📖 Part 3: “Asking Around”
Walter H. McKinley had never been one for small talk.
He delivered the mail, nodded when spoken to, and kept his words tucked away like old letters no one wanted to read anymore.
But that morning, as he tightened the laces on his boots and slipped Margaret Jean’s flannel jacket over his shoulders, he made up his mind.
He was going to ask.
The sky was a soft gray quilt overhead, the kind of sky that smelled like rain waiting to happen. Walter shuffled out onto the porch, glanced down the empty street, and muttered a prayer under his breath.
At the first stop on his route — the crumbling white house belonging to Mrs. Marla Kitteridge — he lingered longer than usual after slipping the bills into the mailbox.
Mrs. Kitteridge was out front, kneeling painfully in her garden, her hands buried deep in the dirt around her stubborn hydrangeas.
Walter cleared his throat.
She looked up, squinting against the light. “Mornin’, Walter.”
He tapped the brim of his cap. “Mornin’, Marla.”
There was an awkward pause.
Walter scratched the back of his neck. “You… uh… happen to see a dog ‘round here? Little scrappy fella. Brown with black patches. Limp in his hind leg.”
Marla wiped her hands on her apron and leaned on her cane to stand.
“You mean that sweet mutt that’s been tailing you the past few weeks?” she asked, smiling a little.
Walter grunted. “Maybe.”
“Haven’t seen him,” she said, frowning now. “Not for a few days. Thought maybe you’d taken him home.”
Walter shook his head. “Ain’t my dog.”
But the words tasted wrong on his tongue.
Marla’s eyes softened. She patted his arm gently. “Sometimes, we don’t pick family. Sometimes they pick us.”
Walter mumbled something noncommittal and hurried on.
At the bakery, Mary-Lou handed him a loaf of day-old bread wrapped in brown paper — a silent kindness she’d started since his Margaret passed.
“Looking for your shadow today, Walter?” she teased gently as she tucked the loaf into his satchel.
He stiffened. “Ain’t mine,” he muttered.
But Mary-Lou just smiled in that knowing way women have. “Well, if I see him, I’ll send him your way.”
The rest of the route blurred into a slow ache.
No brown shape darting across the road. No warm breath puffing in the cold morning air. Just the steady, lonesome sound of Walter’s boots against the sidewalk.
At lunchtime, instead of heading back to the post office, Walter detoured toward the edge of town.
There was an old service station there, long abandoned, its windows broken out and its walls scrawled with fading graffiti. Kids used to dare each other to sneak inside back when Walter was a younger man.
He approached slowly, heart thudding.
Inside, the station smelled of oil and mold and long-forgotten summers.
“Here, boy,” Walter called, his voice rough, echoing off the cracked concrete walls.
No answer.
He knelt down, grunting at the protest of his knees, and set a strip of jerky on the ground.
Then he waited.
And waited.
Outside, a crow called raucously from the rusted gas pump.
Walter sighed, standing slowly, joints popping like dry twigs. He left the jerky there, tucked behind a stack of old tires, just in case.
The walk home felt longer that day.
Every creak of a porch step, every gust of wind through the brittle cornfields made him look up sharply, hope leaping in his chest — only to fall again when he saw nothing but emptiness.
That evening, after tossing the untouched loaf of bread onto the counter, Walter pulled out an old shoebox from the closet.
Inside were photographs yellowed with age: Margaret Jean smiling wide on their wedding day, his father holding up a fish bigger than his arm, and one photo of a boy — barely twelve — laughing as a floppy-eared beagle licked his face.
Walter sat heavily in his worn armchair and stared at that picture for a long time.
Funny, how grief could wait in the corners of a man’s heart for decades, only to rise up with the smallest crack in the armor.
He thought he’d patched himself up good over the years. Thought he’d learned how to outwalk loneliness.
But that scrappy mutt had snuck in somehow, through the same cracks Walter had stopped guarding.
And now, the silence he left behind was louder than any bark.
Walter placed the photo back into the box, shut the lid carefully, and wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his flannel.
Tomorrow, he promised himself.
Tomorrow, he would search again.
📖 Part 4: “The First Clue”
The next morning, Walter was out the door before the sun had fully clawed its way over the horizon.
The air was cooler now, crisp enough to turn his breath to mist. He tugged Margaret Jean’s flannel tighter around him and set out, his boots echoing against the quiet pavement.
Today, he told himself, he wouldn’t just walk the route.
Today, he would search every alley, every ditch, every broken-down shed between Elm Street and the riverbank.
He carried a sandwich in one pocket, two strips of jerky in the other, and a stubborn hope lodged somewhere deep beneath the years of hard living.
By the time the town’s bakery opened its doors and the first smell of fresh bread drifted onto Main Street, Walter had already searched half the town.
Nothing.
He scowled and leaned against a lamppost, catching his breath.
“You alright there, Walt?” called Sheriff Alvin Brewer, stepping out of the diner with a coffee in hand.
Walter hesitated.
He wasn’t much for sharing.
But something about the soft kindness in Al’s weathered face broke down the walls a little.
“Lookin’ for a dog,” Walter muttered.
Al cocked his head. “That same mutt that was following you around last month?”
Walter nodded.
Al sipped his coffee thoughtfully. “Heard tell from Old Man Pearson that a brown stray was sniffin’ around the abandoned canning factory outside town.”
Walter straightened.
The canning factory had been shuttered since ’79, back when the last of the Boone Pickle Company packed up and left. The building was a skeleton now, windows busted out, vines crawling up its brick bones.
“Thanks,” Walter grunted, already moving.
It was a long walk past the edge of town, where the pavement crumbled into gravel and the wild grass grew tall and unbothered.
Walter’s knees complained with every step, but he ignored them.
By the time he reached the factory gates, the sun was a pale coin overhead, struggling to burn away the morning mist.
The place looked dead.
Rusting machines sat frozen behind broken windows. An old “No Trespassing” sign flapped halfheartedly in the breeze.
Walter climbed through a gap in the fence, boots crunching over gravel.
“Here, boy,” he called, voice low but firm.
Only the soft creak of metal answered.
He picked his way carefully across the cracked asphalt lot, calling every few steps.
Then, near the side loading dock, he spotted it.
A paw print.
Small, pressed into a patch of mud, already beginning to dry.
Walter crouched down, heart thumping.
It wasn’t much — just a single print — but it was fresh.
And it was the right size. The right shape.
He wasn’t imagining things.
The mutt was still out here somewhere.
Walter rose slowly, joints stiff.
He searched the loading dock first, shining his flashlight into the shadows. Broken pallets, rusted barrels, old coils of wire — but no dog.
He circled the building next, poking into every open door, calling softly.
In one corner of the factory yard, half-hidden by tall weeds, he found an old shipping crate, its side cracked open just wide enough for something small to crawl inside.
Walter knelt down, peering into the dark hollow.
Inside, nestled among a pile of dry leaves and bits of newspaper, was a nest.
A rough bed, pawed into shape by something desperate for shelter.
Walter felt the ache in his chest sharpen.
The dog had been here.
Recently.
He pulled a piece of jerky from his pocket and set it gently by the crate’s opening.
Then he sat down on the ground, ignoring the sharp protest of his knees, and waited.
Minutes passed. Maybe hours.
The sky shifted overhead, the clouds thinning into ragged strips of white.
Walter stayed still, eyes half-closed, breathing slow.
Once, he thought he heard a soft shuffle in the weeds.
He sat up straighter, heart pounding.
“Easy, boy,” he whispered. “Ain’t nobody gonna hurt you.”
But nothing came.
Finally, when the sun dipped low and painted the factory walls in rust-red light, Walter stood.
He left the jerky by the crate.
And he left something else, too — a strip of his old flannel jacket, torn carefully from the inside hem.
Something that smelled like home.
Something that said, I’m here. I’ll wait.
As he limped back toward town, the shadows stretching long behind him, Walter realized something:
He wasn’t just looking for the dog anymore.
He was looking for a piece of himself he thought he’d lost a long time ago.
