I went back to Devon School not long ago, and found it looking

oddly newer than when I was a student there fifteen years before. It
seemed more sedate than I remembered it, more perpendicular and
strait-laced, with narrower windows and shinier woodwork, as though a
coat of varnish had been put over everything for better preservation.
But, of course, fifteen years before there had been a war going on.
Perhaps the school wasnt as well kept up in those days; perhaps
varnish, along with everything else had gone to war.
Devon is considered the most beautiful school in New England.
It is the beauty of small areas of ordera large yard, a group of trees,
three similar dormitories, a circle of old housesliving together in
contentious harmony.
So after lunch, I walked back toward the school.
In through swinging doors I reached a marble foyer, and stopped at the
foot of a long white marble flight of stairs.
A little fog hung over the river so that as I neared it I felt myself
becoming isolated from everything except the river and the few trees
beside it.
There were several trees bleakly reaching into the fog. Any one of
them might have been the one I was looking for.
Moving through the coarse grass I began to examine each one closely,
and finally identified the tree I was looking for by certain small scars
rising along its trunk, and by a limb extending over the river. This was
the tree, and it seemed to me standing there to resemble those men,
the giants of your childhood, whom you encounter years later and find
they are not merely smaller in relation to your growth, but that they
are absolutely smaller, shrunken by age. In this double demotion, the
giants have become pigmies while you were looking the other way.
The tree seemed weary from age, enfeebled, dry. I was thankful,
very thankful that I had seen it. So the more things remain the same,
the more they change after allplus cest la meme chose, plus ca
change. Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even a death by
violence.
The tree was tremendous, an irate, steely black steeple beside the
river. I was damned if Id climb it. The hell with it. No one but Phineas
could think up such a crazy idea.
He of course saw nothing the slightest bit intimidating about it.
He wouldnt, or wouldnt admit it if he did. Not Phineas.

What I like best about this tree, he said in that voice of his,
what I like is that its such a cinch! He opened his eyes wider and
gave us his maniac look, and only the smirk on his wide mouth with its
droll, slightly protruding upper lip reassured us that he wasnt
completely goofy.
Everything he said was true and sincere; Finny always said what he
happened to be thinking.
Finny decided that the faculty of Devon was beginning to show
commendable signs of maturity,
It was partly his doing. The faculty had never before experienced
a student who combined a calm ignorance of the rules with a winning
urge to be good, who seemed to love the school truly and deeply, and
never more than when he was breaking the regulations. The faculty
threw up its hands over Phineas, and so loosened its grip on all of us.
Phineas was the essence of this careless peace.
I was beginning to see that Phineas could get away with
anything. I couldnt help envying him that a little, which was perfectly
normal. There was no harm in envying even your best friend a little
I found it. I found a single sustaining thought. The thought was, You
and Phineas are even already. You are even in enmity. You are both
coldly driving ahead for yourselves alone. You did hate him for
breaking that school swimming record, but so what? He hated you for
getting an A in every course but one last term. You would have had an
A in that one except for him. Except for him.
Then a second realization broke. Finny had deliberately set out to
wreck my studies. That explained Blitzball, that explained the nightly
meetings of the Super Suicide Society, that explained his insistence
that I share all his diversions. The way I believed that youre-my-bestfriend blabber! The shadow falling across his face if I didnt want to do
something with him! Sure, he wanted to share everything with me,
especially his possession of Ds in every subject. That way he, the
great athlete, would be way ahead of me. It was all cold trickery, it was
all calculated, it was all enmity.
I couldnt stand this.
We followed our gigantic shadows across the campus. We reached the
others loitering around the base of the tree, and Phineas began to
throw off his clothes, delighted by the challenge of the tree, the
competitive tension of all of us. Lets go, you and me, he called.
Well go together, a double jump!
None of this mattered now; I would have agreed to anything. He
started up the wooden rungs and I began climbing behind, up to the
limb high over the bank. Phineas ventured a little way along it, holding
a nearby branch for support. Come out a little way, and then well
jump side by side.

Holding firmly to the trunk, I took a step toward him, and then my
knees bent and I jounced the limb. Finny, his balance gone, swung his
head around to look at me for an instant with extreme interest, and
then he tumbled sideways, broke through the little branches below and
hit the bank with a sickening, unnatural thud. It was the first clumsy
physical action I had ever seen him make. With unthinking sureness I
moved out on the limb and jumped into the river, every trace of my
fear of this forgotten.
None of us was allowed near the infirmary during the next days, but I
had heard all the rumors that came out of it. Eventually a fact
emerged; it was one of his legs which had been shattered. I couldnt
figure out exactly what this word meant, whether it meant broken in
one or several places, cleanly or badly. I didnt ask.
I went to the infirmary.
Dr. Stanpole came walking rapidly out of his office, head down and
hands sunk into his pockets. He didnt notice me until he was almost
past me, and then he stopped short. His eyes met mine carefully, and I
said, Well, how is he, sir? in a calm voice which, the moment after
had alarmed me unreasonably.
Dr. Stanpole sat down next to me. This is something I think boys
of your generation are going to see a lot of, he said quietly, and I will
have to tell you about it now. Your friend is dead.
He was incomprehensible. I felt an extremely cold chill along my
back and neck. Dr. Stanpole went on talking incomprehensibly.
In the middle of it his heart simply stopped, without warning. I
cant explain it. Yes, I can. There is only one explanation. As I was
moving the bone some of the marrow must have escaped into his
blood stream and gone directly to his heart and stopped it. Thats the
only possible explanation. There are risks, there are always risks. An
operating room is a place where the risks are just more formal than in
other places. An operating room and a war. And I noticed that his selfcontrol was breaking up. why did it have to happen to you boys so
soon, here at Devon?
The marrow of his bone I repeated aimlessly. This at last
penetrated my mind.
During the time I was with him, Phineas created an atmosphere in
which I continued now to live, letting its rocklike facts sift through and
be accepted only a little at a time, only as much as he could assimilate
without a sense of chaos and loss.
No one else I have ever met could do this.

Looking back now across fifteen years, I could see with great clarity the
fear I had lived in, which must mean that in the interval I had
succeeded in a very important undertaking: I must have made my
escape from it.