Cracker! (3 page)

When the truck stopped, several men in uniforms crowded around the back talking with the drivers. The uniforms were the same as the one worn by the man who took her from Willie.

“A couple of them are real beauties,” the driver said. “That one’s big for a female.”

“How much does she weigh?”

The driver looked at a clipboard. “Hundred and ten. Moderately aggressive, just what the army is looking for. She had a broken leg, but they’re keeping her anyway. Never heard of that.”

Another couple of men lifted down her crate, and she lunged at the side. These men weren’t thrown off balance, though.

“She seems more than moderately aggressive,” said the driver. “Gorgeous animal, though. From Chicago. Name’s Cracker.”

At the sound of her name Cracker’s ears perked up, but nobody said anything more to her. From the truck, she smelled grass and lots of different people.

The dog crates were carried to a nearby kennel area. One by one the dogs were taken out of the crates and put into a kennel. Only Cracker waited in her crate. Finally, a man appeared with padding on his arms, and he and another man pulled Cracker out of her crate and tried to push her into a kennel. She slammed her body into the padded man and heard that wonderful
clunk
noise as his head hit the concrete. She saw one of his legs rise as he fell.

A third man appeared from somewhere and reached for the back of her neck. She figured whatever he wanted to do was bad, so she heaved her side into him, and he ended up grabbing her around the stomach. They wrestled and wrestled.

“Throw her in the kennel!” somebody yelled. She bit the third man’s arm.

“Ahhh! Ahhh! Crazy dog!” Suddenly, the man let go of her, and the three men rushed
into
her kennel and slammed the door. Cracker looked at them. They looked at her. Even she knew this was all wrong.
Oh, well.
She trotted off but stopped when she saw another man wrapped in padding.

“You’re supposed to grab them by the back of the neck!” shouted one of the men in the kennel. But as the man moved toward her, she easily galloped away. She kept running until she came to a long building. She turned around and saw what was now six men closing in on her, breathing hard.

For a while she ran in a big circle as she listened to the men losing their breath. She heard one of them trip; ordinarily, this might have been fun. But there was nowhere to go. And there was no Willie to go to. This wasn’t fun at all. So she ran back to the only place she knew of where she might belong: the kennel. The gate was open, and she slipped in. It took the men a couple of minutes to reach the gate and slam it shut.

They looked at her. She looked at them. Then nothing happened. She turned her head both ways and saw that kennels with dogs stretched into the distance on both sides of her. Two kennels down was the dog she thought was okay. They met eyes. He looked a little scared—but a little happy, too—to see her. The dog to her right was half her size. She wagged her tail eagerly. Cracker went to sniff noses with her. Then Cracker waved her tail in approval.

A roof protected one section of her kennel from the sun, and a bowl of water sat in a corner. She lapped eagerly at the water. The dog to the left of her whined and pawed at her kennel. She growled, and the dog slunk back. Some dogs she just didn’t like.

The men still watched Cracker as she lay down. And then they left, and she waited and waited and waited, occasionally chewing on the steel gate or licking her raw spot.

She felt crazy in this kennel, but at the same time she knew that there was nowhere else to go. She tried to feel exactly where Willie was. She knew the direction, and she knew he was far, but that was it. She whined and laid her head on her paws.

But the more she waited, the sadder she felt. And then the sadder she felt, the angrier she felt at everybody who came by. Whenever someone tried to take her out, she growled with such menace that they left her and took out another dog instead. She bit a fellow who brought her food in, just because he annoyed her. She felt furious with everybody, even the people who just walked in front of her cage.

The dog on her right, the one everyone called “Tristie,” had guys petting her and taking her out all the time. Everybody liked Tristie, even Cracker. Sometimes Tristie would slap a paw on the fencing between them, and Cracker would slap a paw in the same place. Then they would run up and down their kennels at the same time. Other times, when Tristie was away, Cracker would lie sullenly at the back of her kennel. One day two men in uniform stood in front of her cage. She snarled and jumped over and over at the gate. She hated them—whoever they were.

“This one’s not going to make it. She’s too mean. They’re going to have to put her down or maybe make her a sentry dog.”

“Five dollars says she makes it.”

They shook hands.

R
ICK
H
ANSKI WAS GOING TO WHIP THE WORLD.
It was just a feeling he had. He hadn’t done much to back up this idea, but he just knew it. He’d signed up for the army on his seventeenth birthday, after a long talk with his parents and grandparents about his future and about his father’s hardware store and who might take it over someday if not him. His parents were first-generation Scandinavian Americans—all four of his grandparents came from the tundra. After he’d moved to Wisconsin, Grandpa Hanski had gotten a patent for a bar clamp and sold the patent to a big tool company. He’d used the money to start a hardware store that Rick’s father had inherited when Grandpa retired early. Rick had worked at the store since he was a kid.

When he wanted to relax, he liked to make things: He’d made quite a few frames for his mother and a couple of chairs for his father. He liked to shape things. But he knew his work wasn’t good enough to sell, and anyway, making stuff was mostly just for relaxing. It took his mind off of what worries he had. He guessed his biggest worry was that he wasn’t sure he wanted to take over the hardware store someday. Everybody had assumed that the store was his future; that’s why his parents didn’t complain about his so-so grades. They were just proud that he worked hard in the store, and they’d never made him feel bad that his sister, Amy, was a math prodigy who’d graduated from MIT a couple of years ago and was now going for her PhD in Applied Mathematics, whatever that meant. He did overhear his father saying once that his sister had a calling, whereas Rick was a “good, strong, well-mannered boy,” just like all the Hanski men had been at his age.

When his father had met one of the actual DeWalts at a convention once, he’d talked about it for days, as if he’d met the president or something. But sometimes, working at the hardware store, Rick felt…. not bored exactly, but like something wasn’t quite right. And Rick was filled with guilt, because he knew how proud his father was of the store. But it just didn’t feel right for him. So when Rick turned seventeen, he thought he’d sign up like some of the other local guys had. He was a man now, not a boy, no matter what his parents thought. He’d made the announcement at dinner the week before he turned seventeen. Everyone had just finished eating.

Rick had turned to his father, who Rick could tell was just about to stand up.

“Dad?”

“Hmm?”

“I’d like to sign up.”

“Sign up for what?”

Rick had felt four sets of eyes burn into him. His parents’ and grandparents’. They’d probably been thinking dinner was over, and it was time to watch television, maybe laugh at a TV comedy. Life didn’t hold many surprises in the Hanski household. “Sign up for Vietnam. But I need you to approve since I’ll be only seventeen.”

Rick felt his own chest heaving with nervousness but kept his eyes trained on his father’s. Then everybody was talking at once. His parents and grandparents grilled him for hours. He’d prepared for all this, had planned to start out by talking about something he’d done once: save a kid’s life. It was a couple of years ago, and he’d been standing on a sidewalk and seen a six-year-old boy run into the path of an oncoming bus. Rick had pushed the boy out of the way and just managed to get out of the way himself. Those moments stood out with clarity in Rick’s mind, whereas every day at the hardware store dulled in comparison. That’s what he’d wanted to talk about that night. But instead, his family had hardly given him a chance to speak.

They’d lectured him about what he planned to do when he got back, about whether he really understood that war was an “ugly thing,” as his grandfather said over and over. Grandpa had lived in Finland during World War II. He
knew
war.

“I know, Grandpa,” Rick started to say, but then his grandmother broke in.

“If we’d pushed him more in school, maybe none of this would be happening,” Grandma Hanski had said. If they’d pushed him in school, she continued, maybe he’d want to go to college and be an accountant for the hardware store or something. Finally, at the end of the four hours, silence fell and everybody turned to Rick’s father. His father was a serious man who surprised you sometimes with a practical joke or a belly laugh. But there had been no joking at that table for those four hours.

His father had leaned his forehead on his fingertips in deep thought. Then he’d raised his head and nodded and said, “You do what you have to do.” His father came with him to sign the papers, and the Saturday before Rick left, his family threw a big party. A lot of their friends were also customers. Farmers, furniture makers, factory workers. A couple of the old men had played saws with violin bows. Lots of laughing, a little crying.

And now Rick Hanski was going to whip the world. That’s what he thought to himself as he walked across the lush grass at Fort Benning. He’d always been self-confident. Working with your tools did that to you, made you see how you could shape things. He had to admit that so far he hadn’t been a resounding success in the army. He’d gotten written up during basic training for “lack of tact and diplomacy.” Apparently, some of the mucky-mucks thought he was too outspoken. Originally what had happened was that a sergeant had demanded a loan of ten dollars for a poker game.
Demanded
it. Rick had said politely, “I’m sorry. Don’t have it, Sarge.” The next time the sergeant saw him, he’d demanded ten dollars again, and that had just offended Rick’s sense of fairness. In the house in which he’d been raised, the world was a fair place. Maybe Rick had always been a bit of a firebrand—got that from his mother’s father. His mother said it wasn’t a bad temper, it was “righteous indignation.” Whatever it was, it didn’t get you far in the army. Then, in advanced infantry training, Rick had gotten into a couple of fistfights—more righteous indignation—that got him written up.

Rick had to admit that a couple of times he’d lain on his cot and wondered whether he’d made a mistake by signing up. He was proud of his sister, but maybe her brains were part of the problem. Rick didn’t like to admit that. He wasn’t jealous really. He was proud of her. He just smarted a little from it all. He still remembered something a math teacher had told him. This was way back in seventh grade, right as he was leaving class with a C minus on a test. His teacher had said, “You’re a generalist, Richard. Some people like your sister are born to be specialists. Others are born to be generalists, even if they apply themselves… which you don’t.” Actually, he’d studied hard for that test. Then his teacher had mussed his hair. “You’re a nice boy.” She was an old lady-must’ve been fifty-five at least, and he’d been self-confident even then. But something about the word “generalist” got to him and bothered him still.

At the time, that righteous indignation had risen in him, and he’d said coolly, “Can I go now, ma’am?”

Saving that boy’s life was the one resounding success of Rick’s life. And he wasn’t even sure what “apply yourself” meant. It sounded like gluing yourself to drywall or something.

Anyway, despite the bad write-ups in his file, his best friend’s older brother, who’d flown through Officer Candidate School the previous year and also happened to be good friends with the man in charge of dog-handler training, had put in a good word for Rick, and he was offered the chance to become a dog handler in Vietnam. There was a shortage of dog handlers and they were in demand. Becoming a dog handler meant extra training, and the more training you had, the longer it would take you to get to Nam for your yearlong tour in country. Originally, Rick had wanted to get in country as soon as possible, but he’d decided that while he still planned to whip the world, there was nothing wrong with delaying the timing. So Rick figured he would still whip the world, but with a dog at his side. Although his was one of the few families in the community without a dog, all his friends owned dogs, and Rick had always liked them fine.

He walked across the field toward the kennels. The humidity felt like a hand or somebody with a fever hovering very close to his face but not quite touching it. A lot of guys were complaining about the unusually hot weather today. But the way Rick figured it, if a little humidity could stop you from whipping the world, well, you might as well be a bookkeeper for a hardware store. He’d just been assigned the dog he would train with. The sarge had snickered when he assigned Rick to what was supposedly one of the biggest, and apparently meanest, dogs in the kennel. She’d tussled with or bitten several personnel already. Rick knew the sarge didn’t like him because of the aforementioned lack of tact and diplomacy recorded in his file. Sometimes Rick wondered whether he should have listened to his uncle in California—when his uncle had heard Rick wanted to join the army, he had offered to take Rick in and turn him into a master carpenter. But you weren’t going to save any lives by pounding nails.