The morning count seemed interminable. Every mistake, every delay, every time a ferret retraced his steps down the lines of Allied airmen mumbling numbers, the men cursed and raged and held their positions, as if by standing even more still they could somehow hurry the process.
The ever-erratic weather had changed once again; as the filmy gray of the early morning burned away around them, the sun rose eagerly into a deepening blue sky, throwing warmth over the impatient kriegies. When the dismissal finally came, the formations broke apart rapidly and crowds of men streamed toward the theater, vying for the best seats in the courtroom.
Tommy watched the flow of men and realized that the entire camp would be gathered at the trial that day. The excited kriegies would shoehorn themselves into every available space in the theater building. They would hang from the windows and crowd forward to the doors, trying to find a spot where they could both see and hear. He stood for a moment, probably the only man in the entire camp feeling no hurry, no urgency.
He was a little unsettled and perhaps more than a little nervous about what he would do and say that day and wondering whether any of it would have the single necessary effect of saving Lincoln Scott's life. The black flier stood at his side, also watching the camp disperse in the direction of the trial, his face impassive, wearing the iron look that he almost always adopted in public, but with his eyes darting about, taking in the same things that Tommy saw.
'Well, Tommy,' Scott said slowly.
'I suppose the show must go on.'
Hugh Renaday also stood nearby. But the Canadian had his head turned skyward, his gaze sweeping the wide blue horizon. After a moment, he spoke softly.
'On a day like this, visibility unlimited, you know, if you just look up for a long enough time, you can almost forget where you are.'
Both Tommy's and Lincoln Scott's eyes turned up, following the Canadian's. After a second's silence, Scott laughed out loud.
'Damn it, I think you're almost right.' He paused, then added, 'It's almost like for just a couple of heartbeats you can kid yourself that you're free again.'
'It would be nice,' Tommy said.
'Even the illusion of freedom.'
'It would be nice,' Scott repeated softly.
'It's one of those rare things in life where the lie is far more encouraging than the truth.'
Then all three men lowered their eyes, back to the earth and the wire and the guard towers and the dogs-the constant reminders of how fragile their lives were.
'It's time to go,' Tommy said.
'But we're not in a hurry. In fact, let's show up a minute late.
Exactly one minute. Just to piss off that tight ass MacNamara. Hell, let 'em start without us…'
This made the other two laugh, even if admittedly not a particularly sound strategy. As they crossed the assembly yard, all three men suddenly heard the start-up of construction noise, coming from the nearby thick forest, on the far side of the wire. A distant whistle, some shouts, and the rata-tat of hammers and the ripping sound of handsaws.
'They start those poor bastards early, don't they?' Scott asked rhetorically.
'And then they work them late. Makes you glad you weren't born a Russian,' he said. Then he smiled wryly.
'You know, there's probably a joke in that somewhere. Do you suppose right now one of those poor sobs is saying he's glad he wasn't born black in America? After all, the damn Germans are just working them to death. Me? I've got to worry about my own countrymen shooting me.'
He shook his head and continued to stride forward, at a determined pace. As they marched across the yard, at one point the black flier glanced over toward the two white men and grinned as he said, 'Don't look so glum. Tommy, Hugh. I've been looking forward to this day since I was first accused of this crime. Usually lynchings don't work this way for black folks. Usually we don't get the chance to stand up in front of everyone and tell them how goddamn wrong they are. Usually we're just beaten down in silence and strung up real quiet and with hardly a mouse squeak of any protest. Well, that's not what's going to happen today. Not in this lynching.'
Tommy knew this was true.
The night before, after the completion of Visser's testimony, the three men had returned to Hut 101 and sat around the bunk room. Hugh had fixed a modest meal, more of the processed meat fried alongside a canned vegetable paste from a Red Cross parcel, creating a taste that was somewhere between grease and stew and like nothing they had ever experienced before, which was, on the whole, a positive thing. It was the sort of concoction that would have been revolting back in the States, but there, inside Stalag Luft Thirteen, bordered on the gourmet.
Between bites. Tommy had said, 'Scott, we need to be sure you're prepared for tomorrow. Especially for cross-examination…'
And Scott had replied, as he mouthed some of Hugh's invention, his hunger apparently restored by the prospect of testifying, 'Tommy, I've been preparing for tomorrow for the entirety of my life.'
So instead of talking about the two knives, the bloodstains, and Trader Vic's racist baiting. Tommy had suddenly asked Lincoln Scott:
'Lincoln, tell me something. Back home, when you were growing up, and it was a Saturday afternoon, the sun was shining and it was warm and you didn't have anything that anyone was making you do-you know, chores finished, homework finished-what would you do with yourself?'
Lincoln Scott had stopped eating, slightly taken aback.
'You mean, free time? When I was a kid?'
'That's right. Time to yourself.'
'My preacher-daddy and my schoolteacher-mother didn't really believe in free time,' he said, smiling.'
'Idle hands are the Devil's playground!' I heard that more than once.
There was always time to work at something that was going to make me smarter or stronger or-' But. Tommy had interrupted.
Scott had nodded.
'There's always a but.' That's the one thing in life you can count on.' He had burst into a small laugh.
'You know what I liked to do? I'd sneak down to the freight yards.
There was a big water tower down there, and I knew just how to climb up on it, so that I could get a view of the whole place. You see what I'm saying? From where I would perch, I could see the whole switching system. It's called a roundhouse. Train after train, rattling through the yard, tons of iron being moved about by someone throwing those electric switches, moving cattle one way to the stockyards, and shifting corn and potatoes onto a track heading east, just moving out in time to miss the steel carriers coming in from the mountains. It was like a great elaborate dance, and I thought the men who ran the yards were like God's angels, moving everything through the universe according to a great, unwritten plan. All that speed and weight and commerce coming together and being sent out, never ending, never stopping, never even pausing for a breath of air. Man's greatest works on constant display. The modern world.
Progress at my feet.'
The men had remained silent for a moment, before Hugh had shaken his head.
'It was sports for me,' he had said.
'Hockey with the other lads on a frozen pond. What about you. Tommy?
It was your question. What did you do when you had the time?'
Tommy had smiled.
'What I liked to do is what landed me here,' he had said softly.
