Cracker!

G
RRRR!
F
OR
I
AM THE ALL-POWERFUL
C
RACKER!
Cracker spotted a bird carcass lying in the alley. She picked it up between the tips of her front teeth and flipped it into the air, growling as it sailed above her. When it plopped down, she pushed at it with a paw. She growled more, then leaned the side of her head on the asphalt, staring right into its face. It might have been dead for a week, but who cared? She would kill it again. That’s how powerful she was. She hopped to her feet to attack it—and spotted a mouse! Alive! This was for real! She took off.

Somewhere in the background she heard a voice calling, “Cracker! Cra-a-a-acker! Cracker!”

The mouse had a head start, but she would catch him. She bounded forward and leapt through the air just as the mouse slipped through a chain-link fence.

She reared up and pawed higher on the fence, pushing wildly at the metal to search for weakness. The mouse didn’t move. Just sat in the dirt. Cracker whined. She even licked the fence in the place where the mouse had slipped through. She thought she could just taste his fur …
mmmm.

She reached her paw into a loose area of chain near the ground, but the mouse sat just out of reach. It was as if he were taunting her now. She. Was. Going. To. Kill. That. Mouse. She stared at him as hard as she could. There was nothing in the world except for her and that mouse.

“It’s just a mouse,” Willie said, out of breath from chasing her. “It’s dead. D-E-A-D. Dead.”

Cracker started. She had almost forgotten about Willie. But he didn’t sound angry. Her ears perked. She could hear Willie’s mother calling. Willie picked up a stick and poked at the mouse, sending it scampering.
Huh?
Cracker looked at Willie sorrowfully: Why had he made the mouse go away?

“Oh, stop it,” said Willie. Then he said, “Good girl,” rubbing Cracker’s head. All thoughts of the mouse drained quickly from Cracker. She wagged her tail.
Good girl!
She didn’t even glance at the bird as she and Willie trotted toward home. Who cared about a dead bird?

Willie petted her head again. “Shake!” Willie said, and she fell over … no, that was “play dead.” She leapt up in the air and ran in a circle around him. He laughed, and they continued down the alley.

Willie felt invincible as he walked with Cracker. His mother was used to a better neighborhood and didn’t like them walking through the alley in the evenings, but Cracker’s muscles were stronger than any man’s, and Willie always felt safe with her. Willie’s father had worked as foreman of a taffy apple factory, but when he was laid off, they’d had to move to an apartment while he worked a lower-paying job. And the apartment didn’t allow dogs. The landlord had given Willie’s family one month to get rid of Cracker. That was twenty-five days ago. Willie felt a sharp pain in his stomach at the thought.

Cracker felt Willie’s unhappiness and whined. When they stopped in front of their apartment building, Willie suddenly fell to the ground in front of her and hugged her so hard, it actually kind of bothered her neck. What was going on? “You’re the best dog in the world,” Willie said. “Good girl!” Willie stood up again and looked sadly at Cracker. Anxiety filled her. She jumped up and placed her paws on Willie’s shoulders, almost knocking him over. Willie cracked a smile, and Cracker felt a little better.

At the top of the stairs she scratched at the door to his third-floor apartment. She could never open that door. Willie had to use his “key.” Every day he did the same thing: held up the key and said to her as if she were slow-witted, “Key. Need key.” At the other place they’d lived, the door had pushed open when she grabbed her paws just right around the knob.

Willie opened the door and immediately headed for the bathroom. “Mom, I’m gonna take my bath!” He didn’t want his parents to see him crying. They already felt bad enough. But he hesitated just inside the bathroom as he thought maybe he
did
want them to see him crying. Maybe then he would be able to keep Cracker. But he knew that wasn’t true. He’d already cried a lot, and nothing had changed. Crying wouldn’t get his father’s job back. He closed the door.

“All right!” he could hear his mother call out. She and his dad were watching TV.

He took off his Cubs jacket. As far as Willie was concerned, the Cubs were going to win this year’s Eastern Division, and Willie thought about them almost as much as he thought about Cracker. Some people thought the stupid Mets or Pirates would win the division. Willie wasn’t allowed to use the word “stupid” out loud, but he liked to think the word to himself whenever he felt annoyed.

He’d heard his father use the word just once, during an argument with his mother about the Vietnam War. His parents, uncle, and aunt were all playing bridge, and then all of a sudden they were yelling about the war. There were several hundred thousand American troops in Vietnam, and every day the news reported protests against the war. Ever since Willie’s favorite cousin, Derrick, had been drafted, Willie wrote all his school current events reports about Vietnam. Willie’s father supported the war, and his mother didn’t. And then with the job layoff and the move, well, things weren’t going that well for Willie.

Except for the fact that Cracker was a girl and Willie was a boy, Cracker and Willie were—as his mother liked to say—peas in a pod: They both weighed 110 pounds, and they were almost the same age, Willie eleven in human years and Cracker one year and four months, which Willie had decided was actually eleven in dog years. They both had sandy brown hair in the exact same shade. And Mom also pointed out that Cracker and Willie thought alike. For instance, they probably agreed on two of the biggest problems in their lives: that they lived in a small apartment without a yard and that Willie went away for several hours a day. But once Willie came home from school, life was pretty much perfection, even without a yard. They went out to play with the neighborhood kids until dark, came inside for dinner, went outside for a walk, and then slept on their twin bed together.

And now Cracker was about to make Willie’s life miserable. But he just smiled at her. He’d tried to tell her, but she hadn’t understood.

Cracker felt life was bliss too, though it wasn’t quite perfection, and for precisely the reasons that Willie’s mom thought. Furthermore, Cracker considered Willie a bed hog, but if Cracker held her ground, Willie behaved himself and squeezed up against the wall while she stretched out across the bed, with maybe just a paw or two hanging over the edge. Cracker liked to feel Willie’s back against hers. She also liked it when he slept with his arms around her. Bliss.

On evenings of the three weekends they’d so far lived in this new place, Willie’s parents let them sleep on the floor in the small front room that jutted out with windows on three sides. It was like floating in a boat through the apartments of Chicago. Cracker knew this because she and Willie had been on a boat together once. They’d both liked that. She liked water. She liked it at the lake, and she liked it in the bathtub. Willie started the water going. She didn’t see why she couldn’t get in the bath with Willie. She jumped halfway in the tub and licked Willie’s face.

Willie heard his mom calling out, “Sweetheart, please don’t let Cracker in the bathtub—her hair clogs the drain.”

“Yeah, Mom!” He grunted as he pushed Cracker out of the tub. When she gave him a forlorn look, he said, “Maybe if my dad takes me to the Cubs game Saturday, Mom will take you out for a walk. But don’t pull so hard on the leash.” Willie knew that the Cubs weren’t even in town this Saturday, but the lie made him feel better.

Cracker’s ears perked up at the words “walk” and “leash,” but she relaxed again as Willie kept talking. “If she doesn’t take you out, I’ll take you for an extra-long W-A-L-K when we get back.” Cracker jumped up. She loved it when they went on a “double-you-ale-kay.” That was the same as a “walk.”

Willie dunked under the water with his eyes open, watching the ceiling waver. He stayed under until he couldn’t hold his breath any longer. He was lying to her. By Saturday, Cracker would no longer be his dog. He’d begged everyone he knew, and his parents had even taken out a newspaper ad. But neither he nor his parents could find a new owner for Cracker. They’d taken her to the pound, but then when they got there, he couldn’t give her up. The pound told him that she would probably end up getting put down. Hardly any of the dogs were adopted.

In the bathtub Willie came up for air. Cracker was licking one of her front paws. She’d been doing that ever since they moved to the apartment and she’d actually licked away a raw spot. That’s how Willie knew Cracker was worried.

When Willie had checked his own newspaper ad, he’d noticed another. The U.S. Army needed German shepherds and Labs to go to Vietnam.

Willie hopped out of the tub and dried off. He pulled on his pajamas, and Cracker followed him into their bedroom. He didn’t even call out good night to his parents, just shut the door and got in bed.

Willie pressed up against the wall, and Cracker stretched across the rest of the bed. He lay with his eyes open. Tomorrow Cracker would be on her way to dog-training school, and then to Vietnam, where she could serve her country, and—more importantly—live. Hopefully.
Live.

Cracker sniffed at Willie as he drifted off. Something was wrong with him lately. He was acting funny, and that made him smell a little different. Whatever was wrong with him made her feel kind of sad. She stood up on the bed and pushed her nose onto his cheek, then lifted her nose a bit and sniffed at him. She did smell a little bloody spot on his knee, but she didn’t think that was what was bothering him. She lay down lethargically. Whenever Willie didn’t feel good, she didn’t feel good either.

Cracker opened her eyes when Willie’s parents walked into the room. She thought they were going to scold her, as they sometimes did, for taking up so much space or for being wet. Or something. Except for scolding, they hardly ever paid much attention to her. Now they petted her head and scratched her ears and called her “good girl” over and over. That was nice. Weird, but nice. Then they left. Cracker stared a moment at the crack of light under the door. She felt even more disturbed than before. She licked her paw for a while. But Willie was here and everything was peaceful, and so finally, she fell asleep.

In the morning, as always, Willie rushed around the apartment. He fed Cracker, took her out to run a few times up and down the alley, took her home, and changed her water. Then, instead of running out the front door with his books, he threw his arms around Cracker’s neck and hugged her so hard, she squirmed and had to pull away.

Willie’s mother hovered over them. Cracker whined, completely confused. “Willie, you poor thing,” said Willie’s mother. “Why don’t you stay home today?”

“I can’t watch,” he said. “I don’t want to watch them take her.”

Cracker pawed at his shirt so hard, her nails ripped through the material.
Uh-oh.
She didn’t move for a moment. But nobody scolded her. Things had gotten really weird around here.