The Far Common was different, a gift of the rich lady benefactress. It was Georgian like the rest
of the school, and it combined scholasticism with grace in the way which made Devon
architecturally interesting. But the bricks had been laid a little too skillfully, and the woodwork
was not as brittle and chipped as it should have been. It was not the essence of Devon, and so it
was donated, without too serious a wrench, to the war.
The Far Common could be seen from the window of my room, and early in June I stood at the
window and watched the war moving in to occupy it. The advance guard which came down the
street from the railroad station consisted of a number of Jeeps, being driven with a certain
restraint, their gyration-prone wheels inactive on these old ways which offered nothing bumpier
than a few cobblestones. I thought the Jeeps looked noticeably uncomfortable from all the power
they were not being allowed to use. There is no stage you comprehend better than the one you
have just left, and as I watched the Jeeps almost asserting a wish to bounce up the side of Mount
Washington at eighty miles an hour instead of rolling along this dull street, they reminded me, in
a comical and a poignant way, of adolescents.
Following them there were some heavy trucks painted olive drab, and behind them came the
troops. They were not very bellicose-looking; their columns were straggling, their suntan
uniforms had gotten rumpled in the train, and they were singing Roll Out the Barrel.
“What’s that?” Brinker said from behind me, pointing across my shoulder at some open trucks
bringing up the rear. “What’s in those trucks?”
“They look like sewing machines.”
“They are sewing machines!”
“I guess a Parachute Riggers’ school has to have sewing machines.”
“If only Leper had enlisted in the Army Air Force and been assigned to Parachute Riggers’
school ...”
“I don’t think it would have made any difference,” I said. “Let’s not talk about Leper.”
“Leper’ll be all right. There’s nothing like a discharge. Two years after the war’s over people
will think a Section Eight means a berth on a Pullman car.”
“Right. Now do you mind? Why talk about something you can’t do anything about?”
“Right.”
I had to be right in never talking about what you could not change, and I had to make many
people agree that I was right. None of them ever accused me of being responsible for what had
happened to Phineas, either because they could not believe it or else because they could not
understand it. I would have talked about that, but they would not, and I would not talk about
Phineas in any other way.