“Who’s your friend?” he called out to her, shaking off the odd feeling.
“It’s six thirty,” she called back after glancing at her wrist.
* * *
—
Six-Thirty was badly in need of a bath. Tall, gray, thin, and covered with barbed-wire-like fur that made him look as if he’d barely survived electrocution, he stood very still as they shampooed him, his gaze fixed on Elizabeth.
“I guess we should try to find his owner,” Elizabeth said reluctantly. “I’m sure someone is worried to death.”
“This dog doesn’t have an owner,” Calvin assured her, and he was right. Later calls to the pound and listings in the newspaper’s lost and found column turned up nothing. But even if it had, Six-Thirty had already made his intentions clear: to stay.
In fact, “stay” was the first word he learned, although within weeks, he also learned at least five others. That was what surprised Elizabeth most—Six-Thirty’s ability to learn.
“Do you think he’s unusual?” she asked Calvin more than once. “He seems to pick things up so quickly.”
“He’s grateful,” Calvin said. “He wants to please us.”
But Elizabeth was right: Six-Thirty had been trained to pick things up quickly.
Bombs, specifically.
* * *
—
Before he’d ended up in that alley, he’d been a canine bomb-sniffer trainee at Camp Pendleton, the local marine base. Unfortunately, he’d failed miserably. Not only could he never seem to sniff out the bomb in time, but he also had to endure the praise heaped upon the smug German shepherds who always did. He was eventually discharged—not honorably—by his angry handler, who drove him out to the highway and dumped him in the middle of nowhere. Two weeks later he found his way to that alley. Two weeks and five hours later, he was being shampooed by Elizabeth and she was calling him Six-Thirty.
* * *
—
“Are you sure we can take him to Hastings?” Elizabeth asked when Calvin loaded him into the car on Monday morning.
“Sure, why not?”
“Because I’ve never seen another dog at work. Besides the labs aren’t really that safe.”
“We’ll keep a close eye on him,” Calvin said. “It’s not healthy for a dog to be left alone all day. He needs stimulation.”
* * *
—
This time it was Calvin who was right. Six-Thirty had loved Camp Pendleton, partly because he was never alone, but mostly because it had given him something he’d never had before: purpose. But there’d been a problem.
A bomb-sniffing dog had two choices: find the bomb in time to allow disarmament （preferred）， or throw himself on the bomb, making the ultimate sacrifice to save the unit （not preferred, although it did come with a posthumous medal）。 In training, the bombs were only ever fake, so if a dog did throw himself upon it, the most he might get was a noisy explosion followed by a huge burst of red paint.
It was the noise; it scared Six-Thirty to death. So each day, when his handler commanded him to “Find it,” he would immediately take off to the east, even though his nose had already informed him that the bomb was fifty yards to the west, poking his nose at various rocks while he waited for one of the other, braver dogs to finally find the damn thing and receive his reward biscuit. Unless the dog was too late or too rough and the bomb exploded; then the dog only got a bath.
* * *
—
“You can’t have a dog here, Dr. Evans,” Miss Frask explained to Calvin. “We’ve gotten complaints.”
“No one’s complained to me,” Calvin said, shrugging, even though he knew no one would dare.
Frask backed off immediately.
* * *
—
Within a few weeks, Six-Thirty made a full inventory of the Hastings campus, memorizing every floor, room, and exit, like a firefighter preparing for catastrophe. When it came to Elizabeth Zott, he was on high alert. She’d suffered in her past—he could sense it—and he was determined she should never suffer again.
It was the same for Elizabeth. She sensed that Six-Thirty had also suffered beyond the usual dog-left-by-the-roadside neglect, and she, too, felt the need to protect him. In fact, it was she who insisted that he sleep next to their bed even though Calvin had suggested he might be better off in the kitchen. But Elizabeth won out and he stayed, completely content, except for those times when Calvin and Elizabeth locked their limbs in a messy tangle, their clumsy movements punctuated with panting noises. Animals did this too, but with far more efficiency. Humans, Six-Thirty noticed, had a tendency to overcomplicate.