Tape and Needle and Scissors and Thread and…

"Cup and saucer."

"Pen and pencil."

"Shoelaces. Both of 'em."

For the past hour this scintillating conversation had been floating around the barracks. As usual, Colonel Hogan could be blamed for this, and "this" tonight meant he was determined to get his men's' minds and predilection for mischief safely detoured.

Never let it be said that Hogan wasn't willing to learn from his enemies, and learning a little German here and there had been really useful for getting his finger on concepts like Einstein's Gedankenexperiments.

After three weeks of nonstop rain he had a duty to his men to keep them busy—he also had a slight (ever so slight) sense of duty toward Klink, who was going crazy with his own men's' meteorological cabin fever combined with too many downed trains that had effectively ruined leave for all of them. (Klink had banned them from the long-suffering local villages for six months following a few events that weren't completely Hogan's fault, so Hogan didn't completely feel guilty about the suffering Nazis, as he wasn't responsible for ALL the bad things that happened to this part of the world. Those wrecked supply lines for example; the Germans were thinking about easing costs with wooden bullets for God's sake).

"Two pairs of shoes. Fancy ones for Sunday and workboots."

"Are you kidding?"

"You can't run through a forest looking like Fred Astaire from the ankle down."

So far things were going splendidly even though it was a barracks full of men dealing with the relentless drum of rain, and the high-pitched plink-plink of their tiny stove heating and cooling as it struggled to adjust to the bizarre mix of fuels it was forced to use to keep them warm, or at least dry the mold and moss off their skins. The coal allowance had been lost a month back with the last train dynamiting, and everyone, even Klink, was holding the wet at bay with anything burnable.

It was really amazing how many things fell under the category of 'anything burnable'. Hogan hadn't known that until now.

It was a mark of victory that Hogan's mandatory workshop of problem solving had transformed the men from surly and itchy to calm, engaged, maybe even sociable. The challenge had been "name two things you absolutely need to escape Germany."

(Well, the official question was "name two things you absolutely need to get by," but with Schultz snoring away in the corner one had to be a little careful.)

So far so good.

And now Newkirk…

If 'participating' was defined by physical presence, Newkirk was participating. He sat on his bunk in perfect tailor's pose (crosslegged, shoulders hunched) with a coat spilled across his lap. Whatever miracle he had to work was a tough one because he had at least twelve leftover twists of scrap threads (none matching) lined up in formation for his use, and almost as many needles.

Newkirk had been cranky for weeks, and it had shaken up every man in the Stalag to hear an Englishman complain about the rain. Klink had flatly told Hogan they were allowed visits from the base doctor and check the Codes if he didn't believe him—assuming he hadn't already burned the Codes in the stove to keep warm. Hogan could have easily stood up to Klink and would have under different circumstances, but a part of him was just too startled to do anything; Newkirk's tirade was still hovering in the thick atmosphere, struggling to rise above weeping clouds.

"Ball of string and coin purse."

"LeBeau, your turn."

The Frenchman scowled. "A cooking pot and a cleaver."

"No spoon?"

"A good chef can do anything with his cleaver."

"Anything?" Baker wondered. "Really? But you need spoons and forks for cooking, don't you?"

"Bah, a good chef can prepare a complete meal without touching anything but his knife. I could do without it if I had to, but it isn't easy to skin a rabbit without a knife."

"Aw, that just takes a little practice." Carter assured him. "I used to just look for a broken coke bottle. Two nicks at the neck and you can just turn 'em inside out." And he mimed a banana-peel maneuver that had a few people shuddering. "Sure easier than skinning a moose!" The other act of mimicry, which reminded far too many people of childhood Christmases spent putting one's fist almost completely through the stocking in hopes of one last treat, was far more palpable in reaction. Carter actually noticed. "What?"

"Well, what's your two secret things?"

"I don't think I have one." Carter said thoughtfully. "I mean, there's always something I can make out of whatever's there."

From the lips of anyone else, the statement would be considered braggadocious. But Carter absently spun his spare shoelaces from weeds in the forest, stuffed his socks with moss to keep his feet warm, brushed his teeth with rock salt, stopped the blood from a wound with a spore-filled mushroom, and used the pennies in his pockets for screwdrivers…the man might have a point. Last winter when the cold had cracked three panes of windows clean off the sill, Carter had replaced them with scrounged up layers of paper soaked in grease until he could beg for the horns off the oxen Klink had bought for the camp's two-month meat supply. Before the gaping residents, POW and guard alike, Carter had cheerfully boiled the horns (in the ox stomach because LeBeau wasn't going to let anything like that sully his cooking pot), steamed and peeled the horns into translucent plate so soft before they dried they could be stapled into the window.

"You know we're losing the war." Corporal Karl said to Captain Gruber, who told him to shut up.

"Hey!" Carter brightened. "Newkirk can have my two. A tailor needs four things, right?"

Newkirk gave Carter a look that could have ignited his brass needles. "Such as what?" He asked with exaggerated patience, proving he was at least listening to the debate.

"Well, you need a tape-measure, and a good needle, and scissors and thread, but that's all you need. Honestly. With that you could do anything!"

So honest and heartfelt was this dimwitted admiration that Newkirk found himself smiling much against his will.

"Pack o'needles are the best for what ails." He said at last. "Hardest ones to replace, too."

"Tell me about it!" Carter moaned. "I bent my grandmother's all out of shape because I needed some fishhooks one year…she made me make a whole new set by hand!" And he moaned again.

LeBeau was horrified. "Why couldn't she let you buy another pair?"

"We couldn't afford it." Carter said honestly. "Mom traded our last head of cabbage in for a can of coffee. That's why I used her needles to make fish hooks."

There was a faint, impressed pause as everyone contemplated the levels of poverty that inspired both such destitution, and that it still failed to tar the happy soul that was Carter.

"Have a blacksmith shop nearby?" Baker offered at last.

"Aw, no. She wanted me to appreciate modern technology." Carter shook his head. "I had to make 'em out of bone."

There was another impressed pause, much less faint than the first one. As the relentless fall of rain replaced Schultz' snoring to compensate for the lack of conversation, Hogan began making silent bets with himself on who would speak next if he could only keep himself from talking first.

"At least she let me use the pump drill." Carter continued in his (for him) pleasant memories. "Sure made it a lot easier! Back in her day, her cousins up in the Arctic Circle had to use walrus whisker for drilling holes. Took forever!"

"I have no doubt o'that." Newkirk said without blinking. This was exactly what everyone else was thinking. "So was the old lady happy?"

"Yeah, finally. I had to make the curvy one three times, and then she told me I wasn't going to get anywhere in the world if I kept thinking small and had me make a naalbinder too."

Not even Hogan was going to ask what a Naalbinder was. There was only so much ignorance one could confess to in the presence of Carter.

Newkirk finally looked all the way up, which lifted everyone's hopes that he was about to actually rejoin the land of the living. He contemplated Carter thoughtfully in that "fish or fowl?" expression that Carter had earned by exclusive right, and then looked over to LeBeau, as if to silently ask if the Frenchman could put some clarity on this strange being in their midst.

LeBeau could only shrug, and, being French, was the best at the job.

Hogan wrestled with his conscience with a fervor that would have amazed Klink. Contrary to the belief of the unanimous vote, the Colonel did have occasional dialogs with himself on the performance of his moral compass.

Should he ask The Question, or not?

Hogan was fairly unique among Americans in that he had actually survived a childhood spawned from such deep philosophical questions such as "what would happen if I did this?" Carter was another such soul-mate and it pleased him to no end to know he wasn't the only one in the world. But you had to survive the consequences of satisfying your curiosity by beating Consequences to the punch—or moving faster than the Laws of Physics.

Hogan's normal rate of decision was about .00005 of a second, that being just a hair faster than karma's mean average of 9.8/m/s/s.

"Well, Carter," he cleared his throat and tipped his head back, hands folded across his chest (as if that would help him keep warm in this dank hellhole). "If you had Newkirk's tape measure, needle, scissors, and thread,"

Newkirk's face managed to not only collapse into itself by the weight of its own horror, his eyes simultaneously shrank, then expanded into a four-star alarm.

"what could you do with them?"

Carter's face bloomed with the joy of such an amazing question, even as LeBeau quietly backed just a little closer to the plinking stove. As the pyrotech's mouth opened and they prepared for the orchestra of anarchy to follow, Hogan caught the Brit's silently mouthed promise of revenge.

Nothing like a little terror to get a man out of a slump.