5 | What Really Happened in That Kennel
Harold set the letter down on the table and folded his hands over it, like he was afraid it might blow away.
"I was the handler," he said.
"Not your father.
It was my dog that died."
I didn't say anything.
I just waited.
"We were at Fort Benning," he said.
"Summer of 1972.
Your father and I were in the same K-9 unit.
He had Rex.
I had a shepherd named Sheba.
She was the best dog I ever worked with."
He stopped and looked toward the window, and for a moment he wasn't in that room anymore.
"We were running a night exercise.
Live-fire training.
Sheba and I were supposed to clear a building, and your father was supposed to cover the east side."
"What went wrong?"
I asked.
Harold's jaw tightened.
"I got ahead of myself," he said.
"I broke from the formation.
I thought I saw movement in the tree line, and I went after it.
Your father called out to me to hold position, but I didn't listen."
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"There was a tripwire.
Not a real one, just a training device, but Sheba hit it before I could stop her.
The charge went off in the dirt right under her.
She didn't suffer.
It was fast."
I felt my throat close up.
"And my father?"
I said.
"He was the senior man on that exercise," Harold said.
"When the report was filed, I told them I was following his order.
That he had sent me ahead.
It was a lie, but it was my word against his, and I had a spotless record, and he had just transferred in from another unit."
"So they believed you."
"They believed me," Harold said.
"And your father took a reprimand for something I did.
It followed him for the rest of his career.
He never made sergeant major because of it."
I thought about the photograph in my pocket, and the quiet pride in my father's face in every picture we ever had of him.
"Why didn't he fight it?"
I asked.
"He could have told the truth."
Harold shook his head.
"He did tell the truth," he said.
"To me.
In private.
He told me he knew what I had done, and he told me that if I ever wanted to clear his name, I knew where to find him.
And then he never spoke to me again."
"And you never did."
"No," Harold said.
"I didn't.
I was young, and I was scared, and I had a wife and a baby at home, and I thought if I admitted what happened, they'd put me out on a dishonorable discharge.
So I kept quiet."
He looked down at the letter.
"I've been quiet for fifty years," he said.
"And every year, I wrote to him.
Every single year, on the anniversary.
I told him I was sorry.
I told him I'd clear his name if he asked me to.
He never answered one letter."
I didn't understand something.
"But you said he sent you the flag," I said.
"When you were in the hospital.
Why would he do that if he never forgave you?"
Harold's eyes filled up.
"I was in the VA hospital in Augusta," he said.
"Three years ago.
I had a heart attack, and they didn't think I'd make it.
I woke up one morning, and there was a box on my nightstand.
No note.
Just this flag, folded the way they fold them at a military funeral."
He touched the flag in his lap.
"I recognized his handwriting on the mailing label," he said.
"Your father's.
I knew it right away."
"That doesn't make sense," I said.
"He never answered you, but he sent you a flag?"
Harold shook his head slowly.
"I've been trying to figure that out for three years," he said.
"I don't know what it meant.
I don't know if it was forgiveness or pity or something else.
But I kept it.
I kept it because it was the only thing I had from him."
I looked at the flag again, and then at the letter in his hands, and I realized there was still a piece missing.
"Harold," I said, "did my father ever tell you about the dog?"
He looked up at me, confused.
"What dog?"
I stood up and walked to the door.
"I'll be right back," I said.
"I need to make a phone call."
I stepped into the hallway and pulled out my phone, and my hands were still shaking.
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Because the private who brought Rex here had told me the dog's breeder was a man with a cane, an old man who cried when he left.
And I was starting to think that man wasn't a stranger.
