'I don't follow.'
Scott sighed and nodded.
'MacNamara is the difficult type that vociferously and publicly denies being even a tiny bit prejudiced, then automatically raises the bar just a little farther whenever a Negro threatens to reach up and leap over.
He'll talk about fairness and equality and meeting established standards, but the truth is that the standard I have to surpass is far different from the one that you do. Hart. And mine always gets a little tougher the closer I get to success.
I've seen MacNamara in the schools I've attended, from elementary school on the South Side of Chicago right through the university.
MacNamara was the Irish policeman who walked my block taking payoffs and keeping everyone in line, and the grade school principal who made us share every book three ways in each class and prevented anyone from taking the book home at night and really studying what was in it.
MacNamara was there when I enlisted and went through basic training. He was the officer who looked down at my academic record, including a Ph.D.' and then suggested I become a cook. Or maybe a hospital orderly. But something menial and unimportant. And then, when I scored the highest grade on the entrance exam for flight school, it was a MacNamara who demanded I retake the test. Because of some irregularity.
The only irregularity was that I outperformed all the white boys. And when I finally qualified, MacNamara was down there in Alabama, waiting for me. I told you before: cross-burnings outside the camp and almost impossible standards inside.
The MacNamaras down there would flunk you out of the program for a single mistake on a written exam.
You'd wash out for any error, no matter how minor, in the air.
You want to know why the boys from Tuskegee are the best damn fighter pilots in the army air corps? Because we had to be! Like I say, one set of rules for you, Hart, a different set of rules for me. You want to know the fanny thing?'
'The funny thing?'
'Well,' Scott said, smiling, 'it's not precisely fanny. But ironic, okay?'
'Well, what's that?'
'That when all is said and done, it's a whole lot easier for me to deal with the Vincent Bedfords of the world than it is the Lewis MacNamaras.
At least Trader Vic never tried to hide who he was and how he felt. And he never claimed to be fair when he wasn't.'
Tommy nodded. The two men were walking through the brisk air. There was a freshness to the evening breeze, one that evoked memories of
Vermont in him.
'It must be difficult for you, Scott. Difficult and frustrating,'
Tommy said quietly.
'What?'
'To always immediately see hatred in everyone you meet and to always be so damn suspicious about everything that happens.'
Scott started to reply, his right hand raised in a small dismissive wave that stopped midway in the air in front of them.
Then he smiled again.
'It is,' he said. He coughed briefly.
'It is indeed a difficult chore.' He shook his head, still grinning.
'One that, as you can tell, seems to occupy my every waking minute.' He tossed his head back, a quick burst of laughter escaping from his lips.
'You caught me on that. Hart. I seem to keep underestimating you.'
Tommy shrugged.
'You wouldn't be the first,' he said.
'But don't you underestimate me,' Scott said.
Tommy shook his head.
'That would be the one thing I doubt I would ever do, Scott. I might not understand you, and I might not like you. I might not even completely believe you.
But I'll be damned if I'll ever underestimate you.'
Scott smiled and laughed again.
'You know something, Hart?' he said briskly.
'I must admit you keep surprising me.'
'The world is filled with surprises. It's never quite the way it seems. Isn't that precisely what you told MacNamara about Dickens's world?'
Scott kept smiling and nodded.
'Vermont, huh? You know, I've never been there. Visited Boston once, but that was as close as I got. Do you miss it?'
He paused, shook his head, then added, 'That's a stupid question, because the answer is so obvious. But I'll ask it anyway.'
'I miss everything,' Tommy replied.
'I miss my home. My girl. My folks. My little sister. The damn dog.
I miss Harvard, for Christ's sake, which is something I never thought
I'd say out loud. Do you know what I miss? The smells. I never thought being free had a distinct odor to it, but it does. You could taste it in the air, every time the wind picked up. Fresh.
It was in my girl's perfume when I took her out on our first date. In my mother's cooking on Sunday morning. Sometimes I walk out of the huts and all I see is the wire, and I think I'll never get beyond it and never smell any of those things ever again. Not for even a minute.
Not ever again.'
The two men took a few more steps forward, right to the entrance to Hut
101. There Scott stopped. He turned his head about for a moment, checking to see if anyone was watching them. It seemed as if they were alone right there in the final moments of day's light, before the crush of darkness fell over the camp. Scott reached down into his breast pocket and removed a frayed and cracked photograph. He took a slow, lingering look at the picture, then handed it over to Tommy.
'I was lucky,' Scott said quietly.
'The morning of my last mission, I just grabbed their picture and stuck it in my flight suit, right next to my heart. I don't know why. Never did it on any other mission excepting that last one. But I'm real glad
I have it.'
There was a little light coming from the edge of the doorway, and he twisted so that it fell across the photograph. It was a simple snapshot of a young, delicate, cocoa-colored woman sitting in a rocking chair in the living room of a trim, well-furnished house, cradling a small baby in her arms.
Tommy stared at the picture. He saw the woman's eyes were alert and filled with a soft joy. The baby's right hand was outstretched, reaching up toward its mother's cheek.
There was a small crack in Lincoln Scott's voice when he added, 'I don't know if they've been told I'm alive. It's a very hard thing.
Hart, to imagine someone you love thinks you dead…' He stopped.
Tommy returned the picture to Scott.
'Beautiful,' he said.
This was the obligatory response, but a truthful one, nonetheless.
'I'm sure the army has informed them you're a prisoner.'
Scott nodded.
