Cracker! (6 page)

Cracker sat patiently, and when Rick was finished, he could swear that dog was laughing at him.

C
RACKER LIKED TRAINING A LOT NOW.
S
HE 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 vanished 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.

Rick had heard that when you got to Vietnam, you lived for mail from home. Rick got regular mail from his family, of course. And about once every week Rick had been getting a letter from this Willie kid. Rick wrote to his parents about the training, trying to make it sound as fun as possible, and then told them that they’d be starting an important aspect of training soon. He asked about the family and so forth. Just the usual stuff, yet it felt good. It made you feel like you were still a part of the real world. He didn’t write the kid back, though. He only had so much free time. He tried once, but he didn’t want the boy to think that he might get Cracker back someday: He wouldn’t.

That night after he dropped off his mail, he ate with his buddies in the mess hall, chowing down some pretty decent hamburgers. They weren’t like Mom made, but they weren’t half bad.

“So does U-Haul have it out for me or what?” Rick said.

Cody laughed, sharing his mouth full of food with the table.

“Aw, man,” Rick said. “Close your mouth!” That could get you banned for life at
his
house.

Twenty-Twenty said, “For all intensive purposes, many teachers I’ve had in life seemed to like some students more than others and some students less than others. But sometimes-and again, for all intensive purposes-the students they seemed to like less were occasionally their favorites underneath it all. It happened once in a herpetology course I took.”

“Herpetology?” Rick said. “That sounds like some kind of disease.”

“It’s the study of reptiles and amphibians.”

“Studying that crud oughta be illegal,” Rick said. “You gonna finish those fries?”

“I already got dibs,” said Cody.

“Since when?”

“I asked him yesterday, because I heard we were having burgers today.” Cody grinned. A line of ketchup squiggled down the front of his shirt.

Twenty-Twenty, who was meticulous about his person, said, “You got ketchup all over your outfit!”

“Outfit!” Cody and Rick cried out in unison. “Did you say
outfit?
”

Cody added, “My
sister
wears outfits.”

A guy from another table yelled out, “It’s ‘uniform,’ or ‘fatigues,’ or somethin’, but one thing I know is, I ain’t wearing no
outfit.
” They all howled while Twenty-Twenty wore his usual serious expression.

When they finished eating, it was still warm out. Sometimes after dinner Rick, Twenty-Twenty, and Cody caught a jeep toward the kennels. For the return trip they caught a delivery truck.

Today Rick, Cody, and Twenty-Twenty decided to catch a late jeep. The sky was growing dim, and the sun slanted into Rick’s eyes. “Hey, your mom still want to get that beeshon freeze?” Rick said.

Twenty-Twenty said, “It’s pronounced bichon frise. It costs three hundred dollars. Where is my dad going to get three hundred dollars? But she says it looks like a cloud.”

Rick laughed. “Three hundred dollars for a cloud?”

Cracker, Bruno, and Tristie sat patiently at their individual kennel gates, but when they saw their guys, the impatience turned to near hysteria. As soon as the gates opened, Cracker and Tristie tore across a field, Tristie nipping at Cracker’s back legs. Finally, they circled back to see their guys. Bruno just watched in his stately manner.

Rick, Cody, and Twenty-Twenty sauntered across a field with the dogs. Tonight for some reason, grasshoppers or something were jumping all over the place. Rick swatted one away while the dogs-even Bruno-went after them.

Cracker jumped up and grabbed one in her mouth.
Yuck.
She let it drop out. Then she went to sit next to Rick, resting her head on one of his legs.

“I heard they eat grasshoppers in Vietnam,” Cody said. “Ever try it?”

Rick and Twenty-Twenty looked at each other. “Ever try
what?
” Rick finally said.

“Eating a grasshopper,” Cody said, as if it were obvious.

Twenty-Twenty flapped his hands with exasperation. “Just because they eat them in Vietnam,
if
they eat them in Vietnam, doesn’t mean you have to try it. That’s why we live in America, so we don’t have to eat crap like that.”

Cody shrugged. “That’s not why I live in America. I was born here.”

Rick laughed. “I don’t know if they eat grasshoppers or not, but I do know that I ain’t trying one.” He lay back on his elbows and lit a cigarette. Twenty-Twenty and Cody were great friends, but they fought like an old married couple. He flashed on a memory of his maternal grandfather shortly before he died. They used to keep chickens in the barn for dinner. You killed them by grabbing their heads and shaking them in a circle. One night when his grandpa was getting really old, he went out to get the night’s chicken. When he took a long time. Rick’s mother sent Rick out to check on him. And there was Grandpa, shaking the chicken in a circle by his feet while Grandma screamed at him. Rick, who was only seven, tried to calm everybody down. Grandpa and Grandma bickered and screamed a lot at the end. The poor chicken was the only calm thing in the barn.

Twenty-Twenty couldn’t stop. “I mean, the reason America is America is not that we don’t eat grasshoppers.”

“You’re so literal, man,” Cody said innocently.

“Literal? It’s human language, it’s words, you have to say what you mean. That’s what words are for!”

Rick laughed again. “I’m glad I’m not either of you, ’cause you’re both nuts.” He watched the dogs leap through the air for the grasshoppers. The dogs looked like grasshoppers themselves. He never realized what springy legs dogs had. That is, he’d realized it, but he’d never looked at dogs as closely before as he did every day now. In the backyard of somebody’s house they didn’t seem like anything but friendly, furry things, but out in nature they were pretty darn impressive. The delivery truck honked, and Rick jumped up. “Cracker. Come!” He and his friends put the dogs away and hopped on the truck.

Monday morning was hot as a summer day. But U-Haul seemed to think the weather was some kind of gift from the heavens. “Perfect training weather for Vietnam, men!” The platoon was trucked over to the kennels slightly later than usual, so most of the dogs were already sitting at the front gate waiting. Rick looked down the row of men and dogs and saw the faces of both light up as they saw each other. Many of the dogs jumped up and down. Cracker barked a couple of times as if to reprimand Rick for being a few minutes late.

“Sorry,” Rick told her.

She pawed the gate. She forgave him.

A
S
R
ICK HEADED FOR FORMATION, ADRENALINE
pumped through him. He, Twenty-Twenty, and Cody were now in an unspoken race to be the best in the class. Like last week, when Cracker had not only sniffed out the booby trap she was supposed to, but the sergeant had let her go for an entire hour, finding trap after trap and a couple of hidden men. She even sniffed out a man hiding underwater. She was a thing of wonder, and so far she was the only dog to sniff out a man underwater. Rick figured all he’d get for his troubles would be a stripe for a promotion, a minuscule pay raise, and a cheap trophy. But fair was fair: They were becoming the best dog team, and he knew it. Cody and Twenty-Twenty probably thought they were the best teams, and while Rick had to admit Bruno and Tristie were pretty good, well, he just thought Cracker was better. It was nothing personal against the other dogs.

But there was another reason Rick wanted to be best: He planned to come home without getting hurt. Rick had read the training manual twice, and he’d never read a book twice in his life. He planned to read the manual one more time before training ended. He wanted everything to be second nature by the time he got to Vietnam. That way, he had a better chance of DEROSing in one piece. DEROS meant “date of expected return from overseas.”

Another guy passed with his dog, and Rick kind of looked away. The guy knew he’d pulled a bad dog, a scrawny mutt with the ridiculous moniker of Adonis. Adonis just didn’t seem to have the knack. He hit booby traps with such regularity that the guys called him “No Nose.” Rick had to admit that he now felt secretly thankful to U-Haul for assigning him to Cracker.

Rick slowed down when he heard Cody call out behind him. “Rick, you think they’re feeding the dogs enough?” Cody said. “Bruno’s always hungry.”

“I dunno,” Rick said. He lowered his voice. “I give Cracker treats every so often.”

Cody lowered his voice. “Sometimes I give Bruno an extra meal.”

Cracker suddenly lunged at something. Rick pulled hard on her leash. “No!”

Twenty-Twenty leaned over. “It’s a snake.” He leaned closer. “It’s an Eastern hognose!”