Part 8 – The Ash and the Scar
Russell Cain made it back down the ridge, but not without help.
Karim met him halfway with a folded chair and a quiet look that said more than pity.
Russell didn’t protest this time. He let himself be helped.
His right leg had swollen to twice its usual size, the knee hot and hard beneath his jeans.
Every step felt like bone scraping bone.
But his face was calm.
Something had settled in him up there.
Something that didn’t need words.
Omar was waiting back at the house.
No ceremony, no speech.
Just a small box set on the table, wrapped in cloth the color of sand.
Karim helped Russell to sit.
His breath was shallow, the muscles in his back twitching from holding posture too long.
Omar slid the box forward.
“She is here,” he said softly.
Russell’s fingers hovered before touching it.
The fabric was worn, edges hand-stitched. A woman must’ve sewn this, Russell thought. Maybe Omar’s mother. Maybe a sister.
Someone who cared enough to make grief feel gentle.
He pulled back the wrap.
Beneath it was a carved wooden box, simple and dark.
No lock.
No hinges.
Just a lid, smoothed by time.
Inside, a small bag of ash.
Light gray. Fine as flour.
And beside it, a fragment of bone, barely the length of a matchstick.
Russell didn’t flinch.
He reached in with both hands, cradled the bag as if it were breathing.
“She passed on her own,” Omar said, his voice barely more than air.
“One morning, she didn’t rise. I buried her under the black rock. My uncle helped me carve the marker.”
“You kept her all these years,” Russell said.
“Why?”
Omar smiled, just a little.
“Because she never asked anything. Not food. Not warmth. Just to watch the door. And the field. And me.”
He paused.
“She looked east every evening. Until her last day.”
Russell turned to the window.
Outside, a dog barked.
Far off, a rooster crowed.
But all he could hear was the soft scratch of Dusty’s paws across old floorboards, echoes folding into memory.
He unzipped the front of his coat, slid the bag of ash inside—close to his heart.
It didn’t weigh much.
But it felt like something sacred.
That night, in the small guest room Omar had offered him, Russell sat on the edge of the bed and rolled up his pant leg.
His knee was purple now.
Hot, pulsing. Fluid pooled around the joint.
It looked like war.
His body was waving a white flag.
Karim knocked gently on the door.
“You need a hospital, sir. This is… serious.”
Russell didn’t answer at first.
Then said:
“We go back to the ridge tomorrow. One more time.”
“You can’t walk.”
“Then carry me.”
Karim looked away, jaw clenched.
“You’ll do more damage. You might not come back down.”
“I know,” Russell said.
“But I didn’t come here for coming back.”
That night he couldn’t sleep.
So he sat by the open window, the box beside him on the sill.
The pain was sharp now—his entire leg stiff as iron.
His back spasmed if he leaned too far.
His fingers could barely button his shirt.
But his mind was clear.
He took out his wallet and unfolded an old photograph.
His wife, Marlene, laughing on a summer afternoon.
Hair pinned back, freckles bright in the sun.
He remembered the day he told her Dusty was gone.
She had cried, more than he had.
Said, “That dog loved you more than life. That kind of loyalty doesn’t die.”
Now he wondered if she’d somehow known.
At dawn, Omar appeared with a mule.
Small, sturdy, used to carrying stone.
Russell didn’t argue.
He let Karim lift him up gently, one arm around his shoulders, wincing as the weight shifted.
The mule moved slowly up the ridge.
Russell held the box against his chest the entire way.
Never loosened his grip.
At the grave, the sky was open and blue.
The chalked paw print had faded overnight.
But the shape still lingered, like breath on glass.
Russell dismounted, barely able to stand.
He sat beside the stone and opened the box.
From his coat, he pulled out a small cloth satchel—the same one that had once held his wife’s ashes before Nebraska.
He emptied half of Dusty’s ash into it.
Tied it shut with a bootlace.
Tucked it back into his coat pocket.
The rest, he poured gently around the base of the marker.
The wind picked up.
Swirled the ash into the air—briefly, beautifully—before it settled into the earth.
“I couldn’t give you peace then,” he whispered.
“But I can now.”
He reached into his pocket, pulled out something else.
A silver military pin—his unit badge.
He placed it on the stone, right over the faint paw print.
Pressed it down into the rock with his palm.
“You served better than any of us,” he said.
“And you never asked for anything.”
His eyes closed.
Not sleep.
Just… stillness.
And in the stillness, he heard her breathing.
Not in memory.
Not in dream.
Here.
Now.