And it was this which caused me not to notice Brownie Perkins rejoin us from the dormitory, and
not to hear what he was saying until Finny cried hilariously, “A telegram for Gene? Ifs the
Olympic Committee. They want you! Of course they want you! Give it to me, Brownie, I’ll read
it aloud to this assembled host.” And it was this which drained away as I watched Finny’s face
pass through all the gradations between uproariousness and shock.

I took the telegram from Phineas, facing in advance whatever the destruction was. That was what
I learned to do that winter.

I have escaped and need help. I am at Christmas location. You understand. No need to risk
address here. My safety depends on you coming at once.

(signed) Your best friend, Elwin Leper Lepellier.

Chapter 10

That night I made for the first time the land of journey which later became the monotonous
routine of my life: traveling through an unknown countryside from one unknown settlement to
another. The next year this became the dominant activity, or rather passivity, of my army career,
not fighting, not marching, but this kind of nighttime ricochet; for as it turned out I never got to
the war.

I went into uniform at the time when our enemies began to recede so fast that there had to be a
hurried telescoping of military training plans. Programs scheduled to culminate in two years
became outmoded in six months, and crowds of men gathered for them in one place were
dispersed to twenty others. A new weapon appeared and those of us who had traveled to three or
four bases mastering the old one were sent on to a fifth, sixth, and seventh to master the new.
The closer victory came the faster we were shuttled around America in pursuit of a role to play in
a drama which suddenly, underpopulated from the first, now had too many actors. Or so it
seemed. In reality there would have been, as always, too few, except that the last act, a mass
assault against suicidally-defended Japan, never took place. I and my year—not “my generation”
for destiny now cut too finely for that old phrase—I and those of my year were preeminently
eligible for that. Most of us, so it was estimated, would be killed. But the men a little bit older
closed in on the enemy faster than predicted, and then there was the final holocaust of the Bomb.
It seemed to have saved our lives.

So journeys through unknown parts of America became my chief war memory, and I think of the
first of them as this nighttime trip to Leper’s. There was no question of where to find him; “I am
at Christmas location” meant that he was at home. He lived far up in Vermont, where at this
season of the year even the paved main highways are bumpy and buckling from the freezing
weather, and each house executes a lonely holding action against the cold. The natural state of
things is coldness, and houses are fragile havens, holdouts in a death landscape, unforgettably
comfortable, simple though they are, just because of their warmth.

Leper’s was one of these hearths perched by itself on a frozen hillside. I reached it in the early
morning after this night which presaged my war; a bleak, draughty train ride, a damp depot