But outwardly, Lincoln Scott seemed immune to this.

By the end of his first week inside Stalag Luft Thirteen, when not wrapped up with Gibbons’ history or with the Bible, he had taken to spending his days walking the perimeter of the compound. One circuit after another, for hours. He would stride rapidly along the dusty trail, a foot inside the deadline, eyes riveted to the ground except for occasional pauses, where he would stop, turn, and stare out at the distant line of pine trees.

Tommy had watched him, and was reminded of a dog on a chain, always moving at the very limit of its territory.

He had been one of the men who made an effort in the first few days to enter into a conversation with Lieutenant Scott, but had had no more success than any other. In the midst of a mild afternoon, shortly before the order to start the evening count was to be given, he had approached the lieutenant as the black man made one of his tours of the edge of the camp.

"Hey, how you doing?" Hart had said.

"My name's Tommy Hart."

"Hello," Scott had replied. He did not offer his hand, nor did he identify himself.

"You settled in okay?"

Scott had shrugged.

"Seen worse," he muttered.

"When new guys come in it's sort of like having the daily paper delivered to the house, only a couple of days late.

You've got all the latest, and even if it's out of date, it's still better than what we've got, which' is rumor and official crap over the illegal radios. What's really happening? How's the war going? Any word on the invasion?"

"We're winning," Scott had answered.

"And no. Lots of men sitting in England. Waiting, same as you."

"Well, not exactly the same as us," Tommy said, grinning, and gesturing toward a machine-gun crew in the guard tower.

"No, that's true," Scott said. The lieutenant had kept walking, not looking up.

"Well, you must know something," Hart asked.

"No," Scott had replied.

"I don't."

"Well," Tommy had persisted, "suppose I walk along with you and you tell me everything you don't know."

This request brought the smallest of smiles to the black man's lips, just the slightest turn upward, and he blew out some wind, as if concealing a laugh. Then, almost as quickly as that moment was there between them, it dissipated.

"I really prefer to walk alone," Scott had said briskly.

"Thanks for asking, though."

Then he'd continued his trek, as Tommy stopped and watched him stride on.

The following morning was Friday, and after the morning Appell Tommy went back to his bunk. From a small wooden box beneath the bed, he took several fresh packages of Lucky Strikes from a carton that had been delivered in his latest Red Cross parcel. He also grabbed a small metal container marked earl grey tea, and the uneaten majority of a large chocolate bar. In his jacket pocket, he secreted a small can of condensed milk. Then he collected several sheets of brown scrap paper, which he'd used to scrawl notes upon in cramped, tight handwriting.

These he stuffed between the pages of a worn text on forensic evidence.

He walked outside Hut 101, searching for one of the three Fritzes. The morning was warm, and sunlight gave the yellow-gray dirt of the compound a glow.

Instead he spotted Vincent Bedford pacing along, with a determined look on his face. The southerner paused, his face turning rapidly into a look of anticipation, and quickly approached Tommy.

"I'll sweeten the deal. Hart," he said.

"You're just a hard nut to crack. What'll it take to get that watch?"

"You haven't got what it will take. Sentimental value."

The Mississippian snorted.

"Sentiment? Girl back home?

What makes you think you'll get back there in one piece?

And what makes y'all think she'll be waiting for you once you do?"

"I don't know. Hope? Trust?" Tommy replied, with a small laugh.

"Those things don't amount to much in this world of ours, Yankee. What counts is what you got right now. In your hand.

That y'all can use right away. Maybe ain't gonna be no tomorrow.

Not for you, maybe not for me, maybe not for any of us."

"You're a cynic, Vic." The southerner grinned "Well, maybe so, maybe so. Nobody never called me that before. But I won't deny it."

They were walking slowly between two of the huts, and they emerged onto the edge of the exercise area. A softball game was just starting up, but beyond the outfield, both men caught sight of the solitary figure of Lincoln Scott, marching along the edge of the perimeter.

"Sumbitch," Bedford muttered.

"Today I got to do something about this situation."

"What situation?" Tommy asked.

"The nigger situation," Bedford replied, turning and staring at Hart as if he were unbelievably stupid for not seeing the obvious.

"The boy's using up a bunk in my room and that ain't right."

"What's not right about it?"

Bedford didn't answer directly.

"I suppose I got to go tell old man MacNamara, and then he'll switch the nigger into another room. Boy ought to be housed in some place by his self so's to keep him separate from the rest of us."

Tommy shook his head.

"Seems he's doing that pretty effectively by himself without any help from you," he said.

Trader Vic shrugged.

"Ain't right. And anyway, what's a Yankee like you know about niggers?

Nothing. Absolutely goddamn nothing." Bedford drew out each vowel sound, giving each word an elongated importance.

"Why, I'll bet, Hart, that you ain't hardly ever even seen one before, much less lived with 'em, the way we do down South…"

Tommy didn't reply to this, because there was some truth in what Bedford said.

"And what we come to know about 'em ain't good," Trader Vic continued.

"They lie. Why, they lie and cheat all the damn time. They're thieves, every one of 'em, as well. Good many of 'em are rapists and criminals, too. Not all, mind you.

But a good many. Now, I'm not saying that they maybe might not make good soldiers. Why, that's a possibility, because they don't see things exactly the way white folks do, and they can probably be educated properly in how to kill, and do a right good job at it, I suspect, same as like chopping wood or fixing a machine, though flying a Mustang, I can't see that.

They just ain't the same as you and me. Hart. Hell, you can see that just by watching that boy walk his way around the deadline. And I think it'd be a whole lot better if old man MacNamara figured that out before some trouble happens, because I know niggers, and there's always trouble wherever they are. Believe it."

"What sort of trouble, Vic? Hell, we're all stuck here, just the same."

Vincent Bedford burst out into a small laugh, shaking his head vigorously back and forth.

"The one thing may be true. Hart, that we're all stuck here, though that remains to be seen, don't it? And the other, why, it absolutely ain't the same. No sir. Not the same at all."

Vincent Bedford pointed at the wire.

"The wire be the same. But everybody here sees it different.

You see it one way, I see it another, and the old man sees it a third.

Likely even our boy walking along out there, why he's probably started seeing it in his own way, too. That's the wonder of life. Hart, which

I'd even expect an overeducated and tight-ass Yankee like yourself to figure out.

Ain't nothing ever the same for two men in this world. Not ever.

Except maybe death."

Tommy thought that of all the things he'd heard Bedford say, this last observation was probably as close to the truth as he ever came.

Before he could reply, Bedford clapped him on the shoulder.

"Why hell. Hart, you're probably thinking that I'm prejudiced, but it ain't so. I ain't no stars and bars-waving, tobacco-chewing, white-hooded, night-riding Klansman No sir. In fact, I have always treated every nigger good. Treat 'em like men. That's my way. But I know niggers, and I know they cause trouble, and that's what we'll have here."