They took a few steps through the start of the evening, and then Tommy asked the black flier, "Tell me, Scott, what's your take on MacNamara?"
Scott hesitated, then asked his own question.
"How so? Do you mean as an officer? Or as a judge? Or, maybe, as a human being? Which?"
"All. Or whichever you want to answer. Come on, Scott, what's your impression?"
Tommy could see a small grin creep across the black airman's lips.
"As an officer, he's a by-the-book professional military man. A career officer looking for advancement and probably being eaten alive every second he has to sit here, completely forgotten, while his classmates from West Point go and do what West Pointers do, which is generally to send men out to get killed and then get to pin medals on their own chests and enjoy their promotions up the military ladder. As a judge, well, I suspect he'll be more or less the same, though he will bend over backwards at odd moments to appear that he's being fair."
"I agree," Tommy said.
"But there's a difference between actually being fair and appearing to be fair."
"Bingo," Scott said quietly.
"Now, as a person, well… Do you have any idea. Hart, just how many
Lewis MacNamaras I've met in my life?"
"No" "Dozens. Hundreds. Too many to count."
"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.