In the midst of it, batting at the champing dog, its slaver on his arms, he heard a shrill whistle and a voice shouting a name that sounded like Max, but his terror was so intense by then that he could not react, trapped beneath the dog’s jaws. It was not an imagined pain produced by fear but stabbing paws and teeth in a growling mouth tearing at his face.

“I said, get down.”

What struck him as frightening was the man’s futile voice demanding casually in English that, half crazed in its attack—Joe’s face in the dog’s mouth—the dog would understand and obey. Yet amazingly the dog grunted and let go.

Whoever had spoken dragged the dog away—Joe could see the man and the dog above him as he lay on the sidewalk, the man twisting the dog’s collar, saying, “You all right?”

Gouts of saliva drooped from the gagging dog’s jaws.

Joe said, “I think so,” because he was alive.

And then, “You Colonel Sharkey’s kid?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, shit—I’m really sorry.”

By then other people who’d heard the commotion, women mostly, had gathered to help, dabbing at Joe’s face with hankies and saying with such nervous insistence, “You’re going to be just fine, sweetheart,” that he felt certain he would not be. They helped Joe to his feet and took him down the street to his house.

His mother shrieked and became a mother Joe had never seen before—wailing, angry, vowing to report the incident, demanding the name of the man with the dog.

“What’s his rank!” she screamed.

“Get the boy to Tripler,” a calmer voice said, and then he was in the backseat of a car, his mother still shrieking, being driven to the big pink hospital.

Under a bright light, voices above him and all around him, he lay on a table, fingers in his face, stitching him, other faces leaning over him, murmuring to him, words of kindness and concern, while his mother still chattered and sobbed. “You have a brave boy, Mrs. Sharkey.” “You’re due for a Purple Heart, son.” “The dog wasn’t on a leash.” “The boy will need shots.”

His face bandaged, and no school, the back-and-forth to Tripler, ten days of antirabies injections—he felt singled out and special, privileged, an object of interest. Everyone was kind to him, and for those ten days he felt like a soldier who’d been wounded in battle, an intimation of what it meant to be a hero.

A succession of whispers and echoes revealed the stages of the aftermath, each day something new, often in the repetition of his mother talking on the telephone. The dog had not been on a secure leash. The attack had caused physical harm and emotional distress. “Scarring.” “Compensation.” The base was liable.