available, to be achieved probably before night fell again. Now, in this winter of snow and
crutches with Phineas, I began to know that each morning reasserted the problems of the night
before, that sleep suspended all but changed nothing, that you couldn’t make yourself over
between dawn and dusk. Phineas however did not believe this. I’m sure that he looked down at
his leg every morning first thing, as soon as he remembered it, to see if it had not been totally
restored while he slept. When he found on this first morning back at Devon that it happened still
to be crippled and in a cast, he said in his usual self-contained way, “Hand me my crutches, will
you?”
Brinker Hadley, next door, always awoke like an express train. There was a gathering rumble
through the wall, as Brinker reared up in bed, coughed hoarsely, slammed his feet on the floor,
pounded through the freezing air to the closet for something in the way of clothes, and thundered
down the hall to the bathroom. Today, however, he veered and broke into our room instead.
“Ready to sign up?” he shouted before he was through the door. “You ready to en—Finny!”
“You ready to en—what?” pursued Finny from his bed. “Who’s ready to sign and en what?”
“Finny. By God you’re back!”
“Sure,” confirmed Finny with a slight, pleased grin.
“So,” Brinker curled his lip at me, “your little plot didn’t work so well after all.”
“What’s he talking about?” said Finny as I thrust his crutches beneath his shoulders.
“Just talking,” I said shortly. “What does Brinker ever talk about?”
“You know what I’m talking about well enough.”
“No I don’t.”
“Oh yes you do.”
“Are you telling me what I know?”
“Damn right I am.”
“What’s he talking about,” said Finny.
The room was bitterly cold. I stood trembling in front of Phineas, still holding his crutches in
place, unable to turn and face Brinker and this joke he had gotten into his head, this catastrophic
joke.
“He wants to know if I’ll sign up with him,” I said, “enlist.” It was the ultimate question for all
seventeen-year-olds that year, and it drove Brinker’s insinuations from every mind but mine.