“Why, may I ask?”
“Why? Oh, well it’s a long story, sir. I mean it’s pretty complicated.” I didn’t feel
like going into the whole thing with him. He wouldn’t have understood it anyway. It
wasn’t up his alley at all. One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was
surrounded by phonies. That’s all. They were coming in the goddam window. For
instance, they had this headmaster, Mr. Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in
my life. Ten times worse than old Thurmer. On Sundays, for instance, old Haas went
around shaking hands with everybody’s parents when they drove up to school. He’d be
charming as hell and all. Except if some boy had little old funny-looking parents. You
should’ve seen the way he did with my roommate’s parents. I mean if a boy’s mother was
sort of fat or corny-looking or something, and if somebody’s father was one of those guys
that wear those suits with very big shoulders and corny black-and-white shoes, then old
Hans would just shake hands with them and give them a phony smile and then he’d go
talk, for maybe a half an hour, with somebody else’s parents. I can’t stand that stuff. It
drives me crazy. It makes me so depressed I go crazy. I hated that goddam Elkton Hills.
Old Spencer asked me something then, but I didn’t hear him. I was thinking about
old Haas. “What, sir?” I said.
“Do you have any particular qualms about leaving Pencey?”
“Oh, I have a few qualms, all right. Sure. . . but not too many. Not yet, anyway. I
guess it hasn’t really hit me yet. It takes things a while to hit me. All I’m doing right now
is thinking about going home Wednesday. I’m a moron.”
“Do you feel absolutely no concern for your future, boy?”
“Oh, I feel some concern for my future, all right. Sure. Sure, I do.” I thought about
it for a minute. “But not too much, I guess. Not too much, I guess.”
“You will,” old Spencer said. “You will, boy. You will when it’s too late.”
I didn’t like hearing him say that. It made me sound dead or something. It was
very depressing. “I guess I will,” I said.
“I’d like to put some sense in that head of yours, boy. I’m trying to help you. I’m
trying to help you, if I can.”
He really was, too. You could see that. But it was just that we were too much on
opposite sides ot the pole, that’s all. “I know you are, sir,” I said. “Thanks a lot. No
kidding. I appreciate it. I really do.” I got up from the bed then. Boy, I couldn’t’ve sat
there another ten minutes to save my life. “The thing is, though, I have to get going now.
I have quite a bit of equipment at the gym I have to get to take home with me. I really
do.” He looked up at me and started nodding again, with this very serious look on his
face. I felt sorry as hell for him, all of a sudden. But I just couldn’t hang around there any
longer, the way we were on opposite sides of the pole, and the way he kept missing the
bed whenever he chucked something at it, and his sad old bathrobe with his chest
showing, and that grippy smell of Vicks Nose Drops all over the place. “Look, sir. Don’t
worry about me,” I said. “I mean it. I’ll be all right. I’m just going through a phase right
now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don’t they?”
“I don’t know, boy. I don’t know.”
I hate it when somebody answers that way. “Sure. Sure, they do,” I said. “I mean
it, sir. Please don’t worry about me.” I sort of put my hand on his shoulder. “Okay?” I
said. “Wouldn’t you like a cup of hot chocolate before you go? Mrs. Spencer would be-
-”
“I would, I really would, but the thing is, I have to get going. I have to go right to
the gym. Thanks, though. Thanks a lot, sir.”
Then we shook hands. And all that crap. It made me feel sad as hell, though.
“I’ll drop you a line, sir. Take care of your grippe, now.”
“Good-by, boy.”
After I shut the door and started back to the living room, he yelled something at
me, but I couldn’t exactly hear him. I’m pretty sure he yelled “Good luck!” at me,
I hope to hell not. I’d never yell “Good luck!” at anybody. It sounds terrible, when
you think about it.

I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful. If I’m on my way to
the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I’m going, I’m liable to
say I’m going to the opera. It’s terrible. So when I told old Spencer I had to go to the gym
and get my equipment and stuff, that was a sheer lie. I don’t even keep my goddam
equipment in the gym.
Where I lived at Pencey, I lived in the Ossenburger Memorial Wing of the new
dorms. It was only for juniors and seniors. I was a junior. My roommate was a senior. It
was named after this guy Ossenburger that went to Pencey. He made a pot of dough in
the undertaking business after he got out of Pencey. What he did, he started these
undertaking parlors all over the country that you could get members of your family
buried for about five bucks apiece. You should see old Ossenburger. He probably just
shoves them in a sack and dumps them in the river. Anyway, he gave Pencey a pile of
dough, and they named our wing alter him. The first football game of the year, he came
up to school in this big goddam Cadillac, and we all had to stand up in the grandstand and
give him a locomotive–that’s a cheer. Then, the next morning, in chapel, be made a
speech that lasted about ten hours. He started off with about fifty corny jokes, just to
show us what a regular guy he was. Very big deal. Then he started telling us how he was
never ashamed, when he was in some kind of trouble or something, to get right down his
knees and pray to God. He told us we should always pray to God–talk to Him and all–
wherever we were. He told us we ought to think of Jesus as our buddy and all. He said he
talked to Jesus all the time. Even when he was driving his car. That killed me. I just see
the big phony bastard shifting into first gear and asking Jesus to send him a few more
stiffs. The only good part of his speech was right in the middle of it. He was telling us all
about what a swell guy he was, what a hot-shot and all, then all of a sudden this guy
sitting in the row in front of me, Edgar Marsalla, laid this terrific fart. It was a very crude
thing to do, in chapel and all, but it was also quite amusing. Old Marsalla. He damn near
blew the roof off. Hardly anybody laughed out loud, and old Ossenburger made out like
he didn’t even hear it, but old Thurmer, the headmaster, was sitting right next to him on
the rostrum and all, and you could tell he heard it. Boy, was he sore. He didn’t say
anything then, but the next night he made us have compulsory study hall in the academic
building and he came up and made a speech. He said that the boy that had created the disturbance in chapel wasn’t fit to go to Pencey. We tried to get old Marsalla to rip off
another one, right while old Thurmer was making his speech, but be wasn’t in the right
mood. Anyway, that’s where I lived at Pencey. Old Ossenburger Memorial Wing, in the
new dorms.
It was pretty nice to get back to my room, after I left old Spencer, because
everybody was down at the game, and the heat was on in our room, for a change. It felt
sort of cosy. I took off my coat and my tie and unbuttoned my shirt collar; and then I put
on this hat that I’d bought in New York that morning. It was this red hunting hat, with one
of those very, very long peaks. I saw it in the window of this sports store when we got out
of the subway, just after I noticed I’d lost all the goddam foils. It only cost me a buck.
The way I wore it, I swung the old peak way around to the back–very corny, I’ll admit,
but I liked it that way. I looked good in it that way. Then I got this book I was reading
and sat down in my chair. There were two chairs in every room. I had one and my
roommate, Ward Stradlater, had one. The arms were in sad shape, because everybody
was always sitting on them, but they were pretty comfortable chairs.
The book I was reading was this book I took out of the library by mistake. They
gave me the wrong book, and I didn’t notice it till I got back to my room. They gave me
Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen. I thought it was going to stink, but it didn’t. It was a very
good book. I’m quite illiterate, but I read a lot. My favorite author is my brother D.B., and
my next favorite is Ring Lardner. My brother gave me a book by Ring Lardner for my
birthday, just before I went to Pencey. It had these very funny, crazy plays in it, and then
it had this one story about a traffic cop that falls in love with this very cute girl that’s
always speeding. Only, he’s married, the cop, so be can’t marry her or anything. Then this
girl gets killed, because she’s always speeding. That story just about killed me. What I
like best is a book that’s at least funny once in a while. I read a lot of classical books, like
The Return of the Native and all, and I like them, and I read a lot of war books and
mysteries and all, but they don’t knock me out too much. What really knocks me out is a
book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific
friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That
doesn’t happen much, though. I wouldn’t mind calling this Isak Dinesen up. And Ring
Lardner, except that D.B. told me he’s dead. You take that book Of Human Bondage, by
Somerset Maugham, though. I read it last summer. It’s a pretty good book and all, but I
wouldn’t want to call Somerset Maugham up. I don’t know, He just isn’t the kind of guy
I’d want to call up, that’s all. I’d rather call old Thomas Hardy up. I like that Eustacia Vye.
Anyway, I put on my new hat and sat down and started reading that book Out of
Africa. I’d read it already, but I wanted to read certain parts over again. I’d only read
about three pages, though, when I heard somebody coming through the shower curtains.
Even without looking up, I knew right away who it was. It was Robert Ackley, this guy
that roomed right next to me. There was a shower right between every two rooms in our
wing, and about eighty-five times a day old Ackley barged in on me. He was probably the
only guy in the whole dorm, besides me, that wasn’t down at the game. He hardly ever
went anywhere. He was a very peculiar guy. He was a senior, and he’d been at Pencey the
whole four years and all, but nobody ever called him anything except “Ackley.” Not even
Herb Gale, his own roommate, ever called him “Bob” or even “Ack.” If he ever gets
married, his own wife’ll probably call him “Ackley.” He was one of these very, very tall,
round-shouldered guys–he was about six four–with lousy teeth. The whole time he roomed next to me, I never even once saw him brush his teeth. They always looked
mossy and awful, and he damn near made you sick if you saw him in the dining room
with his mouth full of mashed potatoes and peas or something. Besides that, he had a lot
of pimples. Not just on his forehead or his chin, like most guys, but all over his whole
face. And not only that, he had a terrible personality. He was also sort of a nasty guy. I
wasn’t too crazy about him, to tell you the truth.
I could feel him standing on the shower ledge, right behind my chair, taking a
look to see if Stradlater was around. He hated Stradlater’s guts and he never came in the
room if Stradlater was around. He hated everybody’s guts, damn near.
He came down off the shower ledge and came in the room. “Hi,” he said. He
always said it like he was terrifically bored or terrifically tired. He didn’t want you to
think he was visiting you or anything. He wanted you to think he’d come in by mistake,
for God’s sake.
“Hi,” I said, but I didn’t look up from my book. With a guy like Ackley, if you
looked up from your book you were a goner. You were a goner anyway, but not as quick
if you didn’t look up right away.
He started walking around the room, very slow and all, the way he always did,
picking up your personal stuff off your desk and chiffonier. He always picked up your
personal stuff and looked at it. Boy, could he get on your nerves sometimes. “How was
the fencing?” he said. He just wanted me to quit reading and enjoying myself. He didn’t
give a damn about the fencing. “We win, or what?” he said.
“Nobody won,” I said. Without looking up, though.
“What?” he said. He always made you say everything twice.
“Nobody won,” I said. I sneaked a look to see what he was fiddling around with
on my chiffonier. He was looking at this picture of this girl I used to go around with in
New York, Sally Hayes. He must’ve picked up that goddam picture and looked at it at
least five thousand times since I got it. He always put it back in the wrong place, too,
when he was finished. He did it on purpose. You could tell.
“Nobody won,” he said. “How come?”
“I left the goddam foils and stuff on the subway.” I still didn’t look up at him.
“On the subway, for Chrissake! Ya lost them, ya mean?”
“We got on the wrong subway. I had to keep getting up to look at a goddam map
on the wall.”
He came over and stood right in my light. “Hey,” I said. “I’ve read this same
sentence about twenty times since you came in.”
Anybody else except Ackley would’ve taken the goddam hint. Not him, though.
“Think they’ll make ya pay for em?” he said.
“I don’t know, and I don’t give a damn. How ’bout sitting down or something,
Ackley kid? You’re right in my goddam light.” He didn’t like it when you called him
“Ackley kid.” He was always telling me I was a goddam kid, because I was sixteen and
he was eighteen. It drove him mad when I called him “Ackley kid.”
He kept standing there. He was exactly the kind of a guy that wouldn’t get out of
your light when you asked him to. He’d do it, finally, but it took him a lot longer if you
asked him to. “What the hellya reading?” he said.
“Goddam book.”