Chapter 13 Thirteen

The buildings surrounding the Far Common were never considered absolutely essential to the German school.The essentials are everywhere, in the older, uglier, more comfortable houses that surround the central common.The history of the school unfolds in it, the fictionalized scenes of riots, the visits of presidents to the school, and the assembly of troops in the Civil War, all of which happened in the same places, if not in these houses. In the elder's house.It's where seniors and teachers meet, where budgets are made, and where students get expelled.When you speak German to an alumnus who has graduated ten years ago, the concrete image in his mind is the Central Common.

The far public lawn is different, it is a gift from a rich woman.It, like the rest of the school, is Georgian, mixing convention and elegance in the way that makes Devon architecturally interesting.But the brickwork was a tad overkill and the woodwork wasn't crumbling as it should have been.It is not a core asset of Devon, so donating it to the war would not cause too much poignancy. From the window of my room I could see the Commons beyond, and at the beginning of June I stood there and watched the war approach and occupy the place.The vanguard coming down the street from the railway station were jeeps, which drove more restrainedly, their wheels turning lazily on the old road, which was free of any roughness except for some pebbles.It occurred to me that these Jeeps had plenty of horsepower, but were not allowed to let go of them, so they looked extremely uncomfortable.No stage of life is better understood than the one you have just been through, and I look at these jeeps almost certainly hoping to bump up the slopes of Mount Washington at eighty miles an hour, not Creeping slowly down this dreary street, they reminded me of teenagers in a comically vivid way.

The jeeps were followed by some heavy trucks painted olive green, with troops behind them.They didn't look belligerent; the formation was sprawling, the soldiers in their brown uniforms wrinkled on the trains, and they sang "The Guns Are Blowing." what is that?Brinker said from behind me, pointing over my shoulder to several open trucks in the rear.What's on those trucks? Like a sewing machine. It is indeed a sewing machine! I guess a sewing machine is a must for parachute gear school. Wish Leper was in the Airborne Corps and assigned to parachute equipment school I don't see any difference, I said, let's not talk about Leper.

Leper will be fine.Taking off the uniform is nothing.Two years after the war, people would think, Army Regulations Section 8, that this meant nothing more than sleeping in a sleeper on a train. right.Please, please, why talk about things you can't help? right. I have to be right about things I can't change, and I have to get a lot of people to agree that I'm right.None of them accused me of being responsible for what happened to Phineas because they either didn't believe it or didn't understand it.I would have talked about it, but they wouldn't, and I wouldn't talk about Phineas in any other way.

The jeeps, troops, and sewing machines now pulled up beside the buildings surrounding the Far Common.Some kind of consultation or ceremony takes place on the steps of a building called the Vizier Mansion.The headmaster and several senior teachers stood in one group in front of the door, and several airborne officers stood in another group, and the distance between the two sides was within a convenient range for talking.Then the Headmaster stepped forward and increased his gestures; he was clearly addressing the troops.Then an officer took his place, and the officer's voice grew louder; we could hear him quite well, but not what he said.

It was fine New England weather with clear skies all around.There was a comforting peace in Devon, the peace of summer, a reprieve from pain and trouble, New Hampshire's answer to all the brooding and deadness of winter.In a summer like this, work doesn't have to be urgent, and assembling a parachute doesn't need to be more efficient than sewing a napkin. Or maybe this summer peace is true only for me and a few others, namely last summer's gypsy gang.Or fewer people; had Chet and Bobby felt this summer peace, for instance?And Leper, with his plates of snails, feel it?I can only be sure two people felt it, Phineas and me.So now, maybe only for me, it's true.

The troops disbanded on the spot and spread out on the public grass far away.The windows of the dormitory began to slam open, and dozens of olive-green blankets were hung on the window sills to dry.The sewing machines were moved into the Vichy Mansion with considerable difficulty. My old man is here, said Brinker, and I sent him to the smoking room with his cigar, he wants to see you. We went downstairs to find Mr. Hadley sitting in a lumpy chair, trying to look as though he was not unhappy with the circumstances of the place.But when we entered the house, he stood up and shook my hand with genuine cordiality.He was good-looking and taller than Brinker, so his obesity was less conspicuous.His hair was white and thick and strong, and his face was a healthy pink.

You boys look fine, he said in his booming genial voice, better than the soldier boys I see them driving in, in my opinion.Look at their dick stuff!It's a sewing machine! Brinker stuck his fingers in the back pocket of his trousers.This war is too technical, people have to use all the machines, even sewing machines, don't you think so, Gene? Ah, Mr. Hadley went on emphatically, I can't imagine a soldier in our day stepping on a sewing machine.I can't imagine it at all.Then his mood shifted, and he smiled kindly again.But then times changed and so did wars.But people don't change, right?You guys are a replica of me and my gang.Nice to see you all.Which branch of the military do you want to be in, boy, he said, pointing at me, Marines, paratroopers?There are so many fucking exciting things to do in the military these days.There is also a force called frogmen who engage in sabotage underwater.How nice it would be if I were young with so many options to choose from.

I would rather wait and do what I do, I replied, answering his questions as politely and honestly as I could, but if I did they might send me straight into the infantry, which was not only the most Dirty, but also the most dangerous troops, the worst troops.So I joined the Navy and they were going to send me to Pensacola.I'll probably have a lot of training, and I probably won't see a single foxhole. Foxhole was such a new word that I couldn't be sure Mr. Hadley understood what it meant.But I saw that he didn't care about the word I said.And Brinker, I added, has made up his mind to join the Coast Guard, which is also nice.Mr. Hadley's scowl increased, although his experienced face masked it to a certain extent.

You know, Dad, Brinker interjected, the Coast Guard has a tough job too, they guard the coastline and they do a very dangerous amphibious mission. His father nodded slightly, looked at the ground, and said: You just need to do what you think is right, but you must understand that doing what is right in the long run, not just what seems right now correct.Your war memories will stay with you forever, and when the war is over, you will be asked thousands of times about your war experiences.People will respect you for that and part of it, don't get me wrong but if you can say you went to the front and fought a real battle, it means a lot in the years to come.I know you two want to see lots and lots of fighting, but don't go around saying what's comfortable or not, which service is dirty, or whatever.Now I know you and I feel like I know you, Gene, as I know our Brinker but other people will misunderstand you.You want to be loyal to the country, that's enough.To serve your country faithfully is your greatest moment, your greatest privilege.We're all proud of you, and all of us old guys like me are all envious of you.

I could see that Brinker was more embarrassed by this than I was, but I sensed that the responsibility for the answer lay with him.Ah, Dad, he muttered, we'll do what we have to do. That's not a good answer, Brinker.He said in a voice trying to stay sane. You know, there's only so much we can do. You can do more!Much more.If you want a military record that you can be proud of, you're going to do a lot more than you should.Believe me. Brinker sighed softly, and his father tensed up, paused for a moment, then tried to relax.Your mother is in the car, I have to go back to her place.You two, uh, shine your shoes, he grudgingly added, despite his reluctance, Brinker, some oil?See you at the hotel at six o'clock. all right dad. His father left, dragging his faint, unfamiliar, pleasant smell of cigar smoke. Dad's always talking about his loyalty to the country, Brinker said apologetically, and I wish he would talk less. It doesn't matter.I know that friendship is, in a sense, about accepting a friend's faults, and sometimes that includes accepting his parents' faults. I'm going to sign up for the army, he went on, and I'm going to do what he says I'll do, and I'll even be killed.But I would never have his Nathan.Hale [Note: A soldier in the American Revolutionary War who was hanged as a spy by the occupying forces. ] view of war.I think it's all that WWI stuff.Didn't you notice how childish they were all about this war?He plopped comfortably into the chair that had made his father uneasy.Personally, I hate that view of war.I'm not some hero, and neither are you.Neither was my father, he never was, and I don't care what he says about his battle at Château-Thierry A defensive battle in which the Allies defeated the Germans. ] Almost became a hero. He's just trying to keep up with the times.He probably felt outdated, that he was too old this time. outdated!Brinker's eyes lit up.outdated!He and his gang are responsible for the war!And we are going to war! I used to hear Brinker grumble about the generation gap so much that I finally dismissed his self-pitying generalized resentment of millions he didn't understand as a The cause of his disillusionment in winter.However, he knew his father well, so now they don't get along very well.In a way, that's Finey's point of view, except that Finey comically sees the war as a gigantic and very practical joke played stupidly by fat old men behind the scenes. I disagree with both Brinker and his father.Though it would be pleasant to believe in something, I cannot believe it.For it is clear that wars are not waged over a generation and their particular stupidity, but over a certain ignorance in the human heart. Brinker went upstairs and continued to pack his own boxes, and I went to the gym to empty my storage closet.As I walked across the Far Commons, I saw that the place was rapidly becoming unrecognizable, with huge green guns erected at many strategic locations, with white markings painted on the ground to indicate areas such as offices, and some of the others. Substantial stuff then: There's a crispness in the air, a professional optimism, a consciously kept morale high.I myself used to be happy in Devon, but this afternoon it seemed to me that those times were now over.Joy disappeared, along with rubber, silk, and many other raw materials, to be replaced by wartime chemical syntheses and the high morale of extraordinary times. In the gymnasium, a platoon of soldiers is undressing in the locker room.The best thing to say about them physically is that they look slender and muscular in their bright grass-green underwear. I never talked about Phineas, and no one else talked about him; yet, every hour of every day since Dr. Stempel told me those words, Phineas has been before my eyes.Finny has a life force that cannot be snuffed out so suddenly, even if the marrow flows into the heart.That's why I can't say or hear anything about him, because he's so generous that what I have to say would sound crazy to anyone else's ears, say, that he I can't use the past tense and I can't understand what other people have to say.During my time with him, Phineas created an atmosphere that I continue to live in now, a way of judging the world, with candor and with an entirely personal reservation , sifting the facts like pebbles, accepting just a little at a time, just as much as he could absorb, absorbing without feeling confused and drained. No one else I know can do this.All of them have at some point found something in themselves in violent conflict with something in the world around them.Those of my age often came when they realized the truth about war.When they begin to feel that there is something so hostile in the world, the simplicity and wholeness of their character is suddenly shattered, and they are never who they were. Only Phineas survived.He has an uncanny energy, a growing self-confidence, and a calm capacity for love that saves him.Nothing, neither in his native upbringing nor in Devon, had broken his harmonious and natural integrity, not even anything in war.Finally I finally broke. The parachute fitters ran out of the foyer at full speed, toward the playground.I retrieved my sneakers, bodysuit, and gym shorts from my own locker, and turned away, leaving the door open for the first time, abandoned wide open and unlocked.It was a more final moment than the moment the headmaster handed me my diploma.My student career is over. I walked down the aisle past the rows of closets, and instead of turning left toward the exit back to the dorms, I turned right and followed the paratroopers to Devon's Field.A tall wooden platform was erected here, and a shouting instructor stood on the platform, using the password of one, two, three, and four to instruct the rows of soldiers below him to do calisthenics. This training will be added to me in the coming weeks.I no longer have qualms about this, though I can't help but be glad that I didn't take this training in Devon, or anywhere that resembles Devon.My misgivings were all gone; in fact, I could now sense a growing, smug sense of certainty in the exterior of this training activity.Now that I no longer have any hatred to vent to war, I am ready to go to war.My anger was gone, I felt it gone, dry at the root, dry and lifeless.Phineas has absorbed it, taken it with me, and I will never have anger again. The voice of the physical trainer was like a frog croaking hundreds of times, yelling one, two, three, four. When I walked back to the dormitory, ha!Hey!drink!Joke!The sound came from behind, and of course my feet automatically fell involuntarily to the beat of this hoarse and obligatory sound, which carried me across the playing field and public lawn like an air-raid siren. Then my feet fell into time, as they did a few weeks later under the influence of a louder sound and a more poisonous sun.There I began to accept the constraints that my nature, with its Phineas in it, allowed. I didn't kill anyone, I didn't feel a strong hatred for my enemies.For my wars were over before I put on my uniform; I was always active in school where I killed my enemies. Only Phineas is never afraid, only Phineas never hates anyone.Someone else somewhere experiences this terrible shock, this shock of being targeted by an enemy, and then begins an inextricable effort to defend himself against what he sees himself facing by forming a particular state of mind. Threats, they are declaring in their own way of dealing with people: You see, I am an insignificant little ant, I am nothing, I do not deserve this threat.Or put it another way, like Mr. Lutzbury: How can this threaten me, I am not on the same level as these things, I am much higher than it.Or in another way, like Quackenbusch, always onslaught on the threat everywhere.Or another way, as Brinker did, to develop an irresponsible general resentment against the threat.Or another way, like Leper, emerging from a vague protective cloud only to meet face to face with this horror, which he was always afraid of, so he simply gave up the fight. All but Phineas built their Maginot Line at infinite cost against an enemy they thought they saw crossing it, an enemy who never attacked if he attacked, if he really was the enemy. (End of the book)