Major Clark marched to the front of the formation, moving like a middleweight closing in on an injured opponent hanging from the ropes.
He faced the airmen, and bellowed:
'Dismissed!'
In silence, the kriegies dispersed across the compound.
Fritz Number One was nowhere to be found, which surprised Tommy, but one of the other ferrets was aware of the order allowing him to travel to the British portion of the camp, and after Tommy had plied him with a pair of cigarettes in order to tear him away from what the ferret considered the absolutely essential duty of crawling around and poking through the muddy dirt under Hut 121, escorted him through the gate, past the offices and the shower block and the cooler, and up to the North Compound.
Hugh Renaday was waiting just inside the barbed wire, pacing aggressively as was his style, circling around within a small space, smoking continuously. He stopped and waved as Tommy hurried toward him.
'Eager to get to it, counselor. Come on, Phillip's as excited as a hound in heat. He's got some ideas…'
Hugh stopped, in the midst of the rush of words, staring at his friend.
'Tommy, you look terrible. What's wrong?'
'Does it show all that much?' Tommy replied.
'Pale and drawn, my friend. Couldn't you sleep?'
Tommy managed a smile.
'More like someone didn't want me to sleep. Come on, I'll fill you and Phillip in at the same time.'
Hugh clamped his mouth shut, nodded, and the two men quick-marched through the compound. Tommy smiled inwardly as he recognized one of his friend's better qualities.
Not too many men, when their curiosity is pricked, are able to instantly silence themselves and start scrutinizing details. It is a quality that borders on the taciturn, perhaps an angle off the reflective. Tommy wondered whether Hugh was as quietly efficient with both his observations and his emotions in the cockpit of a bomber.
Probably, he thought.
Phillip Pryce was in the bunk room he shared with Renaday, monkishly hunched over a rough-hewn wooden desk, scribbling notes on a sheet of writing paper, gripping a small needle of pencil tightly in his long patrician fingers. He looked up and coughed once hard, as the two men entered the room. A cigarette stub was perched on the end of the table, burning, ashes littering the planks of the floor below. Pryce smiled, looked around himself for the smoke, picked it up, and waved it in the air like a philharmonic conductor directing the crescendo of a symphony.
'Many ideas, my dear boys, many ideas…' Then he looked at Tommy more closely, and said, 'Ah, but I see that more has happened in the space of a few short hours. And what new information do you have for us, counselor?'
'A little middle-of-the-night visit from what I took to be the Stalag
Luft Thirteen vigilante committee, Phillip. Or perhaps the local chapter of the K-u Klux Klan.'
'You were threatened?' Renaday asked.
'No. More like I was reminded…' Tommy launched into a brief description of being awakened by the hand on his mouth. He discovered that merely by telling his two friends what had happened, some of the echoes of anxiety within him fled. But he was also smart enough to understand that the sensation of wellbeing was as false as perhaps his fear was.
He more or less decided to maintain a certain degree of wariness, some position between the two extremes of fear and safety. '
'Just follow orders'… that's what they told me,' he said.
'Bastards,' Hugh blurted.
'Cowards. We should take this directly to the SAO and ' Phillip Pryce held up his hand, shutting his roommate off mid-complaint.
'First off, Hugh, my boy, we're not going to impart any information even of threats and intimidation to the opposition. Weakens us.
Stengthens them. Right?' He reached for another cigarette, replacing the one that he'd neglected.
He lit this, then blew out a long, narrow stream of smoke, which he watched as it hung in the air.
'Please, Tommy, if you will. A complete description of everything that you saw and did after Hugh left your side.
And, if you can, re-create every conversation word for word.
To the best of your memory…'
Tommy nodded. Taking his time, using every bit of recollection he had, he painstakingly retraced all his steps of the previous night. Hugh leaned up against a wall, arms crossed, concentrating, as if he were absorbing everything Tommy said. Pryce kept his eyes raised to the ceiling, and he leaned back on his chair, the wooden slats creaking as he rocked slightly.
When Tommy finished, he looked over at the older Englishman, who stopped rocking and leaned forward. For just an instant, the weak light filtering through the grimy window gave him a dark and shadowy appearance, like a man rising from bed after an intimacy with death.
Then, as abruptly, this cadaverous look dissipated, and the angular, almost academic appearance returned, accompanied by a wry and engaged smile.
'Yankee these nocturnal visitors called you, you say?'
'Yes.'
'How intriguing. What an interesting choice of words. Did you detect any other obvious southernisms about their language?
A slow, sibilant drawl, perhaps, or some other, colorful contraction, like a y'all or an aren't that would support the geographical impression?'
'There was a y'all,' Tommy replied.
'But they whispered.
A whisper can sometimes hide inflection and accent.'
Pryce nodded.
'Most true. But the word Yankee does not, correct? It immediately leads one in a most obvious direction, true?'
'Yes. Another northerner would never use that word. Nor would someone from the Midwest or West.'
'The word prompts assumptions. Draws one inevitably to conclusions.
Makes one think clearly in a certain' manner does it not?'
Tommy smiled at his friend.
'It does, indeed, Phillip. It does indeed. And what you're suggesting is?'
Pryce sneezed loudly, but looked up with a grin.
'Well,' he said slowly, relishing each word as he launched himself forward.
'My experience is much the same as Hugh's. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it will be the unfortunate lumberjack who has committed the apparently clear-cut brutality.
Usually what is obvious is also true…'
He paused, still letting his smile wander around his face, curling up the corners of his mouth, lifting his eyebrows, crinkling his chin.
'… But there is always that one in a hundred situation.
And I distrust words and language that prompt one to conclusions instead of the more solid world of facts.'
