Cracker!: The Best Dog in Vietnam

  Then he spotted his parents and grandparents waiting for him at the gate. His feeling of joy was accompanied by a feeling of isolation. He knew they wouldn’t understand him anymore. He felt as if the world were divided between those who had been to Nam and those who hadn’t.

  “Rick!”

  Rick rushed over. “Mom. Dad. Hey, Grandpa, Grandma.” Everybody hugged him.

  “I brought you extra clothes,” said his mother. “I thought you might not have any.”

  The soldiers who weren’t being met by anyone looked around tentatively. “Baby killer!” a woman called out. Somebody was talking to Rick. Several people glared his way.

  “You talking to me?” he snapped back.

  “Let’s get you changed,” his father said. “It’s not worth fighting over. You’d have to fight half the country.”

  Rick changed in the bathroom. When he emerged, nobody glared at him anymore. A part of him wanted to put his uniform back on. He wasn’t scared to fight half the country. But instead, he quietly followed his dad. When they got in the car, he immediately asked, “So, do you know if they heard anything about my dog?”

  His father looked straight into his eyes. “Sorry, son” was all he said. And Rick could tell he really was.

  And then he was home. Pancakes, lace on windows. He tried to feel happy to be here, but the thing that had been in his chest was in his stomach now. What used to seem like the real world now seemed like a fake. He wrote more letters but without the same fervor. He even wrote to the principal at his old high school. You never knew who might help.

  He heard nothing for a few weeks. Many nights he sat alone on a lawn chair out back, staring at the streetlamps rising from the next street. His parents kept reminding him that he needed to start training to take over the store someday.

  The family home had a great backyard. Trees everywhere. As a kid, he’d loved the sound of the branches tapping the windows. But lately he would lie lonely in bed, listening to the branches hit his window during an occasional breeze and feeling annoyed by the sound. So his math teacher had been wrong all along. This was what applying yourself all came down to: silence, then wind and the tapping of branches. Even he had to smile at that. Pretty poetic, if he did say so himself.

  One night at dinner his dad said, “So, what about a job? You going to spend the rest of your life writing letters about a dead dog?”

  Rick could have answered a lot of things, but he didn’t answer at all. Then he said, “I talked to my buddy John about a job at his security firm.” He paused. “I’m gonna get my own place.”

  His mother looked aghast, but he knew he couldn’t stay here. He’d been to Vietnam. He didn’t belong in a house with lace curtains.

  Over the past weeks Rick had imagined he’d heard the phone ring so many times that it took him a moment to realize that it really was ringing now. At first nobody moved. Then Rick pushed up off his chair and ran to the kitchen phone. “Hello?”

  Thirty

  RICK COULD HARDLY HEAR THE VOICE ON THE OTHER end of the line. “Who? What?” He could tell that the caller was shouting, but he still couldn’t quite make out what he was saying. But it sounded like—could it be?—Cody. The static suddenly cleared.

  “… I said, it’s Cody!”

  “Cody! Are you back?”

  “I’m DEROSing next week. Did you hear what I said?”

  “You’re DEROSing next week. Hey, congratulations.”

  “No, what I said before that. They found her. They found Cracker alive. She’s shipping home!”

  “What?!”

  “They’re shipping about two hundred of the dogs back. Cracker’s shipping into O’Hare. You got a pen? Let me give you the flight number. There’s another guy waiting for the phone. Hello?”

  Rick was already running to the drawer where they kept the pens, on the other side of the room. He shouted to his family staring at him from the table. “They got her! She’s shipping back! Cracker’s coming home!” Damn, what if Cody hung up? He ran back and snatched up the phone.

  “Cody?”

  “Yeah, you ready?”

  “Yeah.” His hands quivered as Cody spoke. Damn, damn, damn! The pen didn’t work. He threw it down. “Hold on.” He ran back to the drawer and pulled out a handful of pens. “Go.”

  Cody gave him the flight information. Rick’s heart pounded as hard as it had when he’d been under contact. His handwriting looked like he had some kind of shaking disease. He asked Cody to repeat the information, just to make sure he had it down correctly.

  As Cody told him the details again, Rick noticed something funny in Cody’s voice. His own happiness faded slightly. “Did Bruno make it?”

  “Nah,” Cody said, so softly Rick almost didn’t hear. “The dogs who weren’t put to sleep were given to the South Vietnamese Army. Some other dogs got put down, but I begged for Bruno’s life. Now I think she would have been better off put to sleep. The ARVN probably …” He didn’t finish, but Rick knew what he was thinking: They probably ate or killed Bruno. Rick could hear the huge effort in Cody’s voice as he struggled to say, “Nobody knows what happened to them after we gave them away.” Another pause. “I played with him all day.” He choked up. “We played on the obstacle course. Cracker was there. I didn’t call you sooner because I didn’t know if she was going to make it … so many of them went down.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Rick. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Hey, I’m happy for you.” But Rick got the feeling that Cody would never be the same kind of happy that he’d been a year ago.

  “I gotta go,” Cody said. “See you back in the world.”

  “Definitely,” Rick said.

  The phone clicked dead.

  Rick took in a breath.

  That night Rick listened to the scraping branches. They sounded different from yesterday. Less lonely. He sat up, looked at his clock. Ten thirty p.m. So what? He went through his drawer of letters, found one from Willie with his phone number in it. Rick’s own parents had been in bed for half an hour.

  He dialed a number, and a man answered, sounding annoyed. “Hello?”

  Thirty-one

  A WEEK LATER RICK WAS STANDING IN HIS uniform in the airport in Chicago, waiting for a crate to be unloaded in the baggage area. Who knew why it took a whole week to process Cracker? He was probably lucky it had taken such a short time, actually. They probably could have quarantined her for half a year if they’d wanted. But apparently, Twenty’s uncle had a lot of pull.

  For some reason, Rick felt he owed it to Cracker to wear his uniform. Probably a dinky dau idea, but so far there’d been just a few glares. A couple of other guys in uniform were also waiting for their baggage one carousel down. He nodded at them, and they nodded back.

  A moment later he saw one of them in a scuffle with a civilian. He limped over to help, but some other people had already broken up the fight.

  As he returned to his carousel, he spotted a boy, a woman, and a man running toward two guys who were setting down a dog crate. He hurried toward them and heard the boy shouting with despair.

  “No! Oh no!” the boy called out as he stared into the crate. Rick reached the crate and knelt down.

  “Something’s wrong with her!” cried the boy.

  Rick peered inside: It was her! For a second his blood seemed to stop flowing. She lay on her side, not visibly breathing. But then he saw her ribs expand. She was just tranquilized, probably a little overtranquilized. He yanked open the gate.

  Cracker’s head hurt, and she felt sleepy. It seemed she’d been sleeping for a long, long time. She’d dreamed about the jungle, about Rick, about lizards, about rats. But now she smelled something … something important … very important. Wiener! She opened her eyes and staggered out of the cage, falling into Rick’s arms.

  She weakly pushed her head into his. Felt nice. Felt wonderful.

  Twenty-Twenty, Camel, everybody had come through for Rick. Apparently, his father had even made some
calls. Even that crazy fart U-Haul had made some calls—Rick had heard that from Twenty. As far as he knew, he was the only dog handler in the entire U.S. Army who had gotten his dog back. Fewer than two hundred dogs had escaped death, and all but Cracker were going to remain in the service until they died of old age.

  His first words to Cracker were, “Want a wiener, nuthead?”

  She wagged her tail, and he handed her a whole wiener at once. Gulp! One less wiener in the world!

  Then Rick remembered the boy beside him. It had to be Willie.

  He stood up and shook hands with Willie. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Thanks for calling me!”

  Cracker wobbled confusedly for a moment as Willie knelt down to hold her. Wait a second … she belonged to Rick now. She wanted Rick.

  “You think you can carry the crate to my car?” Rick asked. “I’ll carry Cracker.”

  “Sure!”

  Rick looked at Cracker. She’d lost a lot of weight, but she still had to weigh about ninety. Could he carry that much? He was pretty much rehabbed, but once in a while when he put too much weight on his leg, pain stabbed through it. He thought of Camel and told himself, I will do it. He would carry her, even with his weak leg. He took in a breath, lifted Cracker, and winced as the weight fell on his bad leg. “Ahhh,” he moaned.

  “You want me to help?” Willie asked.

  “No, I’m cool.”

  As he walked, he tried—unsuccessfully, he knew—to keep from limping, to keep up that tough veneer. But as he carried her, he knew he didn’t look tough, and he knew people were staring, and he knew he didn’t give a can of beans what they thought. Man, she was still heavy.

  Willie walked alongside him, his dad helping him tote the dog crate. “Will you let me come visit you sometimes?” the boy asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Was she the best dog in Vietnam? She was, wasn’t she?”

  “Yup.”

  “Was she brave? She was, wasn’t she?”

  “Yup.”

  “Your letter said she saved a lot of lives?”

  “Yup.” Rick paused, looked right at Willie. “She saved mine, too.”

  Willie’s eyes grew wide. “For real?”

  Rick grinned. “Yup.”

  “Rick?” Willie’s face was serious.

  “Yeah?”

  “I understand.”

  “Understand what?” They both stopped.

  “How she’s your dog now. I understand. But thank you for letting me see her.”

  Rick didn’t know what to say to that. Then he said, “You did good. Don’t ever forget that.”

  In the parking lot Willie and his father set down the crate and Rick set down Cracker.

  Willie’s parents shook hands with Rick. “Thank you for calling us. It meant so much to Willie,” said Willie’s mother. “We thought he’d get over it, but he didn’t, and we—well, we just want to thank you for calling us. Willie’s been so emotional throughout all this.”

  “Mom, you’re acting like I’m a baby,” Willie said.

  “I’m just trying to explain.”

  Willie looked at Rick and rolled his eyes.

  Rick patted Willie’s shoulder and said, “Thanks for helping with the crate. I gotta get her home now, but we’ll be seeing each other. You come up and visit.”

  “I sure will!”

  They looked at each other. Rick saw something in the boy’s eyes. He studied Willie a moment before realizing the kid wanted to cry. He reached into his pocket. “Hey, look, want my dogtags?”

  “Sure!” Willie eagerly took the tags. Then he knelt down before Cracker and hugged her close, the way he had the last time he’d seen her. And he felt the hug way down inside himself. He whispered in her ear, “You’ll always be my dog. I made you the best dog in Vietnam.”

  Cracker got up and shook herself off. Her head was clearing. Instead of feeling happy, she felt sad. She thought that now she was going back to Willie.

  She put her tail between her legs. Rick laughed. “Guess she’s being kind of shy.”

  Then, instead of crying, Willie stood up and shook Rick’s hand like a man would. And Rick said the same thing that Willie had just whispered: “You made her the best dog in Vietnam.”

  Despite Willie’s promise to himself that he wasn’t going to cry, a few teardrops trickled down his cheeks as he watched Rick throw the crate into his backseat. Then the Stetson family slowly walked off, waving back all the while.

  Cracker felt relief as Rick signaled to her to hop into the front of his car. She was still his dog after all.

  Then Rick climbed into his old, beat-up Chevy Malibu—all he could afford at the moment. He turned the ignition, heard it click, and sighed. He took out the hammer he kept in the glove compartment and got out of the car. He popped the hood, gave the solenoid a couple of taps, and got back in. The car started.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll get a better car soon,” he told Cracker.

  He’d already found his own apartment, and his friend had helped him get that job at a security firm. It wasn’t going to be a perfect life for a big dog, but it was the best he could do for now. He’d take Cracker out for walks, and they could go camping on the weekends. There was room for growth at the firm, especially since the boss was thinking about opening a guard dog department. Or maybe Rick would eventually take up his uncle’s offer and move to Los Angeles to learn carpentering.

  Cracker climbed into his lap as he backed up. He was the luckiest handler in America. Rick peered around Cracker to drive. “Down, girl,” he said, and she lay on his thighs.

  Rick drove down the expressway in Chicago. Some war protestors were holding up signs along the way. But Rick didn’t resent it, didn’t even care anymore. He’d killed men, seen men and dogs die, seen courage, and felt it too. He’d smelled the metallic blood-scent in the air, and he had come back whole.

  Had he survived all that to be angry?

  Cracker lay with satisfaction in his lap. She smelled another wiener in his pocket, but she didn’t paw him yet. She knew he would give it to her soon. She knew somehow that there was plenty of time for more wieners. Plenty of time!

  Author’s Note

  DOGS HAVE SERVED THE UNITED STATES IN A NUMBER OF conflicts, including World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and the Iraq War.

  During the Vietnam War, dogs were considered military equipment; at the war’s end they were considered surplus military equipment. Although precise records were not kept, most historians agree that at least 4,000 dogs served during the war, and are credited with saving some 10,000 human lives. About 1,000 dogs died in country from combat, jungle diseases, or other reasons. At war’s end, only approximately 200 dogs were reassigned to other U.S. military bases. The remaining dogs were either euthanized or given to the South Vietnamese Army. The fate of those dogs remains unknown.

  After the Vietnam War, military policy was changed to allow war dogs to come home. Today the policy is known as No Military Working Dog Left Behind. Further information can be obtained at the Vietnam Dog Handlers Association’s website:www.vdhaonline.org

  To meet the demands of my story, I have made some changes from historical fact. There was no 67th IPSD. Most notable is that I have changed the timeline so a few things that really happened early in the war—such as an entire platoon shipping out battle ready—happen later in the war in my book. Though this book is based on fact, it is a work of fiction, and should be viewed as such.

  Acknowledgments

  I’D LIKE TO THANK THE FOLLOWING VIETNAM DOG handlers who submitted to interviews for this book: Rick Claggett, Bob Himrod, Mike Lister, Bud Rhea, and Ollie Whetstone. Most of them in their generosity allowed me to interview them more than once. Thanks as well to the late Robert Russell, who served as a veterinary technician. In particular, Fd like to thank Rick, who I badgered relentlessly both on the phone and via e-mail and who was absolutely magnanimous.

  I’d also like to thank thos
e dog handlers who read the manuscript for errors: Rick Claggett, Bob Himrod, Mike Lister, and J. Thomas Sykes. Tom also answered many questions at length via e-mail. Thanks also to writer Mike Lemish for reading the manuscript and providing comments.

  I’m greatly appreciative of Special Forces Soldier Eulis Presley, who was generous, patient, and brimming with information and insight during our multiple interviews, some of which lasted hours. Special Forces Soldier John Blackadar as well provided great insights during our interview. I’d also like to express my appreciation to them both for taking the time to read the Special Forces section, in Eulis’s case twice.

  Patricia L. Walsh, who served as a nurse in country, allowed me to interview her repeatedly. She also read the section that takes place in the hospital twice, as well as other sections for context. I was struck by the bigness of her heart during our discussions.

  Dr. Clarence Sasaki, who served in a hospital in Vietnam during the war, took time out from his busy schedule for an interview. Dr. Sasaki is the Charles W. Ohse Professor of Surgery and the Chief of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the Yale School of Medicine.

  And thanks to Betty Rowe for her interview about giving up her dog to serve in Vietnam.

  Thanks also to Dan Schilling for our conversation about his return from Vietnam.

  Finally, cám ón to the eagle eyes of Jeannie Ng and Cindy Nixon, who have saved me from disgrace once again. And thanks to Amy Lerner for helping me finish the manuscript, and my niece, Caroline, for her enthusiastic input.