a heavy hum of their own.

“Someone else was in the tree, isn’t that so?”

“No,” said Fi

This time the hum of silence was prolonged to a point where I would be forced to fill it with some kind of sound if it didn’t end. Then someone else on the platform spoke up. “I thought somebody told me that Gene Forrester was—”

“Fi

“You were there too, weren’t you, Gene?” this new voice from the platform continued.

“Yes,” I said with interest, “yes, I was there too.”

“Were you—near the tree?”

Fi

I had been studying very carefully the way my hands wrinkled when tightly clenched, but I was able to bring my head up and return his inquiring look. “Down at the bottom, yes.”

Fi

I took this under consideration. “I don’t recall anything like that …”

“Nutty question,” he muttered.

“I thought you were in the tree,” the platform voice cut in.

“Well of course,” Fi

“I meant Gene,” the voice said.

“Of course Fi

“How do you expect him to remember?” said Fi

“A kid I used to play with was hit by a car once when I was about eleven years old,” said Brinker seriously, “and I remember every single thing about it, exactly where I was standing, the color of the sky, the noise the brakes of the car made—I never will forget anything about it.”

“You and I are two different people,” I said.

“No one’s accusing you of anything,” Brinker responded in an odd tone.

“Well of course no one’s accusing me—”

“Don’t argue so much,” his voice tried for a hard compromise, full of warning and yet striving to pass u

“No, we’re not accusing you,” a boy on the platform said evenly, and then I stood accused.

“I think I remember now!” Fi