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 acknowledged 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.”

Words instead of tears were a good thing. Pax pushed himself off Rick and sat, his tail still swishing against the floor, his jaws open with the excitement of reunion, and his eyes on Rick’s face. His ears, though, were turned back, listening for Keller.