Starting that day, and for day after day after day, all they ever did, it seemed to Cracker, was sit, stay, and heel in every direction, including in circles. Sometimes she knew what Rick was going to say before he spoke, so she did it before he asked, and he would pull at her neck and say, “No!” Then he would tell her to do what she’d just done. She figured he was kind of mixed up that way. Sometimes she did something totally different from what he’d asked, just to annoy him.
Rick found that Cody was right, that Cracker obviously had learned all this earlier. Still, after a while, whenever Rick told her to sit, she sometimes liked to glare at him first and then sit. Rick figured this was to let him know that she understood the power of the chain around her neck, but he had better understand that she knew the chain was the only reason she needed to listen to him. If she hesitated too long, he’d jerk the chain and say, “No! Sit!” and she’d sit, but with a glare in her eyes.
One morning in formation she simply refused to sit. The entire platoon watched as Rick said over and over, “No! Sit!” and pulled at her chain. Some guys were even laughing. Finally, he had to simultaneously push her butt down as hard as he could while pulling up on her chain until she sat. He looked straight ahead—no way was he going to look at the sergeant. But he thought, I hate that man for assigning me this dog. Rick had never hated anyone in his life. Every community had a couple of cranks who were just what they were, and you accepted that. But you didn’t hate them. This was hate.
Sarge came up to him as if reading his mind and said, almost happily, “That was the most impressive example of incompetence I have seen in my entire career in the army.” He turned to the other men.
Heeling was another problem. Half the time Rick was dragging Cracker or else she was pulling him. Meanwhile, Bruno walked obediently at the side of Cody. Tristie was the same: perfect. Rick had just got the wrong dog, that was the problem. This was the first dog he’d ever met who didn’t seem crazy about him.
“I’m on to your ways,” he said to her one morning. Whenever he lost his temper, his parents always tried to reason with him. Maybe that would work with a dog. “You’re just like me. No tact and diplomacy because you think this is all unfair, right?” She looked at him without expression. They just weren’t bonding at all. He took a breath and said, “All right, then. Come!” She sat.
After a while the dogs learned other commands at the obstacle course like “crawl” and “hup,” which was the command used for both “jump up” and “jump down.” Sometimes when Rick said “hup,” Cracker ran around the obstacle instead of over it. Other times she did it perfectly. In the meantime, the squad moved on to hand signals and the dogs started to work more like teammates with their handlers. Rick and Cracker weren’t the worst team in the squad, but they were definitely in the bottom 5 or 10 percent.
At night, if she bothered to think about it at all, Cracker would lie next to Tristie and she would know that things weren’t going well. But she didn’t know what the result of that would be. At Willie’s once when she’d scratched a couch cover, Willie’s parents made her stay outside for an hour. She knew it was an hour because Willie’s father kept shouting over and over, “An hour outside! An hour outside!” Anyway, even if she now kind of had a human who kind of seemed like he was hers, she also now knew that people just abandoned you eventually. It had already happened to her twice. So why listen to them? Why do what they say?
As for Rick, he would lie on his cot thinking about the day’s various failures. His ego was taking quite a beating. All Rick could do was hold his head high, the way he’d been taught.
One night after an especially bad day of training, Rick lay in bed fuming and couldn’t sleep. U-Haul had told him that they might cycle Cracker out or give her to another handler, if any wanted her. “Cycling out” could mean anything. It could mean returning her to civilian life, it could mean giving her to another handler, it could mean sending her to sentry training, and it could mean putting her down. Sarge said he didn’t know what would become of her if she was cycled out.
Rick lay thinking about changing dogs and leaving Cracker to her fate. It wasn’t personal against the dog or anything, but, after all, the right dog could save his life once he got to Vietnam. The wrong dog could get him killed. The only thing that was stopping him from letting Cracker go was when he thought about the two letters he’d already received from the boy who’d previously owned Cracker. Both letters asked if Cracker was the best dog in training and both talked about how much he still loved her. The boy claimed he’d taught Cracker ninety words. And Cody had told Rick he thought she was a great dog. But, dammit, Rick hated being one of the worst teams in class!
Rick swung up from his cot and walked outside into the mild night air. In the distance he saw some guys standing by a jeep. Fort Benning was mostly quiet at night, but some work had to be done at all hours. He jogged up to the jeep.
“Say, you guys heading toward the kennels?”
“Yeah, need a lift?”
“Thanks, man.”
They drove quietly. When they arrived, one of the guys said, “We’re returning in an hour. Need a lift back?”
“You guys are lifesavers.”
“Cool. See ya then.”
Cracker knew Rick was coming before he got there. She didn’t move from her plywood bed, though. She felt kind of wary. This could be something bad. When he got to the gate, he softly called, “Cracker,” but she still didn’t move. And she could smell that he hadn’t even brought a wiener. He opened the gate and said, “Cracker! Come.” She didn’t move. It gave her pleasure not to move when he called.
He leaned his head against the kennel and didn’t have a thought in the world about what he should do next. He didn’t even understand why he’d come. Then he walked inside and knelt next to her plywood bed.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what to do. You tell me.”
She didn’t move.
He reached out to rub her head. God, she was a beautiful animal, maybe the best-looking dog in training. And the boy had claimed he’d taught her ninety words. She had to be smart if that was true. He looked around. The other dogs were stirring, and a couple had barked at him. “Cracker,” he said. “Does it make a difference if you die without applying yourself? Like if you’re dead, you’re gone, so what’s the difference if you applied yourself or not?”
Cracker just looked at him. She didn’t know what any of those words meant except “dead.” Willie had taught her that when she found the dead bird. He’d also taught her to play dead. Is that what he wanted?
“What am I doing talking to a dog at two in the morning?” Rick said. He must have lost his mind.
Sometimes when Rick watched Twenty-Twenty and Tristie or Cody and Bruno working together, he felt a real thrill. Those dogs were amazing. Twenty-Twenty said, “If you read the literature, you’ll find that for all intensive purposes dogs can smell through concrete.” Rick knew the phrase was supposed to be “for all intents and purposes,” but he never said anything because it was Twenty-Twenty’s favorite phrase. Apparently dogs’ noses opened up a whole world that didn’t exist for humans. But Rick just couldn’t see anything special in Cracker. She was just a big ball of hair.
Rick let her out of the kennel, and she was off, disappearing behind a building. “Hey, come back here! Come! Come!” He heard a lot of barking from all the dogs he’d woken with his cries. But instead of chasing Cracker, the frustration of dealing with her rose in him, and he shouted with fury, “Do whatever you want. You’re dead meat once you cycle out! They can put you down for all I care!” Then he sat down and held his head in his hands. He inhaled deeply, and when he did, it was as if he were inhaling guilt over what he’d just said. He realized he already kind of liked that insane dog, already felt some kind of connection with her. He didn’t want her to be put down or given to the sentry program. But he didn’t want to get killed in Vietnam either.
Rick started as he felt someth
ing cold and wet on his hand. He looked up, and there she was. The dim light caught the catlike reflectiveness of her eyes. For a second, those eyes seemed to bore into him, and even through him. Man, she was a beaut. “What am I going to do with you?” he asked. She stepped back a touch, making the reflectiveness disappear. She threw down her paws to play.
He said, “Cracker, come!” And, to his surprise, she did. She followed him out to a grove of trees. He pointed to one. “Tree!” he said. He pointed to another tree. “Tree!” he said.
Cracker already knew what a tree was. She didn’t know whether he was trying to tell her what one was or whether he was asking her because maybe he didn’t know. Then he started running back and forth between two trees, all the while shouting out, “Run. Run between the trees!” She looked around. It could be he was crazy. She had seen a crazy man when she lived in Chicago. He lived in a different alley from where she lived, but Willie had told her he was crazy.
Then Rick pointed at yet another tree and said, “Cracker! Run to the tree.” And then she got it. She ran to the tree and looked back at him. He cried out, “Good girl!” He pointed to another tree and said, “Run to the tree!” She ran to the tree. “Good girl!” Then he directed her to run among a whole bunch of trees. And they heeled, sat, lay down, and did every single thing they’d been working on for weeks. When they were finished, she was panting but felt elated.
Rick felt elated too. He was also panting. He threw his arms around her. “Good girl,” he said. “Good, good girl.”
And for the first time since he’d ever said it, she knew he meant it. It made her feel wonderful.
Rick kenneled her and caught his ride back. Jeez, he couldn’t believe this dog could have been put down.
After that night, training got better and better. In fact, Rick started lying in bed thinking about the day’s triumphs instead of the day’s failures. It didn’t happen all at once, but after a while it seemed to Rick that they were in maybe the top 25 percent of the class. Not that this trophy business meant anything—they were all in this together. But there was nothing wrong with being the best.
Every day the instructor told the men the same thing: “When you get to Vietnam, you will do everything with your dog. Don’t take a leak without your dog. Don’t have a smoke without your dog. If you sneeze, I want that dog at your side. In Vietnam entire companies of men will rely on your dog to save their lives. But your dog isn’t working for those companies, your dog is working for you. I want you to bond with that dog until you don’t know where the dog ends and you begin!”
Rick had heard this twenty times already. Since that night running among the trees, he had started taking Cracker with him everywhere. It turned out she was a real people dog. She hated being alone, and he started to feel guilty when he did take a leak without her. Sometimes, even when he got leave and went into town, he would catch himself wondering what Cracker was doing.
Training was actually starting to get fun. Sometimes the platoon would go out on the road and jog with their dogs heeling at their sides. If they ran into civilians, the civilians always wanted to take pictures. One hot day they sweated down the road as a couple of gorgeous girls called out, “They’re so cute!” The sarge halted the platoon so the girls could take pictures of the dogs. That gave all the guys new respect for their dogs: They were not only well-trained animals, they were outstanding girl-catchers.
Other times when a civilian wanted to take pictures, the sergeant would rage, “These dogs are not pets. These dogs are specialized military equipment.”
Rick noticed that some of the dogs weren’t as good in various ways as Tristie, Bruno, and—now—Cracker. One dog refused to jump over a wall when told. Another dog bit his handler several times. That dog finally got cycled out and went to wherever such dogs went, maybe to sentry dog training. They liked the dogs meaner there.
The more Rick trained, the more he started to feel that Cracker was reading his mind or something. Of course, he would never say this out loud, unless he wanted to be the laughingstock of the squad. In fact, when he first had the thought during formation one morning, he looked around self-consciously as if somebody might have read his mind.
Rick saw U-Haul scream at someone down the row and couldn’t stifle a yawn. Suddenly, the sergeant marched right in front of Rick. Rick’s heart raced. U-Haul had been looking another way, and Rick didn’t see how he could have seen him yawn.
“You bored, Private?”
“No, SERGEANT!”
“No tact and diplomacy, is that correct, Private?”
“Yes, SERGEANT!”
“Went crying to your friend’s buddy to get into dog-training school, did you, Private?”
“I never cry, SERGEANT!”
“You know how many dead men I’ve seen, Private?”
Rick stopped a second. The guys didn’t like to think about that aspect of the war, but the sergeants liked to remind them.
“No, Sergeant,” Rick said more quietly.
Sarge spoke quietly as well. “Two hundred and seven. I keep a record.”
Rick didn’t answer.
“Fifty push-ups, Private, and don’t ever yawn in front of me again! If you yawn at the wrong moment in Vietnam, you’ll be a dead man. Understand what I’m saying, Private?”
“Yes, SERGEANT!”
Rick dropped to the ground and executed fifty perfect push-ups while the other men left to run their dogs down the road.
Cracker sat patiently, and when Rick was finished, he could swear that dog was laughing at him.
Five
CRACKER LIKED TRAINING A LOT NOW. SHE HAD FUN doing what Rick wanted the second she was sure what it was or sometimes even the second she thought she knew what it was. Back with Willie, she felt like she was the center of the world. She didn’t quite feel that with Rick, but she felt she was doing important work, and she liked that.
Cracker’s favorite part of her new life was when they all started going out into the field and finding men hiding in bushes, guns buried in holes, and anything that smelled or sounded wrong. Rick taught her what was “wrong,” like wind whooshing over a taut string, the smell of gunpowder, growling at the other guys, a hole dug in the ground hidden by leaves, and especially biting certain people. That happened only once, and it wasn’t really her fault. The guy had reached out really fast, and she had been surprised. So she didn’t see how Rick could blame her for that.
Then sometimes they would spend the night out there, and she would lie in the darkness with images of the day drifting through her head. She would see the food she’d eaten or the hidden man jumping out of the bushes. Other nights she would listen to Rick, Cody, and Twenty-Twenty talk. Every so often as they talked, she would hear “Cracker” in their conversation, so she would listen more closely, but she didn’t know what they said.
She always stuck with Rick. She felt the absence of Willie, but it wasn’t an anger anymore. She had started to feel happy whenever Rick was around. He would pet her even while he talked to the other men. She liked that.
Rick, too, would often lie quietly under the stars and think of the day, usually of how well Cracker had done and how well he felt the two of them were starting to understand each other. As a matter of fact, he thought she was going to whip the world. The previous week on the way to a training session he’d inadvertently made the crawl gesture, and Cracker immediately crouched and looked up at him, ready to crawl. A number of times she lay down when he’d only just placed his tongue on top of his mouth to pronounce “down.” Previously, this had bothered him, but she’d gotten the timing so exact that she didn’t do it before he wanted her to but she still did it before he finished speaking. In fact, he got the feeling that getting the timing perfect was one of her favorite things.
Even on the day they practiced flying on a helicopter, she seemed intent on jumping onto the chopper at the precise moment that he did.
Cracker loved the chopper, how the scents from the air flooded her and va
nished almost simultaneously. Everything Cracker could feel on the outside, she could also feel on the inside.
The squad was also supposed to practice rappelling that day. That was when you put on a harness and jumped off with your dog. But the chopper malfunctioned, and they ended up skipping that.
After about six weeks they started what Rick figured was the most important part of training. So far they’d searched for booby traps and personnel that the handlers already knew the location of. Finally, they were going to spend a week bivouacking with their dogs and searching for booby traps and personnel whose locations were unknown to them.
Before this aspect of training, a bunch of guys planned to take their minuscule paychecks and have themselves a weekend of fun in Atlanta. But Rick didn’t get a pass, and Cody and Twenty-Twenty decided to stick around. Rick didn’t much like the big city anyway.
Saturday morning the sun warmed the back of Rick’s neck as he, Cody, and Twenty-Twenty walked to the kennels together. Cody and Twenty-Twenty had become good buddies of his, though they didn’t have a lot in common. Rick was glad to know he’d have a couple of pals in Vietnam. Cody and Rick were from fair-size Midwestern towns, and Twenty-Twenty was from Phoenix. Cody hardly ever worried, while for no particular reason, Twenty-Twenty worried all the time. Rick wasn’t much of a worrier either. On those rare occasions back home when he did worry, he just went into the shop in the garage and sanded a table, fixed a chair.
After they took out their dogs, Cody told them about something he’d seen on TV—some variety show he was obsessed with. The whole idea was to get their three dogs to move in unison. “Dancing dogs,” Cody called it. It worked great. The dogs learned it in about three minutes. Left paw! Right paw! Heel! Heel! Heel! It seemed like they had half the guys in camp watching. Finally, they got chewed out by a lieutenant colonel for playing with the “well-oiled military equipment”-that is, the dogs. So they put the dogs away and went to mail call.