In Their Own Words: The Tuskegee Airmen Page #5

I don't know who

I was stealing it from and...

But I knew it wasn't mine.

I'm very confused right now.

So you didn't...? You...?

You didn't write the book?

None of it is mine,

not one single word.

I don't know what's going on.

It was there and...

I think I wanted so badly

for it to have come from me...

and then the look,

the way you looked at me

when you thought it was mine...

And for a moment I actually

convinced myself that I wrote it.

Do you believe that?

I could never write

anything that good. I know that.

Okay, so then...

You... I mean, you said so yourself...

I said what?

It doesn't matter.

What? What did I say?

You should've known.

You did know, right? You knew...

What do you mean?

You knew when you read them

that they weren't my words.

I knew?

You know me so well.

You were doing research on Paris.

We had just gotten back

from our honeymoon.

Yeah, but you had to have known.

What do you mean?

I believed you.

No, you wanted to believe.

I know, I believed you!

You wanted to...

I f***ing believed you!

Dora?

Don't touch it.

You lied to me.

When you...

When you read those words,

when you copied them,

did you ever stop to think about us?

Did you think about

what this was gonna do to us?

To you?

Did I ever cross your mind?

I can't be here right now.

I'm sorry, I just can't be here.

You really f***ed up.

I think we need to think this through.

What does that mean?

You got the cover

of the book review this Sunday.

I didn't get the cover of this,

some old man got it.

The other book of yours,

did you write that?

Of course I wrote that.

But I didn't plan this.

This isn't something that I planned.

But the only reason why anybody ever

read my stuff is because of this book.

You don't want this.

Everything you're saying you want,

you don't want it.

Just take my name off the book.

And what do you think is gonna happen?

Do you think they're gonna

give you a hall pass?

The media? The press?

They're gonna crucify you.

And my ass is out there

on the line with you.

You wanna pay this man

off your advance,

that's the right thing to do.

You wanna cut him

into the movie rights, fine.

You wanna buy him a house,

a car, a f***ing boat?

But don't screw yourself

for the rest of your life

for one stupid mistake.

And don't you f*** me!

Trust me, this isn't the first time

an author's done something like this.

Don't do that.

You may not believe me now...

but you will thank me later.

My book, the one you sold...

is it as good as this book?

Tell me the truth, Joe.

Thank you.

We're supposed to have dinner

with your parents tonight.

I'm really not up for it.

Fine, I'll call your mother.

How much longer

until this is over, Rory?

What do you want from me?

Do you think you're the only person

on this earth who's ever made a mistake?

Are you gonna let this destroy you?

Destroy us?

What if we had a baby?

We've always wanted to.

We've always wanted to start a family.

I think I'm gonna break.

I'm gonna break in half.

I'm gonna break in half.

You're not gonna break.

You're not gonna break.

I won't let you.

Can we just try to put this behind us?

Look at me. Can we?

How are you doing today?

What type of plant is that?

Plectranthus.

Swedish ivy.

It's nice.

You come up here

just to bullshit about plants?

No, I did not.

Well, if you came to see

if I was gonna blow the whistle on you

you should relax and go back home

to your great, big life.

I wanna fix this.

There's nothing to fix.

You just go live the life

you made for yourself.

If you didn't want anything, why

did you come find me and tell me?

It couldn't be just to torture me.

You don't even know who I am.

You don't know how, you don't know why.

I just...

thought you should know, that's all.

Do you think you can just

steal part of my life?

Any man's life?

Take it as your own

and expect there'd be no price to pay?

No. Don't you understand?

This is why I'm here.

Put that back in your pocket

or I'll kick the sh*t out of you.

This is not a payoff.

This is all I could get out right now,

but it's all yours.

I'm gonna take my name off the book.

I'm gonna tell everybody the truth.

Then you're even more of a fool

than I thought you were.

What is all this about then?

What is it about?

It's about my life.

It's about my wife, about my child.

It's about the joy and the pain

that gave birth to those words.

You take those words,

you take the pain.

Now, why don't you buy

a plant with that money?

Here, a Plectranthus,

since you love them so much.

You take your plant and your money and you

get out of here. Get out of here. Go on.

Hey, I wanna make things right.

You can't just make things right.

Things are just things.

You understand? No matter

how you try and martyr yourself.

I've got work to do.

This place doesn't run itself.

Sir, sir. Please. Sir.

Please.

I did see her one more time.

You did?

I was on my way to work.

Over all those years,

I thought about her every day.

Broken because of what I did to her.

And then all of a sudden,

there she was.

She seemed happy.

Well, if I was to tell you that realization

didn't cause me pain, I'd be lying.

But, in some ways, it helped me.

Helped me turn a corner.

Pick up again

without looking back all the time.

Ah, you think I ruined my life

because I never wrote again.

Just because I lost a book of stories.

No, I just...

God, you had so much more to do.

I've done enough.

Believe me.

I've done what I can the best that I can.

That's all you can ask of a person.

No,

my tragedy was that I loved words

more than I loved the woman

who inspired me to write them.

You wanna do something for me?

Anything at all.

Walk away, don't look back.

We all make choices in life.

The hard thing is to live with them.

And there ain't nobody

can help you with that.

Go on.

Sir?

I do love your book.

We all make our choices.

The hard part is living with them.

Finally, Rory Jansen knew

what he had to do

to live with his.

The Window Tears

by Rory Jansen.

And the old man?

A few weeks

after Rory went to visit him,

the old man died.

And the secret died with him.

Whatever he had to do, whatever

he had to lose, he would seal it off.

It was as if by locking off the secret

of one man's life forever,

he had unveiled

another much deeper

and darker secret within himself.

And that's it. The end.

Poof.

No moral, no comeuppance,

no incredible gain of knowledge,

other than the belief that one can,

after making a terrible mistake in life,

continue to live

and perhaps even live well.

Everyone has to sleep at night.

What really happened, Clay,

after he tells himself all that?

I just told you.

No, tell me the truth.

He goes on. He lives,

he writes, as well as he can,

he's a big success.

Bullshit.

I'm not talking about the book.

You're just avoiding. Tell me the truth.

What are you afraid of, Clay?

Look, why don't you tell me?

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