Chapter 3 three

Yes, he actually saved my life.He actually almost killed me too.If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be standing on that damned branch.If he hadn't been there, I wouldn't have turned around and lost my balance.I don't have to hold any strong feelings of gratitude for Phineas. The Summer Term Super Suicide Club has been a success from the start.Feeney spoke briefly of it that evening as if it were a long-established and respectable institution of the Devon School.Six classmates listened to him in our room and began to ask small questions about details, none of whom said they had never heard of such a club.There have always been some secret societies and underground fraternities at school, and they think this is one of them, it's just been made public.They joined immediately and became its trainees.

We started our nightly rallies to get them started.He and I, as founding members, had to lead by example and start our nightly rallies with our own dives.This was the first of many rules that Feeney had unknowingly created over the summer.I hate doing it.I was never used to this kind of diving.At each meeting, the branch seemed taller and thinner, and the water became farther and more difficult to reach.Each time, when I was in the position to jump, I had a quick feeling that it was unbelievable, that I couldn't believe I was doing something so dangerous.But I always jump off.Otherwise, I would lose face in front of Phineas, which is unthinkable.

We rallied every night, a set of rules that Finny cherished because inspiration and anarchy ruled his life.His own rules, not those imposed on him by others, say the teachers at the German school.The Summer Term Super Suicide Club is a club; the club has to meet regularly; we meet every night.It doesn't get any more regular than that.Meeting once a week seemed irregular to him, entirely too casual, bordering on disorganized. I followed suit and never missed a meeting.At that time, it never occurred to me to say that I didn't want to go tonight, and that's what I was most honestly thinking about every night.I am at the mercy of my mind, and the mind is always trying to restrain me.Let's go, buddy, Finny used to yell, and I went against all my natural instincts, couldn't think of protesting, and followed him.

That's how we spent the summer, day-to-day dating class skipped, meals skipped, chapel skipped. I noticed a certain mentality in Feeney himself that was the exact opposite of mine.His mentality is not entirely laissez-faire.I noticed that he does follow certain rules, he seems to take them as a hadith.When you are 1.74 meters, never say that you are 1.75 meters.This is the first time I have been scolded by him.Another saying is: Pray every night because through prayer God appears. But the line that had the most immediate impact on his life was: You always win in sports.This you are a collective noun.Everyone wins in sports.To play a ball game, to win; in the same way, to sit down to eat, to eat the meal, and so on.Feeney never allowed himself to realize that when you win, they lose.Realizing this, the perfection of sports is destroyed.Bad things never happen in sports; sports are absolutely good.

He doesn't enjoy the summer sports a little tennis, a few swims, clumsy softball, badminton.badminton!On the day when he started playing badminton as planned, he broke out.He didn't say anything else, but the anguished tone of shock, anger, disappointment in which he said the word said everything else.badminton! At least it's not as bad as the fourth grade, I said, handing him the racket and ball that seemed to break with a little effort.They are doing calisthenics. What are they up to?He slapped the ball to the end of the locker room.Want to destroy us?There was a tinge of humor in his angry voice that suggested he was thinking of a solution to the problem.

We walked out into the bright afternoon sun.The sports field in front of us was green and empty.The tennis courts were packed, and the softball field was buzzing.A few badminton nets swayed back and forth in the breeze, and Finny looked at them with rather surprised eyes.At the far end of the sports field, in the direction of the small river, there is a three-meter-high wooden tower, where the coach once stood there to guide the fourth-grade students to practice calisthenics.Now it is empty.The fourth graders either ran off to the woods for an impromptu obstacle course there, took their blood pressure again, or went to the cage for a tricky drill that involved climbing up a box and coming down again, in fast-paced succession Do it for five minutes.They went somewhere, preparing for war.The playground is all ours.

Finny began to stroll towards the wooden tower.Maybe he's thinking we can walk all the way to the river and jump in; maybe he's just interested in looking at it, like he's interested in everything.Whatever he was thinking, he forgot what was in his head when he reached the tower.Someone dropped a big, heavy ball, a medicine ball, next to the tower. He picks it up.Here, this, you see, is all the sports we need.When people discovered the circle, sports were created.As for this thing, he hugged the ball with his left arm, raised his right arm high, and held the dirty badminton in his right hand. This itchy, broken thing is only suitable for a bald monk.He dropped the ball and began plucking the shuttlecock's feathers in disgust, as if scratching a dog for ticks.Then he lunged forward, throwing the bare rubber stopper far out of sight on the playing field.His movement ended with a downward jerk of his wrist, and he couldn't play badminton.

He stands there, weighing the medicine ball, feeling the ball in his hands.All you need is a round ball. Like the weather, Phineas is always being observed, though he doesn't quite realize it.Other badminton players on the playing field sensed the wind had changed; their voices reached us, they were calling us.Seeing that we didn't pass by, they gradually walked towards us. I think it's time for us to start a little exercise here, right?As he spoke, he tilted his head toward me, and then, with his bewildering determination, looked around at the others.It's the look on his face when his aim is to get people to listen to an idea he's just come up with.He blinked twice, and then said: Let's start with this ball.

Simply connect with war, Bobby.Zane suggested, like Blitz or something. Blitz.Finny repeated incredulously. We can come up with some kind of blitz baseball.I said. Let's call it Blitzball.said bobby. Or it's called Lightning Ball, Finney realized, yes, Lightning Ball.Then, he looked around everyone with expectant eyes, ah, let's start, he threw this heavy ball to me.I hold it tightly in my arms with both hands.Ah, run!Feeney ordered.No, not that direction!Run towards the river!run!Surrounded hesitantly by the others, I ran toward the river; they sensed that they were almost certain to be my opponents in the lightning ball.Don't keep covering it!Feeney yelled, throwing it to someone else.Otherwise, he kept talking while running beside me, we surrounded you, and naturally someone would knock you down.

Let's hit!I changed direction to avoid him, still holding the big stupid ball in my arms.What kind of game is this? Lightning ball!Chet.Douglas yelled, and he threw himself on me, grabbed my leg, and knocked me down. It was a foul, of course, Feeney said, and no arms were allowed to hit the ball-handler. Not allowed?Chet grunted on top of me. not allowed.The arms have to be folded in such a way that you can only charge the ball carrier.Neither does the elbow.All right, Gene, start over. I quickly said, after such a situation happens, the ball will not belong to others No, because you were knocked down by the violation.In such a case, the ball remains with the ball holder.So no problem, the ball is still yours.Go ahead.

I had to start running again, and the others strode after me with an even stronger will.Throw the ball!Phineas ordered.Bobby.There was nobody around Zane, so I threw the ball at him; it was so heavy that he had to bend down to grab it from the ground.Very good, Feeney commented, running as fast as he could, passing the ball on the ground, which was very good.Bobby's bent back was getting closer and closer, and it was almost impossible to avoid it.knock him over.Finny yelled at me. Knock him down!Are you crazy?He's on my side! No one is on the side of anyone in the lightning ball, he shouted impatiently, everyone is an opponent.Knock him down! I knocked him down.Well, Finny said, parting us all.Now, the ball is still yours.He handed me the lead-heavy ball. I thought the ball was passed You knock him down and the ball goes to you.run! So I started running again.Leiper.Lepellier strode leisurely beyond my perimeter, paying no attention to the game but following along like a frigate escorting a passing ship.leper!I threw the ball to him over the heads of several people. Startled, Leper looked up in pain, ducked his neck, dodged the ball, and opened his mouth to speak the first thought in his head, a typical one that belonged to him.I don't want it! stop, stop!Feeney yelled in the tone of an umpire.Everyone stopped, Feeney picked up the ball; explained the rules of possession.What Leper just did introduces a very important detail to the game.If the receiver does not want to receive the ball, he can refuse to receive the ball.Since we are all enemies to each other, we can and should always attack each other.We call this a Lepper Denial.We all nodded in silence.Here you are, Gene, and of course the ball is yours. Return it to me?God, no one has ever held a ball but me! Everyone will have a chance.On the way from the wooden tower to the river, if you are rejected three times, then you will naturally have to go back to the tower and start from the beginning. Lightning balls are the miracle of this summer.Everybody plays it; some form of it still prevails in German, I believe, but nobody can play it like Phineas.He unconsciously invented a game that brought out his athleticism to the highest level.In this game, the rules are extremely unfavorable to the ball holder, so Phineas has to do everything possible to improve his game every day when he holds the ball.In order to get rid of the wolves formed by all the other participants, he invented counter-movement passes and feints, and sheer bewilderment, his movements were so good that he surprised even himself; After he'd played around like this, I'd often noticed him secretly amused himself, with a look of delighted disbelief.In such a one-shot game, he still has that natural advantage of being full of energy, and I never saw a break in his energy.I never saw him get tired, never saw him really let up, never saw him run out of energy, never saw him restless.From dawn, throughout the day, until midnight, Phineas's body was always full of vigorous energy that was ready to use at any time. It was clear from the start that no one was as suited to a sport as Feeney was to lightning balls.I saw this immediately.why not?Didn't he invent it?He's pretty good at it, and it's no surprise that the rest of us are more or less dumb in different ways.I think it's wise for us to let him do all the planning.I don't care about that myself.What is it?It's just a game.It's nice that Feeney can be good at it.He can be good at a lot of other things too, like getting along with people, with the rest of our dorm, with the whole faculty; Get on good terms, he attracts everyone he meets.I'm naturally happy about that too.He's my roommate and best friend. Everyone has a moment in history peculiar to him, a moment when his emotions took hold of him so powerfully that after that, when you speak of the world today, or life, or reality to this man, he thinks You speak of that moment, even though fifty years have passed.The world, through his utter indulgence, had imprinted itself upon him, and he always carried with him the imprint of this passing moment. For me, this moment (four years is just a moment in history) is war.War is, and is, a reality for me.I still instinctively live and think in its atmosphere.Here are some of its features: Franklin.Delano.Roosevelt was President of the United States and always will be.The other two constant world leaders are Winston.Churchill and Joseph.Stalin.America is not, has never been, and never will be the fertile land that the songs and poems call it.Nylon, meat, gasoline, and steel are scarce.There are too many jobs and not enough people.Money is easy to make but hard to spend because there isn't much to buy.The trains are always late and always full of soldiers.Wars are always fought far from the continental United States and never end.Nothing stays the same in America for long, including people, who are always gone or on vacation.Americans cry a lot.Sixteen is a key and decisive natural age for a person. People of other age groups are arranged in front of and behind you in an orderly manner, serving as a harmonious background for this sixteen-year-old world.When you're sixteen, adults are somewhat impressed, even a little overwhelmed by you.It's a mystery that's finally solved by the reality that they foresaw your military career and you fought for them.You yourself did not foresee this.In America, it is immoral to waste anything.Rope, thread, and tinfoil are all treasures.The newspapers are always full of strange maps and names of strange towns. Every few months, when you read something in the newspaper, the world seems to falter on its way. A picture of Solini, who seemed almost the eternal leader, was hung upside down from a meat hook.Everyone listens to the radio five or six times a day.All pleasant things, all travel and sports, as well as amusements and food and clothing, are in great want, always have been, and always will be.There are only bits and pieces of pleasure and luxury in the world, and it would be unpatriotic to enjoy them.All overseas places are inaccessible except for the military; they are vague, distant, dust-covered, as if behind a plastic curtain.The dominant color of American life is the dull, dull green known as olive green.This color is always respected, always important.Most other colors are in danger of being unpatriotic. This is a particular America, I think, and an unsymbolic America.Most people remember it as an unfamiliar fog of change, but to me, this is the real America.In this short but special country, we have spent this summer in Devon, in which Feeney has achieved considerable sports achievements.At such a time, no one would notice or reward any achievement involving the body unless it resulted in the killing or saving of the body on the battlefield.So, it was just a few of us applauding, marveling at what he was able to do. One day, he broke the school's swimming record.When I was playing in the swimming pool with him, there was a big brass plaque next to it, marking the school records of fifty yards, one hundred yards, and two hundred and twenty yards.Below each entry, there is a groove with a plaque in it showing the name of the record holder, the year the record was made, and the time it took.Under the 100-yard freestyle, it says A.Hopkins.Parker, 1940, fifty-three. 0 seconds. A．Hopkins.Parker?Finny squinted at the name.I don't remember a name called A．Hopkins.Parker's. He graduated before we came here. You're saying the record has stood the whole time we've been in Devon and no one has reset it yet?It was an insult to the class, and Finny was as deeply loyal to the class as he was to any organization he belonged to.From him and me, spread outward the limits of humanity, to spirits, clouds, and stars. There just so happened to be no one else in the pool.Glittering white tiles and glass blocks all around; fake green water rippling gently in gleaming pools with a faint chemical smell and the many pipes and filters lurking around a feeling of.Contained in this high-roofed closed house, even Finny's voice lost its peculiar resonance, blending into the general well of noise that coalesced and rose toward the roof.He said vaguely: I think I can swim better than A.Hopkins.Parker fast. We found a computer in the office.He stepped onto the platform, leaning forward at the waist, a position he'd seen in competitive swimmers but never tried himself. I noticed a preparatory relaxation in his shoulders and arms, a There's an ease of control that shouldn't come to anyone trying to break a record.I said: ready to jump!In an instant, his body stretched out and jumped out like a spring.He dashes forward in the pool, his shoulders rolling in the water, while his legs and feet move so low that I can't make out them, he stirs up a wake; and then, at the end of the pool , he folded his body, relaxed, dived, stirred for a moment, and then his body, which was suddenly tense like a spring, jumped back towards the other side of the pool.Another cross and I noticed that he didn't slow down much. Another cross, swimming across the pool, his hand touched the finish line, and he looked up at me with calm interest.Ah, how am I swimming?I looked at the stopwatch; he broke the A.Hopkins.Parker record 〇.seven seconds. God!So I did it.Guess what, I knew I would do it.I feel like the stopwatch is in my head, and I can hear myself swimming better than A.Hopkins.Parker is a little bit faster. Worst of all there are no witnesses, I'm not an official timekeeper.I don't think it counts. Of course it doesn't count. You can try again and break it again.tomorrow.Let's call the coach, and all the official timekeepers, and I'll have the German newspaper send a reporter and a photographer He climbed out of the pool.I will not swim again.he said softly. Of course you will! No, I just wanted to see if I could do it.now I know.But I don't want to do it in public.A few other swimmers trickled through the door.Finny gave them a sharp look.By the way, he said in a more subdued voice, let's not talk about it any more.You just need to know about this matter.Don't tell anyone about it. Don't talk about it!But you broke the school record! Hush!He glared at me fiercely. I stopped and looked him up and down.He didn't look me directly back.You are too kind to be real.I said after a moment. He glanced at me and said thank you in a slightly nonchalant voice. Does he want me to think he's great or something?not tell anyone?When he broke the school record without a single day of practice?I knew he meant it, so I didn't tell anyone.Perhaps it was for this reason that his achievement took root in me and grew rapidly in the dark places into which I forced myself to hide it.The record books at the German school contained a mistake, a lie, and only Finny and I knew that. A．Hopkins.Wherever Parker lives now, he lives in a fool's paradise.His vanquished name still looms large on the school's record-breaking bronze medal, and Feeney has purposely shied away from an athletic honor.Yes, he has had many honors. Winslow.Galbraith Rugby Championship 1941｜Most Christian Sportsmanship Award in the 1942 season, Margaret.Duke.Bonaventura Ribbon Award for Student-Athlete Most Like Her Son in Hockey, Devon Schools Contact Sports Award (given annually to a student who is deemed by the sports judges to be more athletic in any contact sport than his or her own) peer students).But these belong to the past, and they are awards, not school records.There are no school records for Feeney's official sports in football, field hockey, baseball, and lacrosse.To suddenly switch to a new sport, in one day, and instantly break its records is like a juggling act, so dizzying that I honestly can't imagine it.There's something exhilarating about it.As I think about it, my head feels a little dizzy and my stomach starts to tingle.In a word, it's very attractive, absolutely masculine.I looked down at my stopwatch and realized that I was on the verge of showing or announcing that Daufini had broken a school record, and I experienced an emotional shock that can be described in one word. My shock was compounded by the silence about the astonishment.That made Feeney so unusual, not so much in terms of friendship but in terms of rivalry.Relationships that are not part of competition are rare in German. Swimming in the pool always felt weird, and as we walked toward the dormitory, he said after an uncharacteristically long silence that the only real swimming was in the ocean.Then he added, in his ordinary voice (which he used when he suggested something out of the ordinary), Let's go to the beach. It takes several hours to ride a bicycle to the beach, and school students are absolutely not allowed to go.Going there would risk getting fired and ruining my revision for an important test the next morning.It's a massive disruption of the order I've wanted to be in for the rest of my life, and that grueling bike ride I hate.Well, I say. We hopped on our bikes and left Devon along a small road.Now that Finny got me, he felt compelled to keep me entertained.He told stories of his crazy childhood; he rode effortlessly beside me, cracking jokes, as I panted and scrambled up steep hills.He analyzes my personality and he insists that he knows what I dislike most about him (you're too disciplined. I say).He rode with the handlebars upside down, he rode on the handlebars, he jumped on and off the moving bike, mimicking the moves he'd seen jockeys do on horseback in movies.he sings.Finny, although he spoke musically, sang out of tune, and he couldn't remember the tune or the words of any songs.But he likes to listen to music, any music, and he likes to sing too. In the late afternoon, we reached the waterfront.The tide is high and the waves are big.I dove headfirst into the water and swam through two waves, but the waves had reached a certain energy state where you could feel the power of the entire ocean.When the second wave rolled me towards the sea, it pushed me ahead at a very fast speed; suddenly, this wave became so huge that I, who was so small by comparison, lost the control of the earth's gravity. And completely swayed by it; the waves threw me down, into a bottomless abyss, and then, finally, with a bottom, the harsh sand, I washed up on the shore.The waves hesitated, swaying slightly on the shore, and then retreated back toward the deeper water with a hiss, showing no interest in dragging me away with them. I went to the beach and lay down.Finny came over, took my pulse politely, and went back to the sea.He stayed in the sea for an hour, returning to me at intervals to say a few words.The sand was so hot from the sun all day that I had to peel off the top layer and lie down in the sand, and Finny's walk on the beach became a series of high jumps. The sea threw foamy, sun-shining waves onto the nearby reefs, and the water was icy cold.This sun and sea, combined with the increasing intensity of the lapping waves, and the adventurous, salty winds from the sea, always fascinated Phineas.He ran around enjoying it to the fullest, laughing loudly at the gulls that flew by.He does anything he can think of for me. We ate dinner at a hot dog stand, with our backs to the ocean and its now-cooler breeze, and our faces to the heat from the grills.Then we headed toward the heart of the waterfront, a small patch of New England nightclubs.The lights on the boardwalk against the fading blue sky produced a perfect beauty of star-studded beauty.Spilled lights from nightclubs, shooting ranges and beer gardens complement the tranquility and purity of the glistening twilight. Feeney and I were walking on the boardwalk in sneakers and white pants, Feeney in a light blue polo shirt and me in a T-shirt.I noticed that people were staring at him, so I took a look myself to see why.His skin had a sun-tanned coppery radiance, his tan hair was lightened by the sun, and I noticed that his eyes shone a blue against the sun-tanned skin. Green cold light. Everyone's looking at you, he said to me suddenly, because this afternoon you've got your movie-star tan and it's showing off again. Enough violations tonight, no more.Neither of us would suggest going into any of the nightclubs or beer gardens.The two of us did have a beer each at a reasonably decent-looking bar, showing fake draft cards to convince the bartender, or appeared to believe, that we were adults.Then we both found a nice place among the sand dunes at the remote end of the sea, and lay down and slept for the night.Feeney usually has a bedtime monologue, and this time the last part of his monologue is: I hope you sleep well here.I know I'm pulling you out, it's a bit of a pull, but after all, you can't come to this beach with anyone, you can't come to this beach by yourself, at this adolescence of your life, the most suitable person to be with you It's your best buddy.He hesitated, then added: That's what you are.After all, there was silence on his dunes. It takes courage to say this.In German school, nakedness like this was second only to suicide.I should have told him at the time that he was also my best buddy, to round out what he had said.I opened my mouth to speak; I almost spoke.But something stopped me.Maybe what stopped me was the emotion, which was deeper than thought and contained truth.