Free A Separate Peace by John Knowles

You didn’t go all the way to Dixie and then come back with nothing but your dismal face to show for it.” His talk rolled on, ignoring and covering my look of shock and clumsiness. I was silenced by the sight of him propped by white hospital-looking pillows in a big armchair. Despite everything at the Devon Infirmary, he had seemed an athlete there, temporarily injured in a game; as though the trainer would come in any minute and tape him up. Propped now before a great New England fireplace, on this quiet old street, he looked to me like an invalid, house-bound.
    â€œI brought . . . Well I never remember to bring anyone anything.” I struggled to get my voice above this self-accusing murmur. “I’ll send you something. Flowers or something.”
    â€œFlowers! What happened to you in Dixie anyway?”
    â€œWell then,” there was no light remark anywhere in my head, “I’ll get you some books.”
    â€œNever mind about books. I’d rather have some talk. What happened down South?”
    â€œAs a matter of fact,” I brought out all the cheerfulness I could find for this, “there was a fire. It was just a grass fire out behind our house. We . . . took some brooms and beat it. I guess what we really did was fan it because it just kept getting bigger until the Fire Department finally came. They could tell where it was because of all the flaming brooms we were waving around in the air, trying to put them out.”
    Finny liked that story. But it put us on the familiar friendly level, pals trading stories. How was I going to begin talking about it? It would not be just a thunderbolt. It wouldn’t even seem real.
    Not in this conversation, not in this room. I wished I had met him in a railroad station, or at some highway intersection. Not here. Here the small window panes shone from much polishing and the walls were hung with miniatures and old portraits. The chairs were either heavily upholstered and too comfortable to stay awake in or Early American and never used. There were several square, solid tables covered with family pictures and random books and magazines, and also three small, elegant tables not used for anything. It was a compromise of a room, with a few good “pieces” for guests to look at, and the rest of it for people to use.
    But I had known Finny in an impersonal dormitory, a gym, a playing field. In the room we shared at Devon many strangers had lived before us, and many would afterward. It was there that I had done it, but it was here that I would have to tell it. I felt like a wild man who had stumbled in from the jungle to tear the place apart.
    I moved back in the Early American chair. Its rigid back and high armrests immediately forced me into a righteous posture. My blood could start to pound if it wanted to; let it. I was going ahead. “I was thinking about you most of the trip up.”
    â€œOh yeah?” He glanced briefly into my eyes.
    â€œI was thinking about you . . . and the accident.”
    â€œThere’s loyalty for you. To think about me when you were on a vacation.”
    â€œI was thinking about it . . . about you because—I was thinking about you and the accident because I caused it.”
    Finny looked steadily at me, his face very handsome andexpressionless. “What do you mean, you caused it?” his voice was as steady as his eyes.
    My own voice sounded quiet and foreign. “I jounced the limb. I caused it.” One more sentence. “I deliberately jounced the limb so you would fall off.”
    He looked older than I had ever seen him. “Of course you didn’t.”
    â€œYes I did. I did!”
    â€œOf course you didn’t do it. You damn fool. Sit down, you damn fool.”
    â€œOf course I did!”
    â€œI’m going to hit you if you don’t sit down.”
    â€œ Hit me!” I looked at him. “ Hit me! You can’t even