A Man of His Own

by Susan Wilson

  The medic is fiddling around with a syringe, tapping it with a dirt-rimmed fingernail.

  “Is he all right? Was he hurt?”

  “I have no idea.” The medic presses a fresh compress on the bullet hole in Keller’s left shoulder.

  “He won’t eat. He’s trained not to take food from anyone.”

  “That’s not my problem. My problem is that I’ve got to evac you to a field hospital and I don’t have room on the transport.”

  “Not without Pax.”

  “Without Pax.”

  Keller struggles against the soporific and lovely effects of the morphine that the medic has just injected into his arm. “Get him. Please.”

  The medic doesn’t respond, and as the arms of Morpheus descend, Keller whispers Pax’s name over and over, terrified that the medic is lying to him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The hot scent of his partner’s blood explodes in Pax’s nostrils; the scent of being quarry, not hunter. As the shooter charges, bayonet fixed, Pax vaults from a standstill and knocks the German to the ground. He is trained to hold a prisoner in any fashion he can, and he holds this one down with the weight of his body and the tensile strength of his jaw, ignoring the man’s screams and flailing. He overpowers this sinner, expecting that Keller will point his weapon and call him off. He doesn’t, and the mingle of human voices in the woods grow closer, angrier, louder, and gunfire spits from every direction. Pax ignores it and keeps his jaw locked on the fallen enemy’s arm, penetrating through the wool to the skin, muscle, and bone. He bears down; this is the man who hurt Keller.

  So consumed in defending his partner, Pax doesn’t hear the sound of the shot, doesn’t feel the penetration of the first bullet. The second shot takes him down.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Keller opens his eyes, to see Big Sully looking down at him. Roger Sullivan, late of South Boston, is the one guy Keller knows will tell him the truth about Pax. “Is he dead?”

  “See for yourself.”

  Keller is suddenly beneath a mound of wriggling dog. Sully helps hoist Keller upright so that he’s neither crushed beneath the weight of the dog nor his shoulder wound reopened by the vigorous reunion. “Pax. Pax. What did they do to you, boy?” A slightly grungy white bandage is wrapped around the dog’s middle and a thin line of missing fur mars the perfection of his skull.

  “Bastards shot him, but he was moving so fast, they only grazed him. You should see what he did to them. When we got there, they were gabbling like they’d found themselves faced with a werewolf. Practically asked us to take them prisoner.”

  Keller recognizes bullshit when he hears it, but he’s grateful to Sully for lying to him. “Thanks for taking care of him.”

  “Medics did a good job. He’s a grunt like the rest of us, but nothing but the best for him.” Sully is quiet for a moment, his usual glibness put away. He looks tired, as they all do. Maybe even a little discouraged. “Look, we lost Carson. Almost lost you.”

  “I’m sorry about Carson. He was a good kid.”

  Sully runs a hand down the length of the dog’s back. Keller doesn’t say anything; for sure, Sully deserves to break the rules. “Nicholson, your dog saved you. That Kraut would have finished you off if Pax hadn’t attacked him. He’s a lucky dog, but so are you.”

  Sully gives Pax one more forbidden pat and leaves Keller and his dog to rest.

  “If anything had happened to you…” Keller cannot complete the whispered thought. His relief in having Pax here, alive and hogging the cot, brings hot tears to his eyes. Keller hasn’t wept since he was a little boy, not since his first night at Meadowbrook, a thrown-away child, alone and confused.

  This dog is his family. And the only other thing as frightening to Keller as having Pax killed, is the fact that, at the end of this endless war, Pax will go home to his real family. And Keller will be, once again, all alone.

  Chapter Twenty

  “I had your baseball card. Still do if my mom hasn’t chucked out all my stuff.” The private is a skinny kid from Lowell, all freckles and brown hair so thin that his scalp shows through his buzz cut as if he didn’t have any hair at all.

  “This war goes on much longer, that may be the only baseball card with my picture on it, so you’d better hope she hasn’t thrown it out. It’ll be a rare one.” Rick runs a cleaning cloth over the barrel of his carbine, a gesture faintly reminiscent of rubbing pine tar on his bat. The wind is picking up the higher up they go in the mountains and he’s glad that it’s summer, not winter; that’s for the mountain troops, not him. Rick is squad leader, and it’s his job to get this bunch of kids up and over the mountain to join their armored division as it collects these strung-out groups of five or six infantrymen slowly making their way along the narrow mountain trail. Sometimes the trail takes them into the woods; sometimes it leads them up toward the sky. Sometimes, like now, it meanders along a series of ledges, wide enough for only one at a time to pass. Above them, already ensconced, the German army. At midday, Rick could hear the sound of artillery bouncing off the other side of the mountain, the vertical assault beginning.

  “You had good stats that last summer you played.” The kid is still chattering about ancient history. He won’t admit it, but Rick is flattered by the kid’s interest. Baseball was a lifetime ago. He’s even lost track of how the Braves are doing, struggling to field a decent team with old-timers and the increasingly rare player with a high draft number and no qualms about not enlisting. Sometimes Rick wonders if he’s still got it, his arm. He’s muscled up, that’s for sure, but does he still have the distance? The ability to put a small spherical object into an invisible box exactly where he wants it? It took years to develop that skill, and now it’s been years since he’s really used it, the little intersquad pickup games notwithstanding. He never throws his good stuff at amateurs; that would be like throwing a smokin’ fastball at a Little Leaguer.

  “Okay, everybody up. Let’s move.” Rick puts an end to the conversation.

  The ledge trail is like a ruffle along the bald side of the Italian mountain, dipping in and out as the contour of the hillside folds in on itself, then bells outward. There is a stark beauty to the view, looking down on the green of vegetation, up at the azure sky. Lone pine trees cling to the hillside, tenacious and scrawny.

  When they finally meet up with their division, Rick is hoping that he’ll find a few letters waiting for him from Francesca. No, he knows that he will; she’s a faithful correspondent. Through her letters, he feels like he is there for every little bit of her day, from her distaste for chicory coffee to the gossip at the wire factory. He knows that, so far, her cousin Sid is all right, and her brothers, too. She has no news for him about Pax. Pax has been in this war for more than a year, almost two. The only thing they know is that if anything had happened to him, they would have been informed. So, as he writes in his letters back, no news is good news. Their dog is doing his duty, his bit. Secretly, Rick wonders how long before this streak of good luck will run out for those Francesca loves. Five loved ones in a war is not good odds. What talisman does she keep in order that they remain safe? As a ballplayer, Rick has seen plenty of superstitions acted out before every game: the same socks, turning three times around before leaving the locker room, never letting a wife say “good luck” before a game. His own game-day nod to Lady Luck was to slip a few dog hairs into his cap. Whatever other superstitious belief she might have, Rick knows that for Francesca, it’s mostly just prayer.

  The trail rises and falls, rises again. The rocky hillside becomes sheer cliff, a hardened wall they keep to their right as the trail once again puts them on a narrow ledge. Rick wants to hurry his men through this all-too-exposed place.

  It’s the skinny kid from Lowell who falls first, victim to a clean shot from the precipice above them. The rest hit the ground, crab-crawling their way to the relative safety of the rock wall, keeping arms and legs close so that the Germans have nothing to aim at from above. Rick cranes his
neck to see what their options are. The next squad will arrive in no less than half an hour. To retreat from this narrow ledge will open them up as targets as surely as moving ahead would. They are pinned down.

  Rick fingers a grenade dangling from his belt, unclips it. The rock face is maybe thirty feet high and angles back slightly. Baseball is geometry. He’s fired a ground-ball hit to the pitcher farther than that to get the double play. Slowly, Rick, keeping his back to the rock face, stands up. He has the grenade in his hand, and he tosses it gently, as if waiting for the catcher’s signs. He briefly wishes that he were a left-handed pitcher; this toss would be easier if he were. But he’s not. He’s a strong righty, accurate and unhittable. Rick pulls the pin, steps away from the rock face, and fires the grenade, putting just enough arc in it that the explosive should curve right into the Germans.

  Instead of diving back against the safety of the wall, Rick waits, watching in horror as the grenade, subject to the immutable laws of gravity, falls back toward him, where it will blow them all off this ledge.

  As if he’s watching a flyball coming his way, Rick instinctively reaches up to catch it.

  Part Two

  1946–1947

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “Come in.” I held back the screen door to let Keller Nicholson and our dog, Pax, into our house. I felt nearly faint with relief at the sight of him, the dog. Our dog. Even before Keller Nicholson had gotten out of the mud-spattered car he and Pax arrived in, I was out of the house and down the walk to pull the passenger door open and release Pax into my arms.

  When Pax didn’t jump out, but looked to Nicholson for orders, I felt wounded. Snubbed.

  “It’s okay, Pax. At ease, boy.” And with that, Pax bowled into me, licking my face and wagging his tail so hard, he nearly took himself off his feet.

  “Ma’am, before we go in, there’s something I’d like to say.” He didn’t step one foot over the sill, although Pax straddled it, forelegs in the house, hind legs still beside Keller.

  “Rick has been waiting. He’s been waiting for this dog a long, long time. Please come in.”

  “Mrs. Stanton, I want to keep him. I can’t imagine life without him.”

  That froze me to my spot. How dare he say such a thing to me? “I guess that you’ll have to try.”

  The litany of our prayers to keep them safe were intoned with fervent belief Sunday after Sunday, and still our boys died, or came back, like Rick, wounded, changed forever, their spirits crushed.

  They found me at the wire factory, those crisply uniformed harbingers of disaster. Bright young men, charged with the unforgiveable duty of informing family members of their soldier’s change of status from unharmed and alive to wounded or lost or dead. As if, in the formality of their words and posture, you might respond less emotionally to the news that your husband, who once wanted only to play ball in the big leagues, is now grievously wounded and simply to survive will be as close as he will ever get to living his dream; that your response will be contained by the choreographed manner in which these boys dressed as men have regretfully informed you that your life is never going to be the same.

  My supervisor didn’t send anyone for me; he came himself, taking me back to his office, where the soldiers waited, their white-gloved hands behind their backs, their caps tucked precisely under their arms; the weight of their duty not bowing them, but keeping them upright. Mr. Towne had also beckoned my pal Barbara, who shared a spot on the line with me. Maybe he felt that I needed to have a woman there. That I would behave with womanly weakness.

  Seeing them, expecting the worst, it didn’t quite penetrate when, instead of informing me of Rick’s death, they told me he was wounded, and suddenly not in Europe, but in England. I think that Mr. Towne caught me as my knees buckled and slid a chair beneath me. “Rick is in England; that’s wonderful news. He’s out of it.” I started to laugh. Whatever had happened, he’d be fine. He was in England. He was alive. These crisp young men had said so.

  Barbara finally got my attention, shaking me out of my hysterical euphoria. “Francesca, he’s seriously wounded. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “I just know that he’s still alive.”

  Barbara took my hands in hers. Her nails were freshly painted, a bright bloodred, at complete odds with our factory work. “They’ve given you a telephone number. They don’t know any more than what they’ve told you; you need to make that call.”

  The two soldiers bearing bad tidings were clearly waiting for some sort of civilian dismissal from me. Mr. Towne kept a hand under my elbow and I stood up. “Thank you.”

  The pair made a stiff about-face, one fell in behind the other, and they left the office, moving on to deliver more bad news to other families whose lives would be forever changed.

  * * *

  Keller Nicholson leaned his back against the screen door, keeping it open, neither entering my house nor leaving it. The dog was sniffing the air, his tail beating a rhythm against the copper screening. He danced on his front legs. He knew that beyond the hallway of this new house lay his man, the man who had always been Pax’s one true master.

  I hadn’t told Rick that Pax was coming home until I was absolutely certain. I had no desire to get his fractured hopes up, only to find out that Pax hadn’t survived, or, maybe worse, hadn’t been able to be rehabilitated from war dog back to pet dog. If that had been the case, I think I would have gone to wherever they had taken him and stolen him back. If he’d changed from the loving, tractable dog we’d known three years ago into something else, something the army called “unsuitable for home placement,” I would still have wanted him for Rick. Rick had lost so much, I just couldn’t bear it if the dog was lost to him, too. With every week that went by postwar when Pax’s status was unknown, Rick lost ground in his own rehabilitation. And then, after an eternity that was reminiscent of the eternity I’d waited for Rick to come home, we got word that Pax was safe and doing well in the retraining program. He could come home. It was the first genuine smile I’d had from Rick since the day he was returned to me.

  “Let him go.”

  Keller bent and unclipped the leash from Pax’s collar. The dog stayed where he was. He was still connected to his handler, unused to thinking for himself.

  “Send him.”

  “Pax, go ahead.” Keller’s words held no command in them. They might have been nonsense syllables, meaningless drivel.

  Pax looked at Keller, as if he, too, hadn’t understood the softly spoken words. He wanted clarification. In that almost human desire for clarity, I could see how close these two must have been in the battlefield, dependent one upon the other for their lives. One misunderstanding and everything would go horribly wrong. The dog eyed Keller and waited for some better instruction. Even as his eyes studied Keller, his nose twitched, and I could see that the distraction of what he surely knew lay at the end of this short hallway was tantalizing him. So close to his beloved Rick, one command away from reunion.

  “Pax. Go to him.”

  The dog’s trot was soundless along the runner that led from the front door to the room that Rick occupied. Keller and I didn’t follow, but waited in an awkward silence, which I finally broke. “Come meet him.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Pax ambled down the corridor to a room where the door was not quite shut. He nosed it open, already certain that behind that door was the person he’d once been adhered to. It had been a long time ago, and the memory of that person was as faded as the dreams that he’d dreamed when opportunity gave him a chance to enter deepest sleep. But the scent had remained imprinted in his memory. A scent he would never have forgotten and one that he would have been able to discern among a thousand others. Keller was his present, and the bond he had with him was soldier-deep. If he had once trusted Rick with his daily requirement of food and exercise and play and affection, with Keller he had survived when others had not. It had been an atavistic existence, surviving by wit and by clan. Pax had acknowled
ged Keller as leader; Keller had depended on Pax to hunt and to defend.

  This recognizable skin scent was overshadowed but not obscured by the other odors of this human body, urine and seeping fluids. A rotting that informed the dog that this human, this scent that he remembered in the same way he remembered his mother’s, was not exactly like the man he had longed for until Keller came into his life. And then Rick spoke and all the strangeness fell away. Saying his name like breathing a prayer out loud: Pax. Out of this mouth, the word that had been the first word Pax had ever recognized for its true value sounded so different to his sensitive ears. It was as if, when identified by Rick’s “Pax,” he was a different creature from the one that Keller called Pax. Gentleness and play versus the serious business of war.

  The big dog instinctively knew better than to throw himself into the arms of the man in the chair. He sat, then quietly lowered his head to Rick’s lap. One hand stroked his head. The other, truncated and bound in a white gauze sleeve, lingered over the dog’s head. The dog sighed. He didn’t have the capacity to wonder how it was that, after all this time, after being sent away, after being befriended and given a purpose, after months in constant danger and after being solely Keller’s own, he was here, in this strange house, with his head in the lap of his once and beloved master.

  Rick was weeping into his fur, and Pax didn’t know what to do to help. He’d never known Rick to be unhappy. His entire experience of Rick was one of optimism and joy. This casualty—for that’s what he smelled like to a dog who had spent a lot of time behind the front lines of the battlefield—confused him, and he had only one option. He pressed himself deeper into Rick’s lap, until only his hind legs remained on the floor. He whined, a guttural assurance that whatever it was, he would fix it. He would make it stop. The hand gripped the nape of the dog’s neck, and Pax was filled with grief for his long-gone mother, who held him just so. Finally, Rick lifted his head and batted the tears away. “Good dog, Pax. You have no idea how much I’ve missed you. My good dog. Thank God you made it.”