He planed up the pool, his shoulders dominating the water while his legs and feet rode so low
that I couldn’t distinguish them; a wake rippled hurriedly by him and then at the end of the pool
his position broke, he relaxed, dived, an instant’s confusion and then his suddenly and
metallically tense body shot back toward the other end of the pool. Another turn and up the pool
again—I noticed no particular slackening of his pace—another turn, down the pool again, his
hand touched the end, and he looked up at me with a composed, interested expression. “Well,
how did I do?” I looked at the watch; he had broken A. Hopkins Parker’s record by.7 second.
“My God! So I really did it. You know what? I thought I was going to do it. It felt as though I
had that stop watch in my head and I could hear myself going just a little bit faster than A.
Hopkins Parker.”
“The worst thing is there weren’t any witnesses. And I’m no official timekeeper. I don’t think it
will count.”
“Well of course it won’t count.”
“You can try it again and break it again. Tomorrow. We’ll get the coach in here, and all the
official timekeepers and I’ll call up The Devonian to send a reporter and a photographer—”
He climbed out of the pool. “I’m not going to do it again,” he said quietly.
“Of course you are!”
“No, I just wanted to see if I could do it. Now I know. But I don’t want to do it in public.” Some
other swimmers drifted in through the door. Finny glanced sharply at them. “By the way,” he
said in an even more subdued voice, “we aren’t going to talk about this. It’s just between you and
me. Don’t say anything about it, to ... anyone.”
“Not say anything about it! When you broke the school record!”
“Sh-h-h-h-h! ” He shot a blazing, agitated glance at me.
I stopped and looked at him up and down. He didn’t look directly back at me. “You’re too good
to be true,” I said after a while.
He glanced at me, and then said, “Thanks a lot” in a somewhat expressionless voice.
Was he trying to impress me or something? Not tell anybody? When he had broken a school
record without a day of practice? I knew he was serious about it, so I didn’t tell anybody.
Perhaps for that reason his accomplishment took root in my mind and grew rapidly in the
darkness where I was forced to hide it. The Devon School record books contained a mistake, a
lie, and nobody knew it but Finny and me. A. Hopkins Parker was living in a fool’s paradise,
wherever he was. His defeated name remained in bronze on the school record plaque, while
Finny deliberately evaded an athletic honor. It was true that he had many already—the Winslow
Galbraith Memorial Football Trophy for having brought the most Christian sportsmanship to the