Free Cracker! by Cynthia Kadohata Page A

lie low.”
    “Yeah,” Rick said softly. “Thanks.”
    Rick took out the P-38 can opener he’d attached to his dog-tag chain to open C rations. Cody was saying to someone, “I’ll trade you four ciggies for your fruit salad.” Cody was the only man in the squad who didn’t smoke.
    Rick opened Cracker’s food first. He dumped it into his steel pot the way Sarge had told them to do. She gobbled the food, and then he poured in water from one of her canteens. Cracker waited for more food.
    Rick said, “No, girl. We travel light in the field. One meal a day.” She whimpered but lapped up some water before laying her head down, eyes turned sadly toward Rick. Aw, for crying out loud.
    “Hey, Sarge?” Rick wheedled. “Cracker’s twice as big as some of the dogs. Shouldn’t she get more food?”
    “One can per dog in the field,” the sergeant said. “How many times do I have to tell you guys?”
    Rick and Twenty-Twenty met eyes, and Twenty-Twenty slipped a bit of Tristie’s food to Cracker. Cracker swallowed it and felt it slide unchewed down her throat. She laid her paw over Rick’s ankle as he ate his own dinner, but just because she liked her paw there, not to ask him for anything. She never begged him while he was eating. He hated that more than anything. Willie had always handed her treats while he ate. Willie had always done whatever she wanted. A brief anxiety washed over her at the thought of Willie. But life was good here, too.
    The sun sank over the forest as the men ate and smoked. One of the guys who apparently thought he was going to kiss butt to a promotion squatted down near U-Haul. “We’re lucky to have your wisdom and experience, Sergeant. So what’s it like in Nam?” the guy asked.
    Sarge belched and cleared his throat before speaking. “Wetter than anything you’ve ever experienced,” he said. “Or so dry your tongue feels like paper, depending on the season. And hot, no matter what the season. When it rains, it rains for weeks. We had one guy drown on a hilltop that flooded during a monsoon rain. None of the birds could get to him because of the weather.” “Birds” were helicopters. “They found his body later on top of a dry hill. The doc said he’d drowned.”
    Rick contemplated that. Personally, he would have abandoned his gear and swam to safety.
    “Why didn’t he swim?” someone asked.
    “To where?” the sarge asked simply. “The whole countryside was flooded. And the guy was star of his swim team in high school.”
    Rick contemplated that.
    “Does the enemy use dogs?” another soldier asked.
    “Nah, but they put a bounty on both our dogs and our handlers. The rumor is that they pay anywhere from one thousand to twenty thousand U.S. dollars to anyone who brings them a dog’s tattooed ear.”
    Rick wondered whether that was true. One thousand or twenty, it was a lot of money for a dog’s ear.
    Rick lay on his back in the grass. Cracker stretched on her back and kicked her legs in the air. The shadows had grown long. The forest was peaceful.
    Twenty-Twenty was rolling his eyes around. One thing Rick had learned was that every man had a quirk, just as every dog did. Twenty-Twenty did weird eye exercises, Cody was always grinning, Jonesie walked in his sleep, and Petrocelli said “um” every other word. Rick didn’t know what his own quirk was. His righteous indignation? That wasn’t a quirk. Maybe generalists didn’t have quirks. “For all intensive purposes, I’m getting sleepy,” Twenty-Twenty said.
    Twenty-Twenty continued moving his eyes around and up and down, which he did every night. He claimed it was some kind of ancient Chinese method of keeping your eyes strong, but he looked like a nutcase. Rick called out, “Hey, man, you look like a nutcase!”
    Twenty-Twenty looked at him seriously. “For all intensive purposes, this is the best way to keep your eyes strong.”
    That was too much for Cody, who started laughing. “That doesn’t even make