Cracker!

by Kadohata, Cynthia

  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.

  Rick stopped in front of a cage reading CRACKER. She was big, but she looked docile enough, lying on the concrete with her front paws delicately crossed. Rick didn’t feel a lick of fear.

  Her kennel was next to Tristie’s—one of the two dogs everybody somehow knew were already excellently trained. Rick knew that Tristie had been assigned a handler nicknamed “Twenty-Twenty.” He actually had 20/40 vision, but he had this weird habit of always doing eye exercises, rolling his eyes around or moving them left and right as far as he could. Then he would lie on the ground with his palms covering his eyes. Some of the guys thought he was nuts, especially since he was black and didn’t talk or act the way some people seemed to think black people should. But Rick thought he was okay. He stopped to pat Tristie. Tristie was unnaturally skinny-you could see her ribs sticking out-but very energetic and smart. She must have weighed less than half of what Cracker weighed, but Rick would have liked pulling her.

  He didn’t open Cracker’s cage just yet. He looked at the rows of German shepherds and shepherd mixes. Apparently, Fort Benning, Georgia, housed hundreds of potential scout dogs. This row housed the dogs who would be traveling to Vietnam with his platoon. All these dogs at Benning, and he’d pulled one with an attitude. Rick wondered where the other dogs were housed. He’d heard Fort Benning was almost as big as New York City’s five boroughs, but Rick had no idea what shape it was. As a matter of fact, he didn’t even know what a “borough” was. Fort Benning was the center of army training. Among other things, it housed Officer Candidate School, jump—or parachute—school, basic training, and Special Forces. Rick just leaned on the cage, thinking idly about jump school.

  Cracker didn’t even move her eyes as the man laid a palm on her gate, but she growled, still without looking at him.

  “Cracker!” he said. “Hey, girl! Cracker!” Cracker listened to him but didn’t move her head. Finally, she moved just her eyes in his direction. He reached a forefinger in and wiggled it. Obviously an idiot. She didn’t bother to raise her head. He started to open the gate while she lay still but tensed slightly. Then he cracked the gate open a touch, and she lunged.

  He slammed the gate shut as her body hit the wire. Though he stood safely outside the gate, he took a step back. That seemed to satisfy her a bit, but she didn’t move from the gate. Wow. What was her problem? Rick had never seen a dog move so fast. He noticed that some guys had gathered at the end of the kennels watching him. He hoped he looked convincingly nonchalant.

  All right. So. Maybe this would be a little tougher than he’d thought, but she was just a dog, right? And he was a human. He was superior, right?

  He reached into his pocket and took out his secret weapon: a wiener.

  “Wiener?” he said in a low voice. According to the manual, the men weren’t supposed to give the dogs treats. First of all, the dogs needed to stay lean and muscular for the hard work they’d be doing in Vietnam. Second of all, the dogs were supposed to follow their handlers’ directions out of love for the person, not out of love for treats. But this was a special situation.

  He saw Cracker eyeing the wiener. “Wiener?” he said again.

  Cracker paused. She knew that word: “wiener.” Willie had used that word. She hadn’t seen Willie for a long time. But she remembered him, the way he smelled, the way he breathed, the way his arms felt wrapped around her. She also remembered wieners. Wieners smelled good. Very good. She stopped growling but didn’t relax her body.

  “Wiener for Cracker?”

  Everybody in the world seemed to know her name, even this man with a wiener. He opened the gate very slowly and broke off a piece of wiener. Cracker growled. What did this man want? He threw her the piece of wiener. She let it fall to the ground before sniffing it suspiciously, keeping her eyes on the man the whole time. Then she snapped up the meat and hopped backward. The man didn’t move. Mmmmm. Good wiener. Not that she’d ever tasted a bad one.

  “Wiene
r?” said the man. “Another wiener for Cracker?”

  Mmmm. Wiener for Cracker. He pushed the gate open farther. She moved back rather than lunging. But she stayed poised for lunging. She didn’t growl, however. The man opened his hand, and inside was another small piece of wiener. She stood still but wouldn’t move toward him.

  He sat down in the doorway. “Okay, have it your way.” He laid the wiener bit on the ground before him. She just sat and looked at him, not at the wiener. He laid another piece of wiener down.

  She lunged suddenly, causing him to scramble up, but she wasn’t lunging for him. She snapped up the two wiener bits. Then she stood growling, her whole body tense, in case she needed to rip his face off.

  Rick’s heart was pounding. She was like a cat. He considered himself pretty quick, yet she’d caught him by surprise. Still, he knew she could have bitten him if she’d wanted. So he must have made some progress.

  He held out his open palms to her. She sniffed his hands. She sat. Sitting was the universal language for, I’ll take another wiener.

  She stiffened as he moved his fingers under her chin. What was the point of that? Then he moved his hand up and scratched behind her ear.

  “Good girl.” He patted his own head. “Rick.”

  Good girl. Hmmmm. He scratched her other ear. Cracker liked “good girl.” When Willie said it, it was even better than “wiener,” though not by much. She missed “good girl.” Thinking of Willie made her whine.

  The man’s hands were firmer and bigger than Wilie’s, and his smell was stronger, sweatier. But he smelled okay. He rubbed her head in a new way that she liked, pressing all his fingers at once onto her skull. He did this for quite a while before he said, “Good girl!” and left.

  Rick stepped outside, mentally patting himself on the back. He was still going to whip the world, no doubt about it.

  Another man—a tall, friendly guy named Cody Willis—leaned toward Cracker’s kennel and said, “Good girl.”

  “Hey, you’re not supposed to do that,” Rick said.

  “Do what?”

  “Once you get a dog, you’re only supposed to praise your own dog. Nobody can praise anybody else’s dog. It’s in the manual.” The dogs were supposed to bond with one man and one man only. On the other hand, the manual also said that if a dog’s handler got wounded, sometimes the dogs felt so protective of their handler that they wouldn’t let the medic near enough to help. In that case, someone was supposed to shoot the dog. So it was good for the dog to at least be able to tolerate someone else besides the handler.

  Cody shrugged good-naturedly. “Okay, man.” He gestured toward a huge, calm dog. “I pulled Bruno.”

  That feeling passed through Rick, that feeling of smarting that he got every so often when people talked about what a genius his sister was. Not envy, though, just a stinging sensation. Everybody knew that Bruno was a smart, strong dog, and friendly, too. Some of the guys had taken him out and found he was perfectly trained already. He was older than the others-four and a half years old—but apparently such a good dog that the army had kept him. In fact, Bruno had almost been stationed at Lackland because one of the captains had taken a shine to him. But the captain had gotten appendicitis and Bruno ended up here after all, to get assigned to some teacher’s pet like Cody.

  Rick leaned in toward Cracker. “Remember. Rick.” He started walking away, but the Hanski good manners kicked in, and he turned and said to Cody, “Bruno’s a great dog. Congratulations.” Then he left.

  Cracker sat at the gate as the man walked away. She liked “good girl.” And the man was okay. But he’d forgotten to give her the rest of the wiener. Tristie came to the fence and sniffed at her.

  That night as the moon rose over the trees in the distance, Cracker actually lifted her head every so often when she heard an unusual sound. And a couple of times she sniffed the air with interest. She hadn’t felt interested in smells or sounds for a long time. They seemed a little more intriguing tonight, but she still felt a hurt inside of herself that wouldn’t go away. A huge bird sailed across the sky, and she barked at it. A number of other dogs also barked. Wow. Cracker had forgotten how good it felt to bark at a bird like that. She stretched her muscles and looked around, then paced back and forth a few times before settling down for bed.

  She slept intermittently through the night, occasionally hearing what sounded like firecrackers in the distance. She knew what firecrackers were, because Willie had taken her to a park a few times to watch the exploding lights in the sky. She’d heard firecracker noises many times since she’d been in this cage, but tonight, for some reason, she raised her ears and sniffed the air.

  In the morning, the man with strong hands showed up again, this time with dog food. She could smell him coming before she could see him. When he arrived, he opened the gate and set down the food. She paused for just a moment. What, no wiener? It didn’t appear, so she ate the food. Not bad.

  “I’m Rick,” said the man. He scratched her and said “good girl” a few times. He looked at the inside of her ear and said, “Seventy-two-A-O. That’s your number. I got a number too, on my dog tag. I don’t need a tattoo in my ear like you.” He’d heard that a lot of good handlers talked to their dogs kind of like they were people. It felt a little peculiar, but she seemed to like it.

  “Woof!” she said. She sent the thought at him: Give me a wiener. She sat, and there it was in his hand, a piece of wiener. She gobbled it up.

  He lowered his voice. “We’re not supposed to give you treats. Don’t tell anyone. Good girl. Come!”

  Then he pulled the chain around her throat, choking her a bit. She growled and tensed: She might need to rip his face off after all. She saw other men pulling their dogs. One dog dragged all four of his paws on the ground as the man holding his leash kept saying, “Heel! No! Heel!” Cracker tried to tug in the opposite direction, but Rick jerked the chain firmly.

  “No!” he said.

  She knew “no,” but she’d never heard it said quite so firmly before. Willie’s father said it angrily sometimes, and Willie said it lovingly, like he didn’t mean it. Rick said it firmly, and he meant it.

  Rick walked her along with the other dogs, but she didn’t heel—she either lagged or pulled. A slight drizzle fell on them. Rick saw Cody jerk expertly on Bruno’s leash and say, “Heel!” Bruno heeled perfectly at Cody’s left side. Rick said, “Heel!” and Cracker sat down instead. Rick said to Cody, “I don’t think this dog is gonna learn so easy.”

  Cody turned to Rick and said, “Want me to give it a try?”

  “Okay, but it won’t make a difference.” Rick knew dogs. Even if he’d never had one, he’d been around them all his life.

  Cody handed Bruno’s leash to Rick. Bruno sat patiently. What a dog! Rick felt the sting again. Then he watched Cody slap his left leg, step out with his left leg, and snap, “Heel!” to Cracker. Cracker heeled perfectly, even when Cody went in circles or trotted. They trotted back, and Cody and Rick traded leashes. “She’s already trained,” Cody said. “And very well.”

  Rick looked at Cracker and mumbled, “Okay, no more games.” Rick imitated Cody, but Cracker started to drag her legs like the other dog had. So he had no choice but to drag her to formation like a fool.

  Cody walked beside them with Bruno, the Mr. Universe of dogs. Cody half grinned the whole time. He was six feet four—a full half foot taller than Rick—but weighed only about three pounds more. He liked to say he was the skinniest man in Minnesota. Cody’s eyes were the blue of a lighter flame, his expression gullible. He had a slight overbite. He was the most cheerful man Rick had ever met. He smiled about everything, especially eating. Rick was a happy enough guy, but he certainly wasn’t cheerful. Cheerful was, well, not really in keeping with the Hanski idea of manhood. Certainly Rick believed that the cup was always half full, but this guy seemed to think it was overflowing.

  “You never had a dog?” Cody said now.

  “A bunch of my friends did,” Rick
said defensively. But he added, “You?”

  “Got a collie now. Looks just like Lassie. Had dogs all my life.”

  All the dogs lined up with the platoon, which was broken up into three squads of eight men each. The sergeant stood in front and announced, “The first part of this course consists of basic dog training: sit, stay, heel, down, and come.” U-Haul met every cliché of a sergeant. He was big, mean, loud, and insulting. He acted a lot the way the sergeant during basic training had. Rick wondered if they’d all watched a training film on how to act like a big, mean, loud, insulting sergeant.

  In the advanced infantry training Rick had gone through just before dog training, the sarge didn’t insult them much. Counting basic, AIT, and now dog training, Rick figured he might end up spending as much time training as fighting.

  “Are-you-listening-soldier?!” U-Haul was staring straight at him.

  Rick said, “Yes, sir!” That had slipped out. He knew exactly what U-Haul would answer.

  U-Haul put his face a few inches from Rick’s. “I work for a living. Don’t ever call me ‘sir’ again.”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  U-Haul stomped down the row. “You are the boss, men!” he shouted. “Do not take anything from your dog. You are in control. Your dog is eager to please you, for that is a dog’s mission in life. Don’t ever give your dog treats.” Rick’s eyes flicked down toward Cracker, as though she might give him away. “Your dog works for love of man, not for love of food.” He looked right at Rick, as if he knew Rick had given Cracker wieners. Rick didn’t change expressions, and the sarge continued. “The basis of all our training is obedience and the bond between man and dog. At the end of training the best handlers will receive trophies.”

  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.