Cracker! (2 page)

Willie took her face in his hands and said, “Bye, Cracker. You’re going to be the best dog in Vietnam!”

Then he ran out the front door with his books. When Willie hurried down the sidewalk in the mornings, Cracker liked to watch from the third-floor window in the boat room. She always felt the same sadness and slight sense of abandonment. Today she yelped at him as she watched his back. Instead of turning around, he started to run. She yelped more. Willie didn’t even stop to wave before turning the corner and going wherever he was going. He’d always waved before.

His mother petted her more than she ever had before. A lot of time passed before she said, “You’re a wonderful dog.” Cracker whined and felt the urge to lick her raw spot. Then his mother left for wherever it was that she went all day. After everybody had gone, Cracker always just lay around the apartment. Her biggest decisions were whether to sleep in the bedroom or the boat room (she wasn’t allowed in the living room) and whether to sneak a pee somewhere that Willie’s parents wouldn’t find it (she did this only once, but she thought about it a lot).

On this particular day Cracker decided (1) not to sneak a pee that morning and (2) to sleep in the bedroom. Willie would be gone for a while, so she made herself comfortable. For some reason, he always pulled the sheets and covers evenly over the bed before he left. It wasn’t comfortable that way. Before she lay down, Cracker pawed and pawed at the covers until they were perfectly scrunched up in the middle. She snuggled into the covers and fell asleep.

She lifted up her head when she heard Willie’s parents come home and a strange man talking with them. That was odd, but Cracker was only mildly interested. She was Willie’s, and Willie was hers, and nothing else much mattered.

She started getting more interested—a lot more interested—when Willie’s father walked into the bedroom carrying a leash and a leather contraption. This was not usual procedure; still, Cracker had learned to tolerate Willie’s parents, even listen to them. A couple of times Willie’s father had taken her to a place where a man poked and prodded her. So when the leather slipped over her nose, she didn’t growl at all, or even protest. The leather prevented her from opening her mouth wide enough to bite. She
could
have knocked Willie’s father right to the ground—and, actually, the thought did flash through her head—but she rejected that possibility pretty quickly. Even when he slipped a chain around her neck and pulled it tight, she figured he might be taking her to that place where she would be poked and prodded. Something felt wrong, but she basically trusted Willie’s father.

When they reached the living room, however, Cracker saw a stranger in a uniform, and she smelled something uneasy in the air. People smelled different, acted different, looked different, and just plain
were
different when they felt uneasy. Willie’s mother was crying. Willie’s father and the man in uniform looked at the ground. Cracker was stronger than Willie’s father as well as stronger than the new man. She was probably stronger, and definitely faster, than both of them put together. She didn’t like the way this new man smelled. She started to snarl. That always scared people. She tried to open her mouth and then snarled even louder.

Willie’s father responded by handing the leash to the man in uniform. He cooed, “Nice dog. Good girl, Cracker.” She snarled again and began to lunge at the man, who jerked hard on her chain. Cracker heard a very uncourageous squeal from her own throat. She tried to pull away, but the man jerked back even harder this time, and the same squeal involuntarily jumped from Cracker’s throat. The funny thing was that the man didn’t seem mean, just firm. He said, “Sit! No! Sit!” Finally, Cracker sat. The man looked at Willie’s parents and said, “She’ll do well in Vietnam.”

“Thanks for packing her up for us,” said Willie’s mother. “We just couldn’t bear to do it ourselves.”

Willie’s father said, “She’s smart as the dickens. Stubborn, though. She and Willie flunked out of obedience school twice—she needs a good handler to really teach her right. She’s strong, too. Feel her muscles.” Willie’s father reached down to squeeze one of her legs.

“I’ll take your word for it,” the man said. “Don’t worry. The army will take good care of her.”

Willie’s father said, “Good luck, Crack.”

The man laid a hand on the front doorknob. Cracker knew she shouldn’t have let Willie’s father put the chain and leather on her. She trusted Willie’s parents only because they were Willie’s parents, but she trusted Willie because, well, because he was Willie. He would help her as soon as he got home. The man took his hand off the doorknob and shook hands with Willie’s father. “Let your son know she’ll do fine.” Cracker could see he was planning to take her somewhere now. She growled and started to leap at him. The man jerked the chain upward, briefly hanging Cracker in the air. She felt her throat constrict, and for a moment everything went black.

W
ILLIE LOOKED UP AT THE THIRD-FLOOR WINDOW
where he always saw Cracker waiting for him. He gasped when he saw that Cracker wasn’t there. That might mean they’d already taken her. She had ESP, so she always knew when he was coming home, even when he was early. He started to trot. He’d probably get in trouble the next day for the way he’d jumped up from his desk and run from the classroom, but his parents could write a letter making up some excuse.

Willie called out to the closed window: “Cracker! Cra-a-a-acker!” She didn’t appear, and Willie broke into a sprint.

He ran up his apartment steps two at a time. When he burst inside, he was already calling out, “Cracker!” He stopped with just one foot inside the apartment. The other foot forgot to move.

There was Cracker, wearing a muzzle, and there were both his parents, and there was a man in uniform holding a leash that was attached to Cracker. Fury overcame Willie. “Let go of her!” he shouted.

His mother and father stared at him. Then his mother said, “You’re home,” as if his being home were the odd thing and not the man in uniform holding the leash that was attached to Cracker.

Willie looked accusingly at the man. “What are you doing?” Now his other foot remembered to move. He walked right up to the man and demanded, “Give me that leash.” He put both hands around the leash.

Cracker came to life, growling at the man.

Willie’s father grabbed hold of Willie’s wrists.

“Willie. Please.” He added, “You’re making it harder on the dog.”

Willie’s mother said, “Sweetheart,” and she reached out to pull him to her, but he shrugged her off. “Sweetheart, Cracker will be a war hero! Remember when we watched the news that night? The war dogs of Vietnam! You said it was neat!” She smiled, but Willie could see that her smile was phony.

“Mom, please!” Willie cried out.

Willie tried to grab the leash again while Cracker strained toward him. Willie’s father held him back and said, “Willie, you have to think about Cracker for a minute. Look how upset you’re making her.”

And, indeed, Willie saw the desperation in Cracker’s eyes. He had made her terrified. So he stepped back and whispered, “Bye, Cracker.”

The man pulled as Cracker struggled. “Heel!” the man said. The last thing Willie saw was a glimpse of her frightened brown eyes, and then the door closed. He ran to the window and stared as Cracker and the man left the building. Cracker looked up at him before the man tore off the leather contraption and loaded her into a crate in the back of a van. When the van drove off, Willie watched until he couldn’t see it anymore.

He didn’t cry at all. It was just … the whole world was completely different now. It didn’t matter if the Cubs won or lost, it didn’t matter if his father had a job or not, and it didn’t matter if he ever went back to school. The thought occurred to him that he should have cut off the hair at the tip of Cracker’s tail or her nails or something so he could always have a piece of her. It was crazy, but he felt like he would give anything in the world for one of her toenails.

C
RACKER HAD STARTED LIFE OUT AS A
B
IG
D
EAL.
She was born the daughter of Champion Felix Olympus von Braun, who a lot of people thought was one of the finest German shepherds ever bred. Olympus had won forty-seven Best of Show titles before his owners decided to retire him. Cracker’s mother, Champion Midnight Moon of Shreveport, won seventeen Best of Shows, even beating Olympus one time. Cracker’s name as a puppy was not Cracker, but Magnificent Dawn of Venus. Venus was expected to be a champion herself, for a lot of people thought she was the finest bitch in her litter. She was purchased for $1,500 by Willie’s uncle on Willie’s father’s side and lived a pampered but lonely life in a big kennel with a big dog run. She won Best Puppy in Match three times, even beating out her littermates.

But one day her left hind leg got caught on a piece of chain link in her day kennel, and the bone broke in two. After healing, she could still walk fine, but her leg bent in a certain way that made it impossible for her ever to be a great show dog. Willie’s uncle decided to give her to Willie as a birthday present.

She was six months old. Willie named her Firecracker, and when he got her home, she immediately proceeded to figure out how to open the refrigerator, eating every piece of meat in there until her stomach was so swollen, she couldn’t move. His parents had worried that she might need to go to the veterinarian and have the food surgically removed from her stomach. But Willie just hauled her onto his bed and let her spread out while he squished himself up against the wall.

When she woke up, he was sleeping with his arms around her. At first she growled, but then she realized she liked the feeling. Despite the attention that had been showered on her previously, she’d never quite felt loved in this way before. And so she began a life of being pampered in a different way. Willie worshipped her. Oh, he taught her a lot of stuff and made her behave sometimes, but she knew she had the upper hand. She was born to be a beloved queen and eat good snacks.

So why was she now trapped in a crate in the back of a van? Why were two other dogs who looked like her also trapped in crates in the back of the van? She howled. The howling reverberated in her ears and seemed to fill the whole world. The other dogs seemed scared, but they didn’t howl. Cracker concentrated on Willie as she howled. Maybe he didn’t understand the seriousness of the situation. Where was he? It was getting dark already. It was time for their walk.

She was so lost in her howling that she didn’t have the slightest idea how much time had elapsed by the time the truck stopped. The two men carried out the other dogs one at a time. She breathed deeply and howled even louder. As soon as the two men returned, she stopped howling and tensed her body.

“Beautiful animal,” said one of the men.

“If you like dogs,” said the other. He looked at her. “Dog, you’re going to Vietnam. They got dog diseases there I can’t even pronounce.” He turned to the other man. “She’ll be lucky to make it home in one piece.”

“Actually, they keep the dogs there until they die,” the other man said. “They never come home.”

“No kidding? My dad had a Doberman who served in World War II, and he came back. He was the family dog after the war.”

“They changed the policy with this war. The military considers the dogs equipment, and equipment is expendable.”

Cracker growled as they neared the crate. They picked it up. She threw herself against the side of the crate and felt gratified when one of the men almost lost his balance. But it didn’t stop the men from loading her into a big, dark room full of stifling air. She smelled more dogs and heard a couple of them howling. The room jerked, a whistle blew, and then the room jerked again and started moving. She couldn’t see anything except a dark wall. This all went on so long that she fell asleep, dreaming of biting the man who had taken her from Willie.

When she woke up, the train had stopped. A voice from a loudspeaker boomed, “Lackland Air Force Base, ladies and gentlemen.” But all she could see was the wall.

Two new men picked up her crate and took it to a place that was almost like the place Willie’s father had taken her a couple of times. A man put a new leather contraption around her snout so she couldn’t open her mouth, and then another man poked and prodded her. So maybe she was at a similar place as before, and Willie’s father might come get her before long. The man tried to grab her neck, but she whirled around and threw herself as hard as she could against him. She heard his head clunk and felt satisfied. Then another man came and grabbed the chain around her neck and held her down while the first man stuck her with a needle.

After that, the days were filled with odd activities. Men would make loud noises around her and study her reaction. A big, whirring mechanical thing someone called “chopper” landed nearby. Again men poked and prodded her. One man examined the leg she’d broken by pressing his fingers into it.

Then one day a woman came along and stuck her with yet another needle. The woman had kind eyes. “You passed all the tests, Cracker. We need to tattoo your ear, baby. Go to sleep, sweetheart. Sleepytimes.”

And that was the last thing Cracker remembered until she woke up in another big, dark, rumbling room, just like the previous big, dark, rumbling room. For some reason, her right ear hurt, as if it were scratched. That made her start up a new howl, and what she heard in reply surprised her: There must have been twenty other dogs, all howling or whimpering. They kept it up as long as they could, and then they all slept. She usually didn’t care for other dogs but she already felt a sense of kinship with these. What was happening to them? The room stopped again. She stayed still to concentrate on the commotion behind her, and then two new men were carrying her crate out of the room and to the back of a truck. She knew what a truck was. She’d ridden in trucks with Willie when they went camping a couple of times. The air outside was warm, humid, and fresh, and the pain in her ear had subsided a little. Another dog looked at her, which annoyed her, so she snarled and threw herself against the side of the cage. He whimpered.
Annoying coward!
She met eyes with yet another dog, one even bigger than her. He didn’t annoy her. They looked at each other, and she felt a mutual respect. She pushed her nose to the gate of her crate, and he did the same in his crate.