We met every night, because Finny’s life was ruled by inspiration and anarchy, and so he prized
a set of rules. His own, not those imposed on him by other people, such as the faculty of the
Devon School. The Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session was a club; clubs by definition
met regularly; we met every night. Nothing could be more regular than that. To meet once a
week seemed to him much less regular, entirely too haphazard, bordering on carelessness.
I went along; I never missed a meeting. At that time it would never have occurred to me to say,
“I don’t feel like it tonight,” which was the plain truth every night. I was subject to the dictates of
my mind, which gave me the maneuverability of a strait jacket. “We’re off, pal,” Finny would
call out, and acting against every instinct of my nature, I went without a thought of protest.
As we drifted on through the summer, with this one inflexible appointment every day—classes
could be cut, meals missed, Chapel skipped—I noticed something about Finny’s own mind,
which was such an opposite from mine. It wasn’t completely unleashed after all. I noticed that he
did abide by certain rules, which he seemed to cast in the form of Commandments. “Never say
you are five feet nine when you are five feet eight and a half” was the first one I encountered.
Another was, “Always say some prayers at night because it might turn out that there is a God.”
But the one which had the most urgent influence in his life was, “You always win at sports.”
This “you” was collective. Everyone always won at sports. When you played a game you won, in
the same way as when you sat down to a meal you ate it. It inevitably and naturally followed.
Finny never permitted himself to realize that when you won they lost. That would have destroyed
the perfect beauty which was sport. Nothing bad ever happened in sports; they were the absolute
good.
He was disgusted with that summer’s athletic program—a little tennis, some swimming, clumsy
softball games, badminton. “Badminton!” he exploded the day it entered the schedule. He said
nothing else, but the shocked, outraged, despairing note of anguish in the word said all the rest.
“Badminton! ”
“At least it’s not as bad as the seniors,” I said, handing him the fragile racquet and the fey
shuttlecock. “They’re doing calisthenics.”
“What are they trying to do?” He swatted the shuttlecock the length of the locker room. “Destroy
us?” Humor infiltrated the outrage in his voice, which meant that he was thinking of a way out.
We went outside into the cordial afternoon sunshine. The playing fields were optimistically
green and empty before us. The tennis courts were full. The softball diamond was busy. A
pattern of badminton nets swayed sensually in the breeze. Finny eyed them with quiet
astonishment. Far down the fields toward the river there was a wooden tower about ten feet high
where the instructor had stood to direct the senior calisthenics. It was empty now. The seniors
had been trotted off to the improvised obstacle course in the woods, or to have their blood
pressure taken again, or to undergo an insidious exercise in The Cage which consisted in
stepping up on a box and down again in rapid rhythm for five minutes. They were off
somewhere, shaping up for the war. All of the fields were ours.