“Which would be?”
“Dignity.”
“Does a helluva lot of good for you when you’re dead.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Hart. Completely wrong. Which is the difference between you and me. I want to live just as much as you, or any other man here. But I’m not willing to be someone different in order to survive. Because that would be a far greater lie than those being spoken from this witness stand. Or any other location.”
Tommy paused, considering what Scott had said. Finally, he shook his head.
“You are a difficult man to understand, Scott. Very difficult.”
Scott smiled enigmatically. “You presume I want to be understood.”
“All right. Point well taken. But, it seems to me that you are only willing to fight these accusations on your own terms.”
“That is the way that I know.”
“Well, listen to me when I tell you that we’re going to have to do something different, because we’re not going to win as it stands now.”
“I understand that,” Lincoln Scott said, sadly. “But what you fail to understand is that there are different sorts of victories. Winning in this phony kangaroo court may not be as important as refusing to change who I am!”
Tommy was taken aback by this statement, and not quick to respond. But the sudden silence between the two men was filled by Hugh Renaday. He had been standing, shoulder to the wall, watching and listening throughout all the angry words shared between the two men, remaining silent. But now he finally stepped forward, shaking his head. “You’re a pair of damn fools,” he said sharply. “And both blind as bats.”
The two men turned toward the Canadian, who was grinning almost maniacally, as he spoke. “Neither of the two of you fools can see the big picture, here. Can you now?”
Scott lightened up, just a small amount, in that second. “But you’re going to tell us, right?”
“I am, indeed,” Hugh snorted. “Where’s Phillip Pryce when one truly needs him? You know, Tommy, if he is dead and looking down at you from up above somewhere, the old limey bastard is probably choking on your words.”
“Maybe so, Hugh. Enlighten me.”
Hugh stomped about for a moment, then lit a cigarette.
“You, Lincoln, you want to undo the world! You want change, as long as it isn’t you that changes. And you, Tommy, you’re so mesmerized by playing by the rules that you can’t see how unfair they are! Ah, you’re both crazy, and neither of you is acting with any bloody sanity whatsoever.”
He pointed at Lincoln Scott. “You made yourself into a perfect man to accuse, didn’t you? I mean, someone in this damn camp wanted to kill Trader Vic, and went out and did it, and then you couldn’t have made yourself any damn more convenient for him to shift the blame right onto your bloody ass! True enough?”
Scott nodded. “That’s not the most elegant way of putting things. But true enough. Seems that way.”
“And, I dare say, you couldn’t make it any damn easier for Townsend to convict you, either.”
Scott nodded. “But . . .” he started.
Hugh shook his head. “Ah, don’t speak to me of buts and maybes and hopefullys and all that crap! There is only one solution to this situation, and that is winning, because when all is said and done, that’s the only thing that matters! Not how you win, or why you win, or even when you win. But win you must, and the sooner you see that, the better off we shall all be!”
Scott stopped. Then nodded. “Perhaps,” he said.
“Bloody right! You think about that! You’ve been so damn busy proving that you’re better than anyone else here, you’ve forgotten to see how you’re exactly the damn same! And you, Tommy, you haven’t done what you said we’d do, which is to fight back! Use their own damnable lies against them!”
Hugh coughed hard. “Didn’t Phillip teach you a bloody thing?” He looked down at the end of his smoke, then pinched off the burning ember, stomping on it as it tumbled to the floor, and then stuffing the half-smoked butt into his blouse breast pocket. “I’m hungry,” he said. “And I think it’s damn time we ate, though why I’m sitting about with the two of you posturing fools is beyond me. You both want to win, and you want to win in the goddamn right way, or else it’s somehow not right? This is a bloody war! People are dying every second of the day and night! It’s not a boxing match with Marquess of Queensberry rules! Go to war, damn it, the two of you! Stop playing fair! And until the two of you put your heads together and agree to do that, well, a pox on both of you.”
“A plague,” Scott said, smiling.
“All right, then,” Hugh snorted. “A plague, if you prefer.”
“That’s what Mercutio says, as he dies,” Scott continued. “ ‘A plague o’ both your houses!’ Capulets and Montagues.”
“Well, bloody Mercutio and bloody Shakespeare got it bloody right!” Hugh went over to his bunk and reached beneath it, removing a Red Cross parcel with foodstuffs.
“Damn it,” he said, as if the parcel and its limited contents were somehow surprising. “All I have left is one of those damn awful British Red Cross parcels. Weak tea and tasteless kippers and crap! Tommy, I hope you’ve got something better. From the States. Land of Plenty and Abundance.”
Tommy thought for a moment, then asked, “Hugh, what was the German ration for tonight?”
Hugh looked up, snorting hard. “The usual. Kriegsbrot and some of that damn awful blood sausage. Phillip used to take it and bury it in the garden, even when we were starving. Couldn’t bring himself to eat it. Neither can I. Neither can anyone I know, in either compound. How the Krauts manage to swallow it is beyond me, as well.”
Blood sausage, Tommy thought suddenly. It was a staple of the German issue to the kriegies, and just as routinely refused even when they were starving. The sausage was disgusting stuff, thick tubes of what the prisoners thought was congealed offal liberally mixed with slaughterhouse blood, given a hard enough consistency by mixing it with sawdust. No matter how it was cooked, it still tasted like eating waste matter. Many of the men buried it, as Pryce had done, in the hope that it might serve as fertilizer. The theater troops in both British and American compounds occasionally mashed it up and used it as a prop in some play’s scene that called for blood.
He turned suddenly to Scott. “Did you ever eat it?”
The black airman looked surprised, then shook his head. “I collected it once or twice, tried to figure out a way of cooking it, but same as everybody else, it was just too damn disgusting.”
“But you got the ration, right?”
“Yes.”
Tommy nodded. “Hugh,” he said slowly. “Take a couple of cigarettes and go out and see if you can’t find someone with some of the sausage. The worst, foulest, most repulsive log of German blood sausage you can find, and make a trade for it. Bring it back here. I’ve got an idea.”
Hugh looked confused, then shrugged. “Whatever you say,” he said. “Although I think you’ve gone bloody daft.” He patted his blouse to make sure he had some smokes and headed out into the corridor.
As soon as the door shut, Tommy turned to Lincoln Scott.
“All right,” he said. “Hugh makes good sense. If you have no objection, I think now’s the time to stop playing by their rules.”
Scott hesitated before nodding.
Colonel MacNamara reminded Lieutenant Murphy that he was still under oath as the flier resumed his seat in the center of the makeshift courtroom and the morning session was set to get under way. Everyone was in the same position as the day before, defense, prosecution, hundreds of kriegies jamming the seats and aisles, Visser and the stenographer in their customary corner, and the stiff-faced tribunal watching over all of it.
Murphy nodded, squirmed once in his seat, trying to get comfortable, then waited for Tommy Hart to approach with a small, anticipatory smile on his face.
“Springfield, Massachusetts, correct?”
“That’s right,” Murphy replied. “Bor
n and raised.”
“And you say you worked alongside Negroes?”
“Right, again.”
“On a daily basis?”
“Daily, yes sir.”
“And what sort of business was this?”
“My family were part owners of a meat processing plant, Mr. Hart. A small, local plant, but we had contracts for numerous restaurants and schools in the city.”
Tommy thought for a moment, then continued slowly. “Meat processing? Like steaks and chops?”
Murphy grinned. “Yes sir. Steaks so thick and tender you didn’t need no knife to cut them. Porterhouse and sirloin, even filet mignon”—he pronounced it feelit migg-non—“chops that taste sweet almost like candy. Lamb chops. Pork chops. And hamburger, finest in the state, without a doubt. Man, what I wouldn’t give for one of those right about now, cooked on an outdoor fire . . .”
The entire theater both laughed and groaned at the airman’s words. A ripple of talk went through the room, all variations on the same, as one man whispered to the next, “What I wouldn’t do for a ribeye steak, grilled with onions and mushrooms . . .”
Tommy let the laughter subside. He wore a small, crooked smile of his own.
“Meat processing can be a pretty foul business, can’t it, lieutenant? I mean, slaughtered animals, guts, blood, shit, and fur. Got to get rid of all that waste, just leave the good parts behind, correct?”
“That’s the game, lieutenant.”
“Getting rid of all that foul, disgusting stuff, that’s where the Negroes worked, right, lieutenant? They didn’t have the well-paying jobs, did they, these Negroes you worked with? They were the people who took care of the mess, right? The mess that the white men didn’t want to deal with.”
Murphy hesitated, then shrugged. “That’s the jobs they seemed to want.”
“Sure,” Tommy replied. “Why would anyone want something better?”
Lieutenant Murphy didn’t answer this question. The courtroom had once again quieted.
Tommy moved about in front of Lieutenant Murphy, pacing in a small circle, first turning his back on the man, then suddenly pivoting to face him. Every motion he made, Tommy thought, was designed to unsettle the man.
“Tell me, Lieutenant Murphy, who is Frederick Douglass?”
Murphy thought hard for a moment, then shook his head. “I’m not sure. Isn’t he a general on Ike’s staff?”
“No. Actually,” Tommy said slowly, “he was a longtime resident of your state.”
“Never heard of him.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
Walker Townsend rose to his feet. “Your Honor,” he said with a tone of exasperated impatience. “I fail to see what is the point of this cross-examination. Lieutenant Hart has yet to ask the witness about the gentleman’s trial testimony. He complained of history lessons yesterday offered by the prosecution, and yet returns today with some question about a man who died decades ago—”
“Colonel, it was the prosecution that made the point about Lieutenant Murphy’s racial ‘enlightenment.’ I’m only following up on that.”
MacNamara scowled, then said, “I will permit these questions as long as you hurry up and make your point, lieutenant.”
Tommy nodded. At the defense table, Lincoln Scott whispered to Hugh Renaday, “There’s one of the bones tossed in our direction.”
Pausing for just an instant, Tommy turned back toward Murphy, who again shifted in his seat. “Who is Crispus Attucks, lieutenant?”
“Who?”
“Crispus Attucks.”
“Never heard the name. Another Massachusetts man?”
Tommy smiled. “Good guess, lieutenant. Now, you say you are not a bigot, sir, but you cannot identify the Negro who died at the infamous Boston Massacre, and whose sacrifice was celebrated by our founding fathers at that pivotal moment in our nation’s history? Nor do you recognize the name of Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist, many of whose writings were committed to print in your fair state.”
Murphy stared angrily at Tommy but did not reply. “History wasn’t my best subject in school,” he said bitterly.
“Obviously. Now, I wonder what else you don’t know about Negroes.”
“I know what I heard Scott say,” Murphy spat out sharply. “And that’s a whole damn sight more important than some history lesson.”
Tommy hesitated, and nodded. “Indeed. Now, you’re not very bright, are you, lieutenant?”
“What?”
“Smart.” Tommy fired his questions rapidly, picking up momentum and raising his voice. “I mean, you had to go to work in the family business, weren’t bright enough to do something on your own, correct? How’d you qualify for officer’s training, anyway? Your daddy know somebody who pulled some strings? And that school where you said Negroes attended beside you. I bet you didn’t even get grades as good as theirs, did you? And you were happy keeping those Negroes sweeping up while you made money, correct? Because if you ever gave one of them a chance, you were afraid they’d do a hell of a lot better job than you could, right?”
“Objection! Objection!” Walker Townsend shouted. “He’s asking ten questions at once!”
“Lieutenant Hart!” Colonel MacNamara started.
Tommy swung his face down toward Murphy. “You hate them because they make you afraid, don’t they?”
Again Murphy didn’t reply. He simply seethed.
“Lieutenant Hart, I warn you, sir,” MacNamara said, slamming his gavel down sharply.
Tommy stepped back from the witness, staring across the small space at Murphy, looking into his eyes.
“You know, Lieutenant Murphy, I can tell what you’re thinking right now.”
“What’s that?” Murphy asked, between tightly clenched teeth.
Tommy smiled. “Why, you’re thinking, ‘I ought to kill that son of a bitch . . .’ aren’t you?”
Murphy scowled. “No,” he said. “I’m not.”
Tommy nodded, still grinning. “Sure you aren’t.” He stood up straight and gestured toward the packed audience and the kriegies hanging by the windows, listening to every word. “I’m sure that everyone here believes that denial. Absolutely. I must be one hundred percent wrong. . . .”
Sarcasm swirled around every one of Tommy’s words.
“I’m sure you didn’t think, ‘I ought to kill that son of a bitch . . .’ and you received perhaps one tenth of one percent of the abuse that Trader Vic subjected Lincoln Scott to on each and every day since Mr. Scott first arrived at Stalag Luft Thirteen!”
“He said it,” Murphy persisted. “I didn’t.”
“Of course he did,” Tommy answered. “But he didn’t say: ‘I’m going to kill that son of a bitch,’ or ‘I must kill that son of a bitch,’ or ‘I plan to kill that son of a bitch tonight. . . .’ He didn’t say any of those things, did he, lieutenant?”
“No.”
“He said what anyone else might have said, under the exact same circumstances.”
“Objection! Calls for the witness to speculate,” Townsend shouted.
“Ah, withdrawn, then,” Tommy interjected. “Because we surely wouldn’t want Lieutenant Murphy to speculate about anything.”
MacNamara glared down at Tommy. “You’ve made your point,” he said. “Are you finished with this witness?”
Tommy shook his head. “Not quite.”
He walked over to the prosecution’s table and picked up the knife.
“Now, Lieutenant Murphy, were you, or anyone else in the barracks room, in the habit of sharing meals with Lieutenant Scott?”
“No.”
“In every other room, people share foodstuffs and take turns doing the cooking, correct?”
“It seems that way.”
“But Scott was excluded?”
“He didn’t seem to want to be a part—”
“Oh, of course. He’d rather starve on his own, all by himself.”
Murphy glared again, and Tommy continued.
>
“So he ate alone. I presume he fixed his own meals, as well.”
“Yes.”
“So you really wouldn’t know for sure what knife he might have used at any given point to prepare his meals, would you?”
“He had a penknife. I saw him use it.”
“Did you always watch him fix his meals?”
“No.”
“So you really have no idea whether or not he might have used this homemade blade, on any occasion, do you?”
“No.”
With the blade still in his hand, Tommy walked over to the defense table. Hugh reached down by his feet and handed Tommy a small parcel. Tommy put the knife down, and then took the parcel over to the witness.
“You are an expert on meats, lieutenant. After all, your family owns a meat-packing business. Lucky for you, I guess. I would hate to have to have you rely on your own wits to get ahead. . . .”
“Objection,” Townsend yelled. “Lieutenant Hart insults the witness!”
“Lieutenant,” Colonel MacNamara said coldly, “I’m warning you. Do not persist along this road.”
“Right, colonel,” Tommy said briskly. “I would surely hate to insult anyone. . . .”
He sneered at Lieutenant Murphy, who eyed him with an ill-disguised fury of his own.
“Now, lieutenant, be so kind as to identify this for us.”
Murphy reluctantly reached out and took the parcel from Tommy Hart. He swiftly unwrapped it and grimaced. “German blood sausage,” he said. “Everyone’s seen this before. Standard issue from the Krauts.”
“Would you eat this?”
“No one I know in the entire camp eats it. People’d rather starve.”
“Would you, the expert on meats and meat processing, eat this?”
“No.”
“What goes into this sausage, lieutenant?”
Murphy scowled again. “Hard to say. The sausage we make back in the States is thick, solid, and carefully prepared. Sanitary. No one gets sick off of what we fix and send to market. This stuff, well, who knows? Lots of pig’s blood and other types of waste matter, loosely packed in sheaths of intestines. You wouldn’t want to know what could be in there.”
The sausage was almost gelatinous. It was a deep brown-black color, tinged with red. It gave off a foul odor.
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