"No, screw you. Now answer the damn question. What are you going to testily to, lieutenant…"
"Murphy."
"That's right. Lieutenant Tim Murphy. I believe you come from western
Massachusetts. Springfield, if I remember correctly.
Not far from my home state."
Murphy looked away angrily.
"You have a good memory," he said.
"All right. Hart. I will be called to testify about the fight and the other confrontations between Scott, there, and the deceased. Threats and other menacing statements made in my presence. That's what these other men will be speaking to, as well. Got it?"
"Yeah, I got it." Tommy turned to the roommate.
"That correct?"
The man nodded. A third also shrugged in agreement.
"You got a voice?" Tommy asked the third flier.
"Yeah," the man said in an unmistakable flat, midwest tone.
"I got a voice. And I'm gonna use it on Monday to see his sorry ass get convicted."
Lieutenant Murphy stared past Tommy, hard at Scott.
"Isn't that right, Scott?" the man asked. The black airman remained silent, and Lieutenant Murphy snorted a mocking laugh.
"That remains to be seen," Tommy said.
"I wouldn't bet my last pack of smokes on it." This, of course, was false bravado, but it still felt good, tumbling from his mouth. He turned to the other men standing in the corridor.
"I'd like to hear all of your voices, one by one."
"What the hell for?" one of the men who'd been silent asked.
Tommy smiled nastily.
"Funny thing about voices. Once you hear one, especially a cowardly one that threatens you in the middle of the damn night, well, you're not likely to forget that, are you? I mean, that voice, those words, the sounds they make, why, they damn well are gonna stick right in the front of your head for a long time to come. And you sure as hell aren't gonna forget that voice, are you? Even if there's no clear face to assign to it, you're still not going to forget the voice."
He looked at the remaining men, including the band leader
"You have a voice?" Tommy demanded.
"No," the band leader replied. Then he and two of the other men abruptly turned and rapidly marched away down the corridor.
None of them were big men, but they still walked with distinct size and anger. And if they had an inadvertent y'all or Yankee in their language, as did the two men who'd paid him the threatening visit in the middle of the night several days past, they had not shared it with Tommy.
Trader Vic's roommate looked over at Scott.
"You'll get your fight someday," he said.
"I can promise that…"
Tommy could sense Scott coiling beside him.
"… nigger," the man concluded.
Tommy stepped forward, blocking the path of the explosion he believed was coming from Scott. He pushed his face up against the roommate's, so that they were almost nose to nose.
"There's an old saying." Tommy spoke quietly, almost whispering.
"It goes something like this: "God punishes those whose prayers He answers. "You might think about that."
The roommate narrowed his eyes for just an instant. Then, instead of answering, he grinned, stepped back a single stride, spit sharply at the wooden floor, right at Tommy's boots, and then executed a precise, military about-face and marched away down the corridor, followed by the remaining men.
Tommy watched until the door to the assembly yard opened and clattered shut as they slammed it behind them.
Scott exhaled slowly.
"I think we will fight," he said.
"Before they shoot me."
He paused, then added.
"The rest? Well, Hart, that was what I was talking about. Hatred.
Ain't nice in person, is it?"
Scott didn't wait for a reply, but disappeared back into his room, leaving Tommy alone in the corridor. Tommy leaned up against the wall, catching his breath. He felt an odd exhilaration, and was curiously flooded with a long-forgotten memory of a time right before he and his bomber group had headed overseas. They'd been flying in formation over the coast of New Jersey, on a spring day not unlike this one, steadily making their way northeast toward Boston's Hanscom Field and their jump-off place to cross the Atlantic.
They were in the lead plane, and the captain from West Texas was looking out over New York City, talking in a rapid-fire monologue, excited about seeing the skyscrapers of Manhattan for the very first time.
"Hey, Tommy," he'd called out over the intercom, "where the hell's that big of' bridge?" And Tommy had replied with a small laugh, "Captain, they've got lots of bridges here in New York and they're all big. But the George Washington? Just take a look to the north, captain.
About ten miles right up the river." There had been a momentary pause, while the captain looked, and then he'd abruptly put the Mitchell into a short dive.
"Come on, boys," he said, "let's have some fun!"
The formation had followed the Lovely Lydia down to the deck, and the next thing Tommy knew, they were flying right up the Hudson, the easygoing whitecaps of spring water glistening beneath their wings. The captain steered the entire group under the bridge, their engines echoing and roaring as they passed beneath some astonished motorists, who'd stopped in mid-span as the flight passed below them, close enough so that Tommy could see the wide eyes of one small boy who waved frantically and joyously at the bombers. The intercom was filled with the whoops and hollers of excited crewmen. The radio crackled with the shouts from the pilots of the other planes in the formation.
Everyone knew what they'd done was dangerous, illegal, and foolhardy, and they were likely to get their butts chewed out at the next checkpoint, but they were all young men who thought it still a delightfully fine and outrageous idea on a beautiful, breezy afternoon.
The only thing that might have made the dare deviltry better would have been some young women to admire it. Of course. Tommy thought, this was months before any of them knew anything about the lonely and ugly deaths that awaited so many of them.
He looked down the empty corridor of Hut 101 in Stalag Luft Thirteen and remembered that moment and wished he could feel that sort of excitement once again. Risk and joy, instead of risk and fear. He thought that was what the reality of war stole from him. The innocent chanciness of youth.
Tommy sighed deeply, shook the memory from his head, and walked down the corridor. His boots echoed in the empty space. He flung open the door, and stepped down into the dirt of the camp ground, the sunlight blinding him for an instant.