gutters, a gray seamy shifting beneath the crust of snow, which cracks to show patches of frozen
mud beneath. Shrubbery loses its bright snow headgear and stands bare and frail, too
undernourished to hide the drains it was intended to hide. These are the days when going into
any building you cross a mat of dirt and cinders led in by others before you, thinning and finally
trailing off in the corridors. The sky is an empty hopeless gray and gives the impression that this
is its eternal shade. Winter’s occupation seems to have conquered, overrun and destroyed
everything, so that now there is no longer any resistance movement left in nature; all the juices
are dead, every sprig of vitality snapped, and now winter itself, an old, corrupt, tired conqueror,
loosens its grip on the desolation, recedes a little, grows careless in its watch; sick of victory and
enfeebled by the absence of challenge, it begins itself to withdraw from the ruined countryside.
The drains alone are active, and on these Saturdays their noises sound a dull recessional to
winter.
Only Phineas failed to see what was so depressing. Just as there was no war in his philosophy,
there was also no dreary weather. As I have said, all weathers delighted Phineas. “You know
what we’d better do next Saturday?” he began in one of his voices, the low-pitched and evenly
melodic one which for some reason always reminded me of a Rolls-Royce moving along a
highway. “We’d better organize the Winter Carnival.”
We were sitting in our room, on either side of the single large window framing a square of
featureless gray sky. Phineas was resting his cast, which was a considerably smaller one now, on
the desk and thoughtfully pressing designs into it with a pocket knife. “What Winter Carnival?” I
asked.
“The Winter Carnival. The Devon Winter Carnival.”
“There isn’t any Devon Winter Carnival and never has been.”
“There is now. We’ll have it in that park next to the Naguamsett. The main attraction will be
sports, naturally, featuring I expect a ski jump—”
“A ski jump! That park’s as flat as a pancake.”
“—and some slalom races, and I think a little track. But we’ve got to have some snow statues
too, and a little music, and something to eat. Now, which committee do you want to head?”
I gave him a wintry smile. The snow statues committee.”
“I knew you would. You always were secretly arty, weren’t you? I’ll organize the sports, Brinker
can handle the music and food, and then we need somebody to kind of beautify the place, a few
holly wreaths and things like that. Someone good with plants and shrubbery. I know. Leper.”
From looking at the star he was imprinting in his cast I looked quickly up at his face. “Leper’s
gone.”
“Oh yeah, so he is. Leper would be gone. Well, somebody else then.”