Anyway, once I've done that, then you and I will start preparing hard for Monday morning because I'm sure Phillip is already outlining a scenario he'll want us to follow precisely.'
Scott nodded, snorting slightly.
'Somehow,' he said quietly, 'I don't think that it's going to work out quite as theatrically as all that.'
Tommy had turned and was halfway through the door, but there was so much frustration in Scott's words that he turned and asked, 'What's the problem?'
'You don't see the problem? What, are you blind. Hart?' Tommy hesitated, stepping back into the small bunk room.
'I see that we're accumulating evidence and information that should show the prosecution's efforts to be so many lies…'
Scott shook his head.
'You'd think the truth would be enough.'
'We've gone over that,' Tommy said with brisk finality.
'It rarely is. Not merely in a court, but in life.'
Scott sighed, and drummed his fingers against the leather jacket of the Bible.
'So, we can show that Bedford wasn't killed in the Abort.
We can suggest that he was killed in a fashion resembling an assassination. We can argue the actual murder weapon wasn't the knife that was so damn conveniently planted here although we can't really explain why Bedford's or somebody else's blood was all over it. We can claim that my boots and my jacket were stolen on the night in question by the real murderer but that particular truth is going to be a hard one for any judge to swallow, huh? We can attack every aspect of the prosecution's case, I suppose. And what good does it do us? They still have the strongest piece of evidence available to them. The evidence that's going to put me in front of that firing squad.'
Scott shook his head sharply from side to side.
Tommy stared at the mercurial fighter pilot and for the first time since meeting him in the cooler cell thought him to be a truly complicated man. Scott had returned to his bed, hunkered down, shoulders slumped forward. It was like the portrait of an athlete who knows that the game is lost although there is still time remaining on the clock. The score insurmountable no matter what occurs. He lifted his massive right fist and rubbed it hard against his temples. The confident adventurer of the night before, the man who rose to the hunt in the darkness and danger of the camp at night, had disappeared. The fighter pilot who had led the mission of the midnight past seemed to evaporate, replaced by a resigned, discouraged man; a man filled with strength and speed but shackled by his situation.
Tommy was struck by the thought that it seemed at least in part that history was as much a part of the case against him as was any morsel of evidence.
'What's that?' he asked.
Scott sighed slowly, then broke into a rueful smile.
'Hatred,' he said.
Tommy did not reply, and so the black flier continued after a momentary hesitation.
'Do you have any idea how exhausting it is to be hated by so many men?' he asked.
Tommy shook his head.
'I didn't think so,' Scott said, bitterness crawling over his words. He thrust back his shoulders, as if gaining a second wind.
'Anyway, here is what is true and what they can prove, beyond any damn reasonable doubt: I hated Bedford and he hated me and now he's dead.
That hatred is all they need.
Every witness they call, every bit of evidence no matter how faked or false or phony. Hart-will have that hatred supporting it. And every decision being made in this 'trial' we're starting on Monday, well, it has the same hatred coloring it.
They all hate me. Hart. Every one of them. Oh, I suppose there are men in the camp who maybe don't care all that much, one way or the other, and some who know that my fighter group saved their asses aloft maybe more than once, and those men are willing to tolerate me. Might even be inclined to give me the benefit of the doubt. But when you get right down to it, they're all white and I'm black, and what that means is hatred.
Why do you think it will be any different on Monday, no matter what we prove? It has never been different. Never. Not since the first slave was taken off the first slave ship in irons and put on sale in the open marketplace.'
Tommy started to speak. There was something in the grandiosity of Scott's words that irritated the hell out of him, and he was eager to say it. But Scott held up his hand like a policeman on a street corner directing traffic, cutting him off.
'I'm not blaming you. Hart. And I don't think you're necessarily one of the worst, you know. And I do think you're trying your damnedest.
And I'm appreciating that. I really am. I just sometimes sit here, like this morning, and realize it ain't going to do me any damn good at all.'
He smiled, shaking his head.
'So,' he continued, 'I want you to know. Hart, that I'm not blaming you for what happens, no matter what. I just blame all that hatred.
And you know what's almost funny? You've got it, too. You and Renaday and Pryce. Maybe not as much as MacNamara and Clark and that sorry-ass dead man, Bedford, but you've got it, somewhere inside of you, probably where you can't see it or hear it or feel it. But it's there, the exact same hatred. And I'm thinking that when it comes right down to the end of all this, that last little bit of hatred for me and the folks like me, well, it'll cause you to do something. Or not do something, it amounts to the same. Maybe not something terribly big, or seemingly important or crucial, but something nonetheless. Like not ask a key question. Not want to rock the boat. Who knows? But in the end, well, saving my sorry life and ass won't quite be worth the price you'll be asked to pay' Tommy must have appeared surprised, because Scott laughed again, still tossing his head back and forth.
'You just have to understand, Mr. White Harvard from Vermont.
It's inside you and there ain't nothing you can do about it,' Scott continued, his words momentarily lapsing into a singsong yessuh-nosuh tone that mocked his situation.
'… And when the end comes, there it will be. That of' devil, hatred.
And so, you jus' won't take a step that you might have, like if I was another white man. You jus' won't have no part of doin' that, no suh…'
Scott exhaled slowly, and let his voice return to the educated flat Chicago tones with which Tommy was familiar.
'But you understand. Hart, I'm not holding this against you.
You're doing your best, and I appreciate that. At least, you think you're doing your best. It's just I understand the nature of the world. We may be locked up behind barbed wire here in Stalag Luft Thirteen, but human nature doesn't change.
That's the problem with education, you know. Shouldn't take the boy off the farm. It opens his eyes and what he sees isn't always what he might want to see. Like blacks and whites.
And what happens? What always happens. Because there isn't any piece of evidence in this entire world strong enough to overcome the evidence of hatred and prejudice.'
Scott gestured toward the blood-marked board beneath the bunk.
'Especially some hunk of wood,' he said. Tommy thought for a moment about the black flier's speech, then shrugged.
'I can think of one thing,' he replied.
Scott smiled.
'You can? You must be a damn sight smarter than I thought. Hart. What might that be?'
'Someone else hated Trader Vic more than you did. All we have to do is find that particular
