he opened up, and turned to Lincoln Scott and Hugh Renaday. Scott was staring straight ahead, his eyes fixed upon the empty witness chair. Unblinking.
Rigid.
Hugh leaned forward.
'Well,' he said slowly, 'that was a shot across the bow, what? How do we prove that bastard is lying?'
Tommy started to reply, although he was unsure what he was going to say, only to be cut off by Scott.
The black flier's voice was dry, parched. It rasped and echoed slightly in the theater. They were alone now.
'It wasn't a lie,' Scott said quietly, almost as if each word he spoke were painful.
'It was the truth. It's exactly what I said to the slimy son of a bitch. Word for word.'
By the time they finished the evening Appell and returned to their room in Hut 101, Tommy was seething. He slammed the door shut behind them and pivoted to face Lincoln Scott.
'You could have goddamn told me,' he said, his voice rising in pitch like an engine accelerating.
'It might have been helpful to know that you threatened the life of the murder victim right before he was killed!'
Scott started to reply, then stopped. He shrugged and sat down heavily on the edge of his bed.
Tommy's hands were balled into fists, and he circled the space in front of the black flier.
'I look like a goddamn idiot!' he raged.
'And you look like a killer! You told me you didn't know anything about that damn knife, and now it turns out you built the damn thing!
Why didn't you tell me?'
Scott shook his head, as if unwilling to answer that question.
'After I shot my mouth off to Murphy, I stuck it next to where I kept my Red Cross box. It disappeared the next morning. The next time I saw it was when Clark pulled it out from the hiding place that I didn't know about, right under the bunk.'
'Well that's great,' Tommy said furiously.
'That's a great story. I'm sure just about everyone will believe that…'
Again Scott looked up, ready to reply, then stopped himself.
'How the hell do you expect someone to defend you when you won't tell him the truth?' Tommy demanded furiously.
Scott opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Instead, he kept his head bent, almost as if in prayer, until he finally sighed deeply and whispered a reply.
'I don't,' he said.
Tommy's jaw dropped, in surprise.
'What?'
Scott's eyes rose slightly, peering at Tommy.
'I don't want to be defended,' he said slowly.
'I don't need to be defended.
I have no desire to be defended. I shouldn't be in a position where I have to be defended! I have done nothing! Nothing except tell the truth! And if those truths don't work out right for you, well, I can't do anything about that!'
With each sentence, Lincoln Scott had stiffened, finally rising to his feet, his hands clenched tightly in front of him.
'So I threatened the bastard! What's wrong with that? So I made a show of constructing a knife? That's not against the goddamn rules, because there are no rules! So I told him I would kill him. I had to say something, for Christ's sake! I couldn't just sit around quietly, ignoring everything the bastard was saying and doing! I had to put Bedford on notice, somehow, that I wasn't like every weak-kneed, terrified, ignorant black man that he's been bullying and holding down every minute of every day of his whole damn life! I had to get across to that bigoted bastard that it didn't make any difference to me if I was all alone here. I wasn't going to shuffle off into some corner and yassuh, nosuh, take all his abuse, just like all those others. I'm not a slave! I'm a free man! So I constructed a goddamn sword, and let him know I would use it!
Because the only thing the goddamn Bedfords of this world understand is the same violence they want to deliver to you!
They're cowards, when you stand up to them, and that's all I was doing!'
Scott, seething himself, stood stock-still in the center of the room.
'Do you understand now?' he asked Tommy.
Tommy stood up, directly in front of the black flier. Their faces were only inches apart.
'You're not free,' he said starkly, punctuating each word with a short choppy hand motion.
'Neither you, nor I, nor anyone else here is free!'
Scott shook his head vigorously, side to side.
'You might be a prisoner. Hart. Renaday might. Townsend and
MacNamara and Clark and Murphy and all the others might. But not me!
They may have shot me down and locked me up here and now they may march me in front of a firing squad for something I didn't do, but no sir, I will never see myself as a prisoner! Not for a second, understand! I am a free man, temporarily trapped behind barbed wire.'
Tommy started to reply, and then stopped. There was the problem, in the proverbial nutshell. The weight that Scott carried went far deeper than a simple murder accusation.
Tommy stepped back and took a few paces in a circle in the small room, thinking.
'Have you ever, in your entire life, trusted a white man?' he suddenly asked.
Scott took a single step backward, as if the question struck him like a hard jab.
'What?'
'You heard me,' Tommy said.
'Answer the question.'
'What do you mean, trust?'
'You know exactly what I mean. Answer the question!'
Scott's eyes narrowed, and he hesitated before replying.
'No black man, in today's world, can get ahead without the help of some well-meaning white folks.'
'That's not a goddamn answer!'
Scott started, stopped, then smiled. He nodded.
'You're correct.' He paused again.
'The answer is no. I have never trusted any white man.'
'You were willing to use their help, though.'
'Yes. In school, generally. And my father's church sometimes benefited from charities.'
'But every smile you made, every time you shook hands with a white man, that was a lie, wasn't it?'
Lincoln Scott sighed slightly, almost as if amused.
'Yes,' he said.
'In a way, yes.'
'And when we shook hands, that was a lie, too.'
'You could see it that way. It is simple. Hart. It's a lesson you learn early on in life. If you're going to rise up and be someone, you can rely only on yourself!'
'Well,' Tommy said slowly, 'by relying solely on yourself, I would say your future prospects have diminished some in recent days.' He made no attempt to hide his sarcasm, and Lincoln Scott seemed to
