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  Dedicated to the men and women of the United States armed forces and to their brave military dogs past and present.

  And to my grandchildren, Claire and Will

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part I: 1939-1945

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Part II: 1946-1947

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Part III: 2008

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Sources

  Also by Susan Wilson

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Every dog should have a man of his own. There is nothing like a well-behaved person around the house to spread the dog’s blanket for him, or bring him his supper when he comes home man-tired at night.

  —Corey Ford

  Part One

  1938–1945

  Prologue

  His mother had sheltered him in the nest she’d made in a crawl space under the sagging weight of an old tavern tucked just off the main street of the city, which hadn’t yet begun to recover from the Depression. She’d fed him first from her teats, all eight his alone as the only survivor of her brood of five, then from her mouth as she left him for short periods and scavenged for scraps, which she would share with him even as she withered from a decent-size purebred German shepherd to a scabbed scarecrow.

  The puppy would never know her history, only that his mother had managed to survive long enough as a stray by falling upon instincts hard-coded in her blood—find shelter, find food, and trust no one—so that when she failed to return to their alleyway nest, he was almost capable of surviving on his own. Almost. What he didn’t know about her was that at an earlier time in her life she’d been a show dog. Somewhere miles away, blue ribbons and a silver cup graced a dusty shelf. Not a runaway, but a throwaway when the neighbor’s mongrel jumped the backyard breeder’s fence.

  He stayed in the nest, venturing out only to do his business, lap a little at a puddle of yesterday’s rainwater. But his belly began to grumble. Sometimes it had taken her a very long time to return to the nest, so he made do with sucking on the end of his tail, comforting himself, one ear cocked toward the entrance to the blind alley. She’d be back. She always came back. He had no way to know how much time had elapsed except by the extraordinary hunger that refused to be satisfied with tail sucking, and his thirst, which was no longer satisfied because the puddle had dried up during the warmth of the day. Hours passed into days and the puppy knew only that his mother was still absent, and without her, he had no strength. What he longed for was to feel her body wrapped around his, to awaken to find her licking him ears to tail, to snuggle up against her warm body and let himself drift into deep sleep.

  A noise. The puppy lifted his head, sniffed. A man had come into the narrow alley. His mother had always shied away from people, so he kept himself very still. When the human boldly urinated not three feet from where the pup hid, the odor of it filled the youngster with information. This person was male; this human being had eaten meat and wasn’t thirsty. He couldn’t help himself—the odor of food wafting out of the skin of this overwarm being drew him to his legs. He didn’t consider revealing himself to the human; he just wanted to breathe in the tempting odor, as if by inhaling the scent of pastrami or ham, he’d be filled.

  The rain came down and splashed into the hollows gouged out of the worn bricks. The sound of the soft late-summer rain and the earthy scent of refreshed soil confused the puppy. He ran his tongue against the rough brick, where a thin layer of moisture trickled toward him. There was no relief in it, only the torment of dissatisfaction. From the splintered access to his mother’s carefully chosen nest site, he could see where the puddle he’d licked dry was re-forming. Nearly crazed with thirst, the puppy forgot his mother’s rules and dashed out from beneath the building to lap at the new-formed puddle in an ecstasy of relief. And that’s when his future was revised.

  The sudden insult of big feet against his washboard ribs made him yelp, but something kept him from running back to the shelter of the crawl space. As a dog, a youngster just newly weaned, he didn’t have the experience to nip or protest, and being swept up in strong human hands had a calming effect on him. Here was contact. Here was touch. Soft vocalizations unlike his mother’s voice, but with her intent. Hey there, little guy. As soothing as her heartbeat.

  The puppy made a token protest, and with a wisdom far beyond his mere eight weeks of life, he chose to accept this human’s touch; this man’s bond.

  Chapter One

  The men’s room stinks so badly that Rick walks past it and out the open back door of the tavern. He’s in an alley, a brick wall conveniently placed, so that he conducts his business in privacy. Today was the last day of play for the Waterbury Comets, and Frederick “Rick” Stanton has just spilled his good news to his teammates. Despite the C-league Comets’ losing season, he’s pitched well, and in the spring he’ll report to the minor-league AA team, the Hartford Bees. It was surprisingly hard to say, and he was a little embarrassed to have gotten choked up, especially when they all raised their beer mugs and toasted his good luck.

  He’s finally going to be able to say good-bye to cobbled-together amateur teams, and all his years of hard work, from sand lot to high school to playing in college, have paid
off. Sacrificing steady employment in a respectable profession like his father’s, banking or accounting, in favor of menial jobs he has no compunction about leaving when practice starts up has been worth it.

  Still, he’ll miss these guys, the oldest among them the catcher, “Foggy” Phil Dexter; the youngest, a kid of sixteen who cheerfully takes all their good-natured abuse, lugging most of the equipment, always riding stuck between two bigger players, fetching for the rest of them, and enduring persistent razzing about the state of his virginity.

  Finishing up, Rick feels the first drops of rain on his bare head. Those few drops are quickly followed by a complete cloudburst, but he stays where he is. It’s hot inside, and the cool rain feels good. Rick raises his face to the sky and opens his mouth, taking in the taste of fresh rain. “I’m the luckiest man on earth,” he says to the sky, and in that moment, he’s pretty certain that he is. Well, he should get back in. Eat another couple sandwiches, toss back one more beer; laugh at a few more tired jokes. The season is over and no curfew tonight.

  Thoroughly soaked now, Rick turns around and trips over something, nearly pitching headlong onto the brick pavers. That something yelps.

  It’s a puppy, and rather than running away after being tripped over, it stays put, and for a hard moment, Rick thinks he may have accidentally killed it with his big feet. In the weak light of the open back door, Rick sees the glint of life in its eyes. “Whoa, fella. Where’d you come from?” Rick squats down and the wet and trembling puppy inserts itself between his knees as if seeking shelter. It sits and rests its muzzle on Rick’s leg. As quickly as the cloudburst started, it fades away, the rivulets trickling down the side of the wall, pooling in the interstices between the bricks. “Where’re your people, little guy?”

  The puppy shakes, spraying Rick with a thousand droplets. Rick scoops it up and heads back into the tavern. In the light, he can see it’s a boy, silvery in color, with a darker saddle across narrow shoulders and along ribs that poke out like the bones of a chicken. His ears flop over at entirely different angles, as if they belong to two different puppies. Probably a German shepherd, or at least mostly shepherd. The bartender doesn’t say anything when Rick comes in carrying a puppy, so Rick holds him up. “He yours?” The barkeep shakes his head no.

  The barkeep’s wife swings a new pitcher onto the table and considers the dog on Rick’s lap. “Probably got dumped out back. You found him, you keep him. Don’t leave him here.”

  The puppy has settled neatly on Rick’s lap, gently taking the bits of meat Rick offers without nipping those important fingers with his sharp teeth. He can’t keep a dog; he’s living in a boardinghouse. In nine months, he’ll be at training camp. In a year, with luck, he’ll be pitching for the majors.

  “Got to name him if you’re keeping him.” Dan Lister, their manager, spreads a gob of mustard on his third corned beef sandwich. “How ’bout Spot?”

  “Too common. Besides, he doesn’t seem to have any spots, and who said anything about me keeping him?” Rick fingers another tiny bite of sandwich into the puppy’s mouth.

  “Lucky.” Foggy has slumped in his chair, so that his chin is barely above the edge of the table.

  “Well, he is a lucky dog if one of you bums keeps him.” Rick holds the wriggling fur ball up as if offering the puppy for auction.

  “Darby?” This from the kid.

  “Darby?”

  “I had a dog named Darby. My dad’s Irish. It’s how they say Derby over there. Darby was a real good dog, never left my father’s side all the time he was sick with tuberculosis. We even let him come to the funeral.”

  The group grows silent. No one had known that the kid was a half orphan.

  “Maybe I’ll call him Rin Tin Tin. He looks like he might be shepherd.” Rick scratches the puppy under the chin. “What do you think? You gonna grow up to be some kind of movie star hero dog?” The puppy yawns, drops his head, and is instantly asleep. Rick realizes what he’s just said. If he names this puppy, how will he ever drop him back in the alley? It’s not even fair to keep the dog on his lap, to allow the little thing to accept a few minutes of comfort, let him think that humans are trustworthy. The party will break up soon, and what then? Abandon the tyke to the elements? His first trust in humans to do right by him destroyed, and maybe he’ll never trust another human being again. Rick can feel the puppy’s beating heart in the palm of his pitching hand. The fluff of baby fur feels like the softest mink of his mother’s fur stole as Rick strokes him, lifting the spatula-shaped paws and feeling the thick bones of a puppy with the potential to become a large dog. If he’s not hit by a car or starved to death.

  Dan Lister pushes away from the table. “I’m done in. Go to bed, gentlemen. I bid you farewell. Keep healthy and see you”—he looks at Rick—“most of you, in the spring.” The manager presses both hands on the table, suggesting that he’s more sober than he is.

  The bartender hands Rick a length of string for a leash, but Rick carries the ten pounds of soft fur in his arms. Foggy is bumbling into chairs and tables while trying to find the front door. “Come on, Phil, throw an arm over my shoulder.”

  Foggy Phil Dexter gladly slings his arm over Rick’s neck and leans into him. “You’ll be great. Bees need a good curveball pitcher.” His breath is rank with beer and pastrami, but Rick doesn’t mind. Phil’s been a good friend and taught him a lot about the game. “By God, you’ll be in the majors in a year.”

  “Your mouth to God’s ear.” Rick bears the weight of the man and the small burden of the puppy as they walk the few blocks to their boardinghouse.

  Everything that he’s done has been fed by his lifelong ambition to play for the majors. Rick has never wanted anything else in his life. As a kid, he asked Santa for gloves and balls and bats; as a teen, he paid his own way to baseball camp, using the money he earned from a paper route. He never learned to sail, letting his father practically adopt the next-door neighbor’s kid to crew for him. Tomorrow, he’ll head down to his parents’ Greenwich home. He wonders if, when he gives them his good news, his extraordinary and long-awaited news, they’ll finally respond with some pride and enthusiasm.

  The puppy in his hand wriggles himself up and under Rick’s chin. Well, so what if they don’t. He’s a grown man, he’s stuck to his plan, and now, at very nearly the last minute, at age twenty-seven, he’s finally there. Almost. He doesn’t want to be the world’s oldest rookie when he finally gets the call to major-league baseball.

  Maybe this will be the last winter keeping fit by any means possible while substitute teaching or doing temporary work at a busy accounting firm. In eight months, he’ll be back in training, a hardball in his hand, sensitive fingers feeling for the seams, the magic of that perfect throw. The future spools out in front of him: a winning season with the minor-league Bees, then getting the call to the majors. His first appearance in the National League. Rick sees himself doffing his ball cap and waving at cheering fans. He’s paid his dues, by God. Forfeited job security and Mary Ann Koble, who didn’t want to be a ballplayer’s wife.

  The puppy yawns, burrows his tail end deeper into the crook of Rick’s arm. Why not keep him? He could be a mascot. A lucky charm. A companion on all those miles of roadwork.

  There is a church along the way, more beautiful than any other building on this defeated main street; its all-white marble facade glows softly in the newly rain-freshened air. Picked out in gold leaf on the pediment are Latin words: Gloriam Deo Pax In Terra.

  “Pax. Peace.” Rick looks at the puppy in his arms, now sleeping with utter trust in the man carrying him. It’s started raining again, a warm drizzle that makes the wet pavement shimmer beneath the sparse streetlamps. “I’m the luckiest man on earth.”

  Pax. The puppy in Rick’s arms suddenly wakes. He reaches up with his baby muzzle and his long pink tongue comes out to lick Rick’s nose. Pax.

  Chapter Two

  I just didn’t see myself a farmer’s wife. No insult intended to all my f
riends who found satisfaction in it, but I just couldn’t. I was, at heart, a town girl, even if the town was little Mount Joy, Iowa, population insignificant, city limits something like six blocks firmly built on the banks of the Mississippi River. It wasn’t that I didn’t want marriage; of course I did. And kids. But I wanted something else for them besides the grinding work of feeding America. I wanted something more for myself than being sentenced to cooking three meals a day seven days a week for insatiable farmhands. Pickling and canning and putting up. Putting up green beans and tomatoes. Putting up with bad harvests and droughts and too much rain and corn borers. I was a town girl, but the domestic realities of my farm-bred girlfriends made an impression on me.

  Thus I was flirting with old maidhood, a ripe nineteen years old, my only significant accomplishment the high school diploma my mother had framed and hanging in the den. My high school chums were getting married one after the other, but I was determined that my knight in shining armor wasn’t going to be one of the local boys, most of whom had already adopted the high seat of the combine as their throne and were deep in the family cornfields. Their chief currency was the half acre set aside for a new house, or the addition Daddy would put on the old one to accommodate the anticipated bounty of babies. More fodder, I thought, for the machine of agriculture. That’s not what I wanted for my kids. I wanted for them what I wanted for myself, an indefinable more.

  When I try to unravel the skein of circumstance that led me to meet Rick Stanton, I have to look to my cousin Sid. Cousins through our mothers, we were playmates, and then he grew into a boy, and I wasn’t much interested in playing army or being forced into the damsel in distress role for Sid and his buddies to rescue on their imaginary chargers, wielding not so imaginary sticks as lances and swords. One unfortunate kid got his eye poked real good, as his imaginary knight’s visor was a little porous, and the neighborhood mothers put a stop to stick play for a time.

  The one thing Sid and I continued to enjoy together was baseball. We’d sit in our parlor, or his family’s, the big cathedral radio on, our dads in their undershirts, sneaking Pabst Blue Ribbon beers past our mothers. We listened to the games of the St. Louis Cardinals, as close to a home team as those of us in Mount Joy, Iowa, had. We might have rooted for the Cubs, but my family had turned its back on the Chicago team a generation ago.