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Jack Mitchell had fought in a war, run a gas station, preached the gospel on the side and raised two boys. Then his wife left him because she said she wanted to find herself. She went to live on a college campus and told him not to bother her anymore.

Jack no longer had a war, a gas station, the gospel, the boys or now even a wife.

He started drinking, spending all his money on whiskey. He’d load up in a bar, then pass out somewhere on the way home. In the morning he’d find himself huddled behind some bushes next to the library or stretched out on the porch of a church. In stinking clothes, he’d drag home, full of shame.

Jack would then clean himself up, go to church the next Sunday and swear he’d never take another drink.

But in a week or two, he’d do it all again.

One night Jack was arrested. A policeman found him lying in a sandbox in the park. Jack had to pay a fine and was ordered by the judge to go to the Veterans Hospital to “dry out.”

Jack checked himself in the next week.

The Veterans Hospital was on the edge of town, surrounded by green lawns and bordering a forest. The yellow brick building was old, and inside, on its walls, were framed mementos of all the wars that had made its patients veterans: pictures of generals and troops, plaques remembering some who had died, framed newspaper articles describing victory in battle, American flags. It was a hospital filled mostly with men; and these men had been lucky enough to survive their wars, but not lucky enough to leave them behind. Many of the patients had missing arms or legs; many suffered with diseases they had caught as young soldiers in foreign countries. And many, like Jack, suffered because they could not stop drinking.

Jack knew when he checked in that he would not be leaving the hospital for weeks. He would stay until the doctors were satisfied he wouldn’t drink anymore. More than anything, it was giving up his freedom that he hated. Giving up the whiskey would be hard — but feeling trapped inside that hospital meant pure misery.

When the squirrels came, Jack had been in the hospital about a week and was having an awful time of it. He wanted some whiskey so bad he thought he might go crazy with longing for it. He missed his house and his street and the dark, noisy bars that made him feel safe. He hated himself, hated the other patients, hated the doctors and, especially, hated the hospital ward where he slept. His bed was one of a row of beds filled with men just like him — drunks. He hated his thin, narrow bed, the whole row of thin, narrow beds, and inside his mind he screamed, “Out! Out! Get me out!”

At the end of that first week, Jack awoke at dawn. The other men around him lay snoring and sighing in their sleep, and only Jack lay awake. He looked out at the smoky blue morning light and decided he had to escape. He would escape. What could they do to him? Throw him in jail? So what. He felt like a prisoner, anyway.

Jack lay in his bed, watching the morning come, and thought about the things he had lost in his life. Too much, he thought. Too much.

Then, as he stared at the window in sadness, he saw something move, just at the edge of the sill.

He sat up quickly. Some kind of animal. A cat? He reached for his glasses and his pants.

Jack tiptoed over to the window and looked out to the far edge of the sill. Not a cat — it was a squirrel. A black squirrel. The animal sat on its haunches and looked right back at him.

Jack leaned against the radiator, barely breathing. Then, while he and the squirrel looked each other over, two more black squirrels jumped from a nearby tree onto the sill. All three animals sat up on their haunches and looked at Jack through the window.

“Well,” Jack whispered. “Well.”

The staring among them went on for several minutes, until Jack’s legs got tired and he went back to bed. He fell asleep and when he woke, the three squirrels were gone.

He felt better, though, and decided to stick it out in the hospital another day. So he talked to the doctors, cried some, ate terrible meatloaf for dinner and in the evening went to bed early, expecting to get up the next morning and just walk out of the place.

He woke up at dawn again. As soon as his eyes opened, he couldn’t help looking over at the window before he pulled on his pants and packed his few things.

All three squirrels again sat on the sill. One had a nut and was gnawing at it furiously, while the other two sniffed around the windowpane.

Jack put on his glasses and tiptoed over.

“Well,” he said.

The squirrels raised up on their haunches when he stood at the window, intently watching him. At first Jack couldn’t figure what to do. Then he decided to feed them.

He opened the drawer of his bedside table and pulled out a couple of packs of Saltines. When he slid open the window, the squirrels didn’t run away, and when he held out the crackers, each squirrel grabbed one and sat back to enjoy a free breakfast.

Jack chuckled to himself.

That day, too, he changed his mind about leaving the hospital. He was a little friendlier to the doctors, and he played a game of cards with another man, a Korean War veteran (Jack’s war was World War II). He also hid some corncobs from dinner inside his pillowcase.

Jack woke up the next morning and fed the squirrels. They hopped right up to him and reached for the cobs. Two of them ate the food, but the third jumped down into the yard and buried his.

You’ll never find it again, Jack silently told the squirrel. Boy, are you going to look foolish. He grinned and went back to bed.

Day after day jack fed those squirrels. One morning the smallest of the three had a bloody scrape on its back and Jack fed it an extra cracker, then worried about it all day.

Jack grew stronger with each new morning. After about two weeks, he gave up altogether his plans for escaping. He wanted to stay. His body didn’t torture him for whiskey, he was growing to like the doctors, a few of the men had become important friends to him (he found he enjoyed talking with them far better than he had with his wife) and, most important, he had three squirrels to greet every morning.

By the fifth week, Jack had gained weight, made plans for a camping trip with another man and was finally not as afraid of his life as before. The doctors said he could leave.

Jack wanted to be home again, to move around in his own small kitchen and fix a few things in the garage. He wanted to leave. But he wondered about his squirrels.

He moved out of the hospital, back home, and for the next four days woke up at dawn and thought about the squirrels. Then on the fifth day, an idea struck him.

Jack was at the hospital the next morning, before sunrise. He walked through the grass around to the wing of the building where his ward had been. All the windows looked alike to him, especially in the half-light, but when he saw three black shapes moving around outside one of them, he knew he was in the right place.

“Hey!” Jack called softly, standing below the window. “Hey! I’m outside now!”

The squirrels stopped moving and sat, listening sharply. Then one of them jumped off the sill into a tree.

“Hey!” Jack called again. He opened the bag he was carrying and pulled out a long rope of peanuts. He shook it at them.

“Look what’s for breakfast,” he said.

The peanuts that Jack had strung together like popcorn clicked in the silent yard, and the squirrels came after them.

Jack draped the rope over a few tree branches and watched, grinning, as the squirrels picked off the nuts.

“Thanks,” he whispered. “Next week, sunflower seeds.”