~~~(A/N) So every time you see this: "~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~", it means there's a jump in time. It begins in the present, and jumps to the past, and jumps back again, several times. If you do not get it now, you will certainly understand when you read it.~~~
Chatter fills the Infirmary, nervous din making the small room seem even more miniscule. I listen halfheartedly, lying limp on the hard bed, my face blank. The night nurse, Dr. Stanpole, and Phil Latham are standing there, huddled in a triangle of clamour opposite from me. The jittery night nurse lists off instructions, restrictions and warnings, and prattles on about meaningless topics, useless words wrapped in cheerful ribbons. Dr. Stanpole, as always, is stringing words together from his immense vocabulary, hoping it makes him seem important to those who wouldn't understand these lengthy words. Phil Latham's voice rings out with thinly veiled despair, encouraging me to give my twice-broken leg the "Old College Try", to give rest the "Old College Try", to give anything and everything the "Old College Try", throwing out that familiar phrase like a shield against the gravity of the situation. The old college try! Ha! He got himself kicked out of his college after he tried. The "old college try" led him to failure, led him to resort to coaching wrestling to kids who didn't give a hoot at Devon – and he wishes that fate upon me? I lay there taciturn, listening intently to their closely guarded voices, hearing the nervousness and shock more than their words, drinking in the emotions lying underneath their careful voices, tamed into hope and cheer and beaten into a professional monotone.
Eventually they all left. I am alone for once, alone to consider the horrible truths I have learned, the horrible things I do not want to believe. I do not want to even think about these things. So I diverted my attention to the dark room. This room is a place of great contrast. When the light is on, it is blinding – everything is brilliant white, but when the light is off, apparently, it is a place of unforgiving shadow, still blinding, but in an entirely different manner. The only consistent things about the Infirmary are the occupants and the odour, for both are always ill. I was struggling to keep my mind away from that which brought me to this wretched space when an intruder startled me by opening the window from the outside and loudly whispering my nickname.
"Who is it?" I demand, hissing with unleashed anger. I lean forward so that I might see their face, and I recognize the object of my fury, hanging partially through the window. The boy who wrecked my future is attempting to forcibly invade my sanctuary. I begin to flail around, trying to spring up so that I might push him down from the window like he deserves, only to be hindered by the cast on my leg.
"I came to—" Now he decides to begin explaining himself to me? Does he deserve the chance after all that has happened?
"You want to break something else in me! Is that why you're here?" Words spat out of my mouth faster than I could think them. I am entirely out of control, thrashing to and fro, hoping my cast would disappear, my leg miraculously fixed so I could properly give him a piece of my mind.
"I want to fix your leg up," he says slowly and matter-of-factly, as if I am a feral animal. Hasn't he done enough without taunting me as well? Can't he go wreck someone else's future and leave me alone? Honestly, what can he possibly do for my leg that would be positive?
"You'll fix my…" My outrage was too great for me to even finish a four-word sentence. I finally was able to lunge out of bed, but I fell, hard, onto the unforgiving floor between the bed and the window. I am suddenly struck with the great realization of how little I could now do, and the sheer force of such a terrible idea seemed to drain out the rage that had been holding me together, and my strength dissolved, leaving me as a puddle, weak on that cold expanse. I may not be hurt physically, yet my pride is shattered beyond repair. I let my head sink, resting my forehead between my hands, silent once more.
"I'm sorry," he says unconvincingly, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." He chanted this phrase to break the profound stillness, too deep for him to handle. He keeps saying it, just standing there as if empty apologies could reverse all the misery and transport us back to the beginning of the summer session, full of promise and joy. I labor to move back into my bed with much difficulty while he slithers out, back to his happy, sports-filled life. So immense is my exhaustion – more than I have ever experienced in years of playing on various sports teams – that I fall right into a dreamless sleep.
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I remember this one time when I was five, six, or seven, my family, all three of us, went on a long road-trip to Niagara Falls. After the seemingly endless nine-hour drive, we finally reached our destination. It wasn't the rushing water throwing itself with utter abandon against the rocks below that I remembered most, though. That was impressive, but I remember looking around and seeing all these people, seeing families speaking in clucks, hisses, shrieks, and grunts, clutching their children to their bodies and pointing at various things over the railings. They were all dressed differently and speaking incomprehensibly in strange tongues I had never heard, but their open faces all told the same story. It was beautiful.
A few weeks later I would recall this memory, and grow very curious. It was then that my parents hired a tutor to teach me my letters. Writing wasn't that important to me after I learned how to write "Phineas", my name, but I learned to read quickly, throwing my energy single-mindedly into it. My parents bought me books, and gave them to me to read. I wondered at the time what all the black rectangles meant, but didn't realise until much later what was going on, until I caught my mother with a permanent marker in her hand, and a new book in her lap. This displeased me greatly, for I wasn't sure all that I had been missing in those books. I asked my parents to get me a library card; I had heard about them from one of the books, and was sure I wanted to go. "Besides," I debated, "wouldn't it be easier to get new books and give them back when I am done, than to fill up space with books I will most likely never read again?" Or perhaps I did not speak so eloquently then, but that is the gist of what I was saying, and I like to fancy myself saying that.
So my parents gave me a library card, and eventually a subway pass so that they didn't have to take me there themselves, and I was able to gaze at text un-marred by censors. I was still restricted, having been ordered to remain in the children's section, but the only books I had ever read besides children's books had been reference books, which I had no desire to ever lay eyes upon again. I had no particular aversion to the subject matter held within those serious, leather-bound tomes, but rather it was the censors that put me off. Where I would only have the occasional word or phrase blocked out in normal books, I would have entire pages and sections blocked, or worse, ripped out of reference books. Every time I thought of the thick volumes, my mind inadvertently turned to those impenetrable barriers, blocking me from my quest of knowledge. That was why I did so poorly in scholarly activities at Devon. I simply never read the books.
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Dr. Stanpole noisily cleared his throat and said "Ahem" intermittently until I woke. He informed me, in phrases punctuated with ridiculous words and permeated with an air of pompousness, that he has left Gene Forrester a note instructing him to bring me my clothes and toiletries. I nod my understanding, and he swept out with a flourish of an invisible cape. Much to my chagrin, he has left me awake and with no entertainment besides an old magazine I've already read seven times, and thoughts I do not want to amuse.
There are 192 ceiling tiles.
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I never took much to books about good versus evil, and cops and robbers. After all, the "bad guys" weren't really bad, per say. They probably did it as a joke, or to keep their families safe. The writers never talked about the other side, and their opinions. The characters always assumed that the other side was bad without even asking them why they committed the crimes in the first place. No, my favourite books were the ones about boys going on adventures. They were always the best of friends, and had such fun. I remember that there was this series that I favoured especially about a pack of boys living in a boarding school. For weeks after that I pleaded with my parents to allow me to go to boarding school. They muttered things like "bad influences" and "sheltered" when they thought I wasn't listening. I suppose I must have made enough of a nuisance out of myself with my constant begging, because they finally enrolled me in the summer session at a boarding school called Devon, apparently it was the top school in the country, with some truly excellent sports teams. I was considered quite excellent at sports among the teams in Boston, so I was excited to see the teams at this new school.
When I arrived at the expansive, impressive school, I found my room-mate, Gene Forrester, already sitting on one of the two beds. I knew immediately that we were going to be great friends. He was my age and my height, and was fairly good at sports. Plus, he had the determined, yet lonesome, hollow look of a boy without a best friend. I was already easily placed in that category, so I figured we could fix that for each other. We needed each other; everyone needs a best pal.
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I was searching for sentient thoughts and emotions behind the glazed faces in that magazine when Gene came in, holding my suitcase like it weighed thrice his weight and looking for all the world like he was approaching the gallows. He glances up at me and swiftly snaps his gaze back to the floor, as if my appearance is burning his eyes.
"I've brought your stuff," he whispers, his voice partially camouflaged by the quiet of the room.
"Put the suitcase on the bed here, will you?" The sentence falls out stark and emotionless. I must sound like one of those three chatterboxes – the night nurse, or Dr. Stanpole, or maybe even Phil Latham. He sets the suitcase down next to me as requested, and I open it up and leisurely sift through it, mostly to hide my face and shaking hands. I force myself to look as though checking carefully, taking as long as I required to still my hands and gain control of my expression. Apparently I wasn't doing as well as I thought, and he caught sight of me unable to pull out my hairbrush due to the violent nature of the shakes.
"Finny, I tried to tell you before, I tried to tell you when I came to Boston that time—" Apparently he feels the need to drag up painful memories and rub them in my face.
"I know, I remember that." I snap at him, having conquered my hands and my face, but not yet my voice. "What'd you come around here for last night?"
"I don't know." Well, that's incredibly descriptive. He steps over to the window, resting his hands on the sill and stares at them with an odd fascination I can't place. I look away. "I had to." He uttered another useless three-word sentence and pauses before he elaborates with "I thought I belonged here."
I turn towards him at that, and he looks back up at me, finally removing his attention from his hands. I allow myself to pretend that the gaping chasm between us doesn't exist, or at least has a temporary bridge, and I expressed my emotions. I slam my fist against my closed suitcase.
"I wish to God there wasn't any war." He looks at me with an acute stare.
"What made you say that," he asked carefully.
"I don't know if I can take this with a war on. I don't know." Now I am talking about multiple things – the discovery of my friend's betrayal, my busted leg, my shattered dignity, and so much more.
"If you can take—" I don't want to hear him finish that sentence, so I carry on as if he hadn't said anything.
"What good are you in a war with a busted leg?" I shout at him mercilessly.
"Well you—why there are lots—you can—" He starts over and over, but I don't want to hear him try to make himself feel better. I don't want to hear him try to pretend this isn't as bad as it is. I bent over my suitcase, once again hiding my face, protecting it from his expressions.
"I've been writing to the Army and the Navy and the Canadians and everybody else all winter. Did you know that? No, you didn't know that. I used the Post Office in town for my return address. They all gave me the same answer after they saw the medical report on me. The answer was no soap. We can't use you. I also wrote the Coast Guard, the Merchant Marine, I wrote to General de Gaulle personally, I also wrote Chiang Kai-shek, and I was about ready to write somebody in Russia." I'm letting out these painful truths that I had been hiding all winter, and then he has the nerve to grin and say:
"You wouldn't like it in Russia." I explode at that.
"I'll hate it everywhere if I'm not in this war! Why do you think I kept saying there wasn't any war all winter? I was going to keep on saying it until two seconds after I got a letter from Ottawa or Chungking or someplace saying, 'yes, you can enlist with us.'" I smiled, imagining a letter from the US Army informing me I was going to be a general. "Then there would have been a war."
"Finny," his voice breaks; I suppose realizing that he can't call me Finny anymore. "Phineas," Sometimes I hate it when I'm right. "You wouldn't be any good in the war, even if nothing had happened to your leg." I sat there astonished. Even if nothing had happened? He still won't take responsibility for it? Then he continued more strongly, no doubt completely misinterpreting my silence.
"They'd get you someplace at the front and there'd be a lull in the fighting, and the next thing anyone knew you'd be over with the Germans or the Japanese asking if they'd like to field a baseball team against our side. You'd be sitting in one of their command posts, teaching them English. Yes, you'd get confused and borrow one of their uniforms, and you'd lend them one of yours. Sure, that's just what would happen. You'd get things so scrambled up nobody would know how to fight anymore. You'd make a mess, a terrible mess, Finny, out of the war." I'd been trying to keep calm this entire time, trying to tune him out, trying to believe that this boy still supported me through thick and thin, that he hadn't really meant to do this to me, but now I was crying, because I couldn't make myself believe it while my delicate reality was shattering into a million pieces.
"It was just some kind of blind impulse you had in that tree there; you didn't know what you were doing. Was that it?" I am trying so hard to believe in him, to remember that the world is a good place, like I had been all winter. Can't he see that?
"Yes, yes, that was it. Oh that was it, but how can you believe that? How can you believe that? I can't even make myself pretend that you could believe that." Is he agreeing or denying my claims? Nevertheless, I want him to be agreeing, so I'll take it as that.
"I do, I think I can believe that. I've gotten awfully mad sometimes and almost forgotten what I was doing. I think I believe you, I think I can believe that. Then that was it. Something just seized you. It wasn't anything you really felt against me, it wasn't some kind of hate you've felt all along. It wasn't anything personal." Please, Gene, please agree with me. Please let me believe this a little, even if I will never be able to delude myself entirely!
"No, I don't know how to show you, how can I show you, Finny? Tell me how to show you. It was just some ignorance inside me, some crazy thing inside me, something blind, that's all it was." I kept nodding, nodding, agreeing with his words, my jaw tensing up and trying to fight back my tears as I fought to pretend.
"I believe you. It's okay because I understand and I believe you. You've already shown me and I believe you." Even after Gene left, I kept repeating these words in my head, trying to believe, trying to pretend, like I had been all year. Make-believe is not as easy as it was when I was a kid. I was always skilled at pretending, but at this point, it might not be enough. I want to believe again, to believe that all people are good at heart, and there are no enemies, but it's so hard to do that after such betrayal.
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We pulled countless pranks during that heavenly summer session. I recall quite clearly this one time when Quackenbush, Brinker, and of course Gene and I went and short-sheeted Chet Douglass and Leper. The very next day, though, Gene and I went with Chet and Leper to turn back Quackenbush and Brinker's alarm clocks an hour. It was all good-hearted fun. Gene and I played tons of pranks, broke loads of rules that summer. In fact, we created a club based on breaking rules.
Together Gene and I founded the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session, our secret club, where we broke the rules daily, opening every meeting with an illicit leap of faith from the Tree into the river. Oh, right, that tree. The tree from whose gnarled branches I will never again jump, up whose trunk I would never again want to climb. Swimming in the river was never as good as that time we swam in the ocean.
That was another time we broke rules. It all started when I wanted to see if I could break a long-standing record in swimming at Devon. I had Gene time me, and I swam as fast as I could down the length of the pool and back. I did break the record, if only by a little bit. Gene wanted to get the record changed, but I declined. It just didn't feel satisfying, didn't feel right. When you swim in a pool, you're so caged in, stuck inside your emaciated, suffocating lane without anyone else playing with you. I wanted to do some real swimming, not in a nose-burning puddle, but out in the open, salty ocean. I convinced Gene to ride bikes with me to the beach, and we had a fantastic time, doing tricks, talking, and singing while we rode. I discussed his personality, and I managed to have him analyze mine, though he was very reluctant to divulge what he most disliked about me. Eventually we arrived at the beach, and to our luck, it was the best possible day. The sun was shining bright, the wind was calm and gentle, and the sea had such intoxicating power, high tide and heavy surf. Gene tuckered out after the first time he got in the water, and dragged himself up to the beach, pushed away some sand and rested. I ran up, astonished that he would be done with the ocean so soon, and made an ostentatious show out of checking his pulse, before sprinting back to the waves. I performed endless tricks and things, partially for his entertainment, and partially because I felt like I was soaring high on the energy of this perfect moment. Every so often, of course, I leaped back to the spot where he was lazily laying, and we made conversation. Later we had dinner at a hot dog stand, and had a glass of beer, even though we were only 17. It wasn't enough to make us inebriated, not by a long shot, but I definitely felt a little brave that night. We strolled down to the sand dunes and found a comfortable place on the sand to sleep for the night. I began saying my prayers and absentmindedly babbling to myself, and at the end, I said "I hope you're having a pretty good time, here. I know I kind of dragged you away at the point of a gun, but after all you can't come to the shore with just anybody, and you can't come by yourself, and at this teenage period of life, the proper person is your best pal." I hesitated for a moment, before revealing this next deadly fact, hoping he wouldn't flip out: "Which is what you are." I felt lightened, as the heavy burden that I'd been trying to express had rolled off my shoulders. It was a shocking confession, and would have been suicide at Devon, but it was so important, and the atmosphere here was different anyway. I lay there, wracked with emotions, as relief, fear, and anxiety drifted through my mind. Yet Gene said nothing. I decided he was asleep.
It always seemed as though we had a very close friendship, to me anyway. But then… that happened. We opened the nightly meeting of the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session with Gene and I jumping out of the Tree as always. Sure, I did always drag him to the S5 meetings, and I did drag him to a lot of places and to do a lot of things. He always had fun in the end, didn't he? I did. Anyway, everything started out normal, and half-way up the tree, I suggested that we jump together this time, instead of one after the other. It was the sort of thing best pals did, to my understanding. So he climbed up, and stepped on the branch. I wasn't looking at him, but one minute I was grinning from ear to ear, and the next minute, the world went slightly up, and then I was hurtling towards the ground at high-speed, helpless to the effects of gravity. But it couldn't have been Gene's fault. I knew at the time that it was an accident, at worst it was the Tree's fault, or the Earth's fault. Not Gene. I'd had my misgivings earlier today and yesterday, to drastically understate things, but I know that it wasn't his fault. He's a little clumsy, but… I believe him; it's not his fault, and we are still best pals.
I want to keep that belief. I wanted to even when it first happened and people were flapping their gums with gossip about the accident and whose responsibility it was. Of course, talk died down as soon as they saw me or Gene, but not that quick, and I have good ears. I firmly believed that their words were all hogwash, but even Gene wanted to spoil that for me. Of course he didn't mean anything by it—he wasn't even in his right mind at the time. He arrived at my abode in Boston and I thought about what a great pal he was, coming to see me while I was sick. Then he starts spewing nonsense about confessing his latent loathing for me, and that it really was his fault that I fell from the Tree, and worse, that he did it on purpose! I could see that all the gossip really got to him, and must have grated on his soul. Or perhaps he was trying to give me an outlet for my frustration at my new inability to participate in sports, playing the fall guy so I didn't pick on anyone that couldn't take it, or blame myself. He is such a good guy. So I returned the favour and made sure he didn't really believe that he did it. I affectionately called him crazy, and made absolutely sure he thought it was nature's fault, not his. He kept arguing with me, frantically attempting to assume accountability for the accident, so I sent him out of the house to deliberate over my speech. I was doing him a favour.
Towards the end of the year, after I was so sure that the incident must have been left behind us and buried in the minds of the rest of the boys, replaced instead by thoughts of war, the incident came back to haunt us with a fierce vengeance. With no warning whatsoever, Brinker Hadley and three of his friends burst into our room around 10 o'clock at night. At that time I was excited. Brinker had us hustled out of the dormitory, and we left to some undisclosed location, and I was sure we were going to pull a senior prank of some sort. We arrived at the First Building, used only for classrooms and therefore empty at night. In the Assembly Room, we joined ten members of our class, dressed in their black graduation robes. From that point on, I remember the incident in crystal clarity, just as it keeps replaying in my head.
"You see how Phineas limps," Brinker proclaimed loudly as soon as we entered the room, as if no one had noticed. I was quite confused, after all, it had been a well-established fact that my leg wasn't doing so well. Why would he feel the need to announce it?
"Sit down," he continued "take a load off your feet." I did as he suggested, Gene following suit a moment later. I took a long glance at the Assembly Room, at the stuffy portraits of long-since-deceased old men staring down at you and meeting your gaze, at the elegant marble floor that spread throughout the building in a continuous white expanse as if the snow that had recently melted outside was still bravely defending its territory inside. Perhaps this white marble floor, hard and impassive, should have been some sort of omen for me, an omen of what sort of uncomfortable, unwelcome whiteness awaited me in the near future. This room was used for serious business, and was definitely not a place for pranks. I did not know what exactly was going on, but I knew then that it was no joke. Brinker was stationed at the balustrade, starting some sort of soliloquy directed at the other students. Because the Assembly Room is infamous for its horrific acoustics, I only made out the occasional word or phrase as he talked about justice, an inquiry, and in general seemed to take himself too seriously.
"What is all this hot air?" Gene asked, angrily yet absently, as if he knew something more than I did, and was outraged by it, but still didn't have the whole picture.
"I don't know," I said snippily. I was trying to listen and find out myself. Brinker turned towards us at that, finishing his sentence.
"…blame on the responsible party. We will begin with a brief prayer." He smiled smugly, knowing exactly how much he sounded like Mr. Carthart, and quickly put on a wide-eyed expression like Mr. Carthart too. I'd bet that Brinker practices this in the mirror when he's feeling insecure and insignificant. Once again in Mr. Carthart's customs, he murmured "Let us pray.
We all immediately got into the Devon-prayer-position, and Brinker led us in an address to God. There was a heavy silence at the end, but Brinker broke it by saying "Phineas, if you please."
I rose with a shrug, and tried my best to stroll nonchalantly to the centre of the floor, separating Gene and the others from the platform. Brinker made a big show of taking an armchair from behind the balustrade and graciously giving it to me to sit upon. I did, and he then prompted:
"Now just in your own words."
"What own words?" I looked up at him, dumbfounded. What was the idiot talking about?
"I know you haven't got many of your own," he said patronisingly with an indulgent smile. "Use some of Gene's then." Honestly, he couldn't even try to disguise his disdain for my lesser grades could he?
"What shall I talk about? You? I've got plenty of words of my own for that."
"I'm all right." He glanced around the room gravely, as if trying to glean moral support from the unblinking crowd. "You're the casualty." Oh, no. This isn't good. He's gone off the deep end; he's got to have, if he thinks he's talking to a dead man. I had to treat this lightly, carefully. This is dangerous ground for sure.
"Brinker," I began in a guarded voice: "Are you off your head or what?" So I wasn't quite as sensitive as I had intended, but did he really deserve much consideration after dragging Gene and I from our room in the middle of the night and conducting some sort of informal trial, looking down his abnormally large nose at me and insulting me every chance he gets?
"No," he continues consistently, "that's Leper, our other casualty. Tonight we're investigating you."
"What the hell are you talking about!" Gene cuts in, unable to keep his anger at bay any longer. Clearly he was not as mesmerized as the others.
"Investigating Finny's accident!" He replied as though this was the natural course of things, still calm and unfazed in the face of our anger, as though he had scripted all this and was anticipating our commentary. "After all, 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" began a small voice from the platform "you agree, don't you Gene?"
"I told Brinker this morning," his voice was shaking badly "I thought this was the worst—" He knew. He knew about this nightmare and he hadn't thought to inform me. My morale decreased tenfold.
"And I said," Brinker interrupted Gene, his voice remaining authoritative and completely under control "that for Finny's own good, and for your own good too, by the way, Gene, that we should get this all out in the open. We don't want any mysteries or stray rumours or suspicions left in the air at the end of the year, do we?"
The cacophonous agreement of the small crowd rang through the shadowy environment of the Assembly Room.
"What are you talking about?" I let loose all my contempt for Brinker at that moment into that acidic sentence "What rumours and suspicions?"
"Never mind about that," Brinker replied carefully, his face schooled into false gravity. He's probably just jumping for joy on the inside right now. He is always so conceited, and now he's in a position of power with everyone watching his every move; and it doesn't help that he's playing judge. He's always fancied himself with a well-developed sense of justice. The problem is that he has forgotten that justice is blind, and that is exceedingly difficult for him to achieve when he has grievances with both parties, and it doesn't help him when he doesn't try. "Why don't you tell us in your own words what happened?" Brinker continued. "Just humour 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."
I wanted to ask him what those reasons were, exactly, but I didn't want him to seem validated in front of everyone here. I just wanted him to bug off. So I settled for saying: "There's nothing to tell."
"Nothing to tell?" Brinker shot a pointed glance at my cast and my cane.
"Well then, I fell out of a tree."
"Why?" someone from the platform asked.
"Why? Because I took a wrong step" I explained.
"Did you lose your balance?" The voice continued.
"Yes, I lost my balance." This was all too painful for me to go through. Couldn't they simply leave me alone and accept it for the accident it was?
"You had better balance than anyone in the school."
"Thanks a lot."
"I didn't say it for a compliment." How is good balance an insult?
"Well then, no thanks."
"Have you ever thought that you didn't just fall out of that tree?" Well, this was interesting. I had been thinking about this for a long while, turning it over and dissecting it in my head.
"It's very funny, but ever since then I've had a feeling that the Tree did it by itself. It's an impression I've had. Almost as though the Tree shook me out by itself."
"Someone else was in the tree, isn't that so?"
"No." I said quickly and firmly. "I don't think so." I found myself gazing upward as I tried to recall the details of the memory. "Or was there? Maybe there was somebody climbing up the rungs of the trunk. I kind of forget" There was an excited, humming silence that filled the room for a measure of seconds, until someone from the platform spoke up.
"I thought somebody told me that Gene Forrester was—"
"Finny was there," Brinker interrupted confidently, "he knows better than anyone."
"You were there, weren't you Gene?" the new voice from the platform continued.
"Yes," Gene replied, seemingly interested, "yes, I was there too."
"Were you—near the tree?"
I turned to Gene, eager for him to agree with my memory of the incident. "You were down there at the bottom, weren't you?" I was no longer speaking as a person of the court; I was speaking as a pal to my pal. It didn't matter what others were saying. I needed my best pal to corroborate my story.
Gene looked back up at me and confirmed: "Down at the bottom, yes." Taking this as the encouragement I required, I continued:
"Did you see the Tree shake or anything?" I flushed a little, fully realizing how nutty I sounded. "I've always meant to ask you, just for the hell of it."
"I don't recall anything like that…"
"Nutty question," I muttered.
We, as in the people on the platform, Gene and I kept arguing, trying to figure out where Gene was at the time. Gene and I kept insisting that Gene was at the bottom, and the people in the platform kept trying to put Gene elsewhere. There was confusion in both our voices. Brinker insisted that Gene had to remember every detail, because that was his experience with accidents. They began to argue as to whether or not Gene was being accused, and the air grew tense, too tense. Finally I couldn't stand it, and I broke the conversation.
"I think I remember now!" I felt happy and relieved, as the intensity of the atmosphere drained away at the advent of my speech. "Yes, I remember seeing you standing on the bank. You were looking up and your hair was plastered down over your forehead so that you had that dumb look you always have when you've been in the water—what was it you said? 'Stop posing up there' or one of those best-pal cracks you're always making." I smiled, pleased that the memory wasn't as sour as it usually was. "And I think I did start to pose just to make you madder, and I said, what did I say? Something about the two of us… yes, I said 'Let's make a double jump,' because I thought if we went together it would be something that had never been done before, holding hands in a jump—" Then suddenly the memory went bitter, acidic and poisonous again. "No, that was on the ground that I said that to you. I said that to you on the ground, and then the two of us started to climb…" I trailed off as the memory began to play in my head.
As I began to be trapped in the swirling void of my evil memories, the fall replaying endlessly in my mind, I didn't pay much attention to the actions of people around me. I did hear that someone wanted to see Leper, so I absentmindedly announced his location once my head cleared enough to allow me to do so.
Leper came into the room and asked what he could do for us. I mumbled, mostly to myself, about the trial and Brinker's obvious stupidity. Brinker walked up to Leper and asked him about where he was when the incident occurred. Leper replied efficiently:
"Right there by the trunk of the tree. I was looking up. It was almost sunset and I remember the way the sun was shining in my eyes."
"So you couldn't…" Gene's voice tapered off before he finished his statement.
Brinker ignored the interruption and prompted Leper. "And what did you see? Could you see anything with the sun in your eyes?"
"Oh sure," said Leper. "I just shaded my eyes a little, like this." He showed us how one shades one's eyes, "and then I could see. I could see both of them clearly enough because the sun was blazing all around them," his voice began to entertain a certain sing-song sincerity, as if reading aloud a picture book to a kindergarten class, "and the rays of the sun were shooting past them, millions of rays shooting past them like—like golden machine-gun fire." He paused, apparently proud to find an appropriate simile. "That's what it was like, if you want to know. The two of them looked as black as—as black as death standing up there with this fire burning all around them."
"Up there where?" Brinker's voice took up an interrogational quality. "Where were the two of them standing up there?"
"On a limb!" He sounded slightly exasperated, as if he'd said the same thing five times in a row and was still being asked the same question.
Brinker and Leper began to get into a small tiff because Leper couldn't see who was ahead of the other, but Brinker relented and simply asked how they were positioned.
"One of them was next to the trunk, holding the trunk of the tree. I'll never forget that because the tree was a huge black shape too, and his hand touching the black trunk anchored him, if you see what I mean, to something solid in all that bright fire they were standing in up there. And the other one was a little farther out on the limb."
Brinker asked what happened next in the sequence of events, and Leper simply replied that the figures moved, and when asked to clarify, Leper likened the movement to an engine.
"Like an engine!" Brinker was outraged, and such was evident in his yell, his expression dancing between surprise and disgust.
"I can't think of the name of the engine. But it has two pistons. What is this engine? Well anyway, in this engine one piston sinks, and then the next one sinks. The one holding on to the trunk sank for a second, up and down like a piston, and then the other one sank and fell."
Then once again they were quarrelling, this time about who was the one holding onto the trunk, and which one was the one who fell. Leper refused to tell Brinker, but isn't it obvious? Who has the broken leg, Gene or me? Who has to walk with a cane and can never enlist, Gene or me? So who do you think fell? Gene? Or me? I rose from my seat amidst chaos.
"I don't care," I proclaimed evenly. "I don't care."
Gene leapt up from the bench on which he had been sitting. "Phineas!" he bellowed.
I shook my head sharply, and closed my eyes for a moment before I could turn to him with a calm expression. "I just don't care. Never mind." I found myself saying these words, and began to traverse the cold, white marble floor.
Brinker shouted after me. "Wait a minute," he pleaded, "We haven't heard everything yet! We haven't got all the facts!"
But I for one had heard enough. I was tired of his petty obsession. I whirled around as best as I could with a worthless left leg.
"You get the rest of the facts, Brinker!" I roared. "You get all your facts!" I could feel scorching tears escaping from my eyes, but I didn't care. "You collect every useless fact there is in the world!"
I stormed out the door, dashing like there was no tomorrow. I reached the stairs, planning to take them two at a time, but instead, I tumbled. I fell, rolling and bouncing my way down those sharp, cruel, white stairs.
I was taken to the hospital wing at Devon, where three chatterboxes were trying to reassure themselves as much as me.
~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~
Dr. Stanpole rapped on the door in a cheerful rhythm before he entered. He begins to explain to me that my leg requires surgery, and tries to communicate exactly what this entails. I don't understand barely any of the medical mumbo-jumbo, but basically he has to set my bone. Why he doesn't simply say this as such, instead of using the twenty-syllable words he seems fond of, I shall never know. Perhaps this is designed to put the patient at ease, knowing that the doctor knows more than they do and is highly trained. But who in their right mind would be soothed by not knowing what is going to happen to them? I ask whether they are planning on knocking me out during the procedure so I don't flip out, and he says 'yes', in his usual roundabout manner. He leaves shortly after.
I am still unsure about my ordeal and the people involved. I've always been so sure that everyone is good at heart, but how could a good person do what Brinker Hadley had done in good conscience? I need to believe that Gene meant well this whole time, that he didn't really jounce the branch on purpose. I must convince myself that he was simply a little uncertain of his steps, of his footing, so he took a step to test his weight, and … the test did what it was supposed to do. After all, I can't blame him for wanting to be sure the branch could hold our combined weight. We'd never been both on the jumping branch at the same time, and he is naturally quite cowardly anyway. He probably tried to grab me when he realized what was going on, but couldn't reach me. But Leper never said anything about him moving his arms to save me. So maybe he froze, maybe he just seized up. What does it matter, anyway? We're best pals. We stick together through thick and thin. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
What future do I have now? My grades are horrific; all of them except for the time during this winter when Gene helped me study nonstop. I have no great intelligence to speak of; my ticket to college was going to be through sports or the military, and now I am unable to do either. I was so excited before, I was so sure I was going to be a war hero.
Now what can I do? Wars don't last forever. Even assuming that the surgery works just as Dr. Stanpole hopes, and even hoping that I will run again; by the time I have fully recovered, the war may have already ended. There isn't even much of a chance I will walk again, let alone run, sprint, and march. And I would have to deal with this alone.
I don't know who my friends are now. I don't know who I can trust. Gene isn't always going to be there, I know that now. I had dreams of us going to the same college, of us being life-long friends. Those dreams have shattered. I want so badly to believe that Gene is a true friend, my best pal through and through. Even believing that the incident in the Tree was a complete accident, why didn't he tell me that the trial was going to occur? He had that knowledge with him all day. Even if he didn't tell me at first because he didn't think Brinker would go through with it and he didn't want to worry me, there were plenty of opportunities for Gene to tell me what was going on before Brinker made me sit in that armchair and make a fool of myself.
Dr. Stanpole and a handful of nurses come and wheel me into the operating room. As they prepare to put me under, and get ready for surgery, I realize that I am going to wake up in that same hellish white room, still weak, still broken. My only friend would be Gene, and what reason so I have to think he would ever see me again? The only time he ever visited me outside of school was when he had a guilty conscience and visited me for an hour on the way to Devon to appease both of us, but himself more so. What if he serves? That'll be one more experience that separates us, one more thing adding depth to the chasm between us. The doctor begins to put me under, and I feel myself drifting away.
How can I live to see the rest of my years? How can I live to see tomorrow? I don't know if I even want to.
~~~I really wanted the trip to be to the Redwood Forest in California, but Niagara Falls is geographically closer to Boston, Massachusetts, and the Redwood Forest is secluded in comparison.~~~