Part 6 – “The Box by the Register”
Harold didn’t count the cards.
He told himself it wasn’t about the number. But each time he slid open Jasper’s old biscuit box beneath the register, it felt heavier. Not in weight, exactly — in meaning. A cardboard box could only hold so much paper. But love? Memory? That stuff leaked through the seams.
By midweek, there were at least thirty.
Some folded from printer paper. Some torn from journal pages. One was written on the back of a grocery receipt. All of them said the same thing in different ways:
We saw you.
We remember.
You mattered.
Jasper hadn’t left the towel in two days. He barely lifted his head anymore. Sometimes he whimpered in his sleep — not in pain, Harold hoped, but in dreams. Maybe of creeks and fields. Maybe of the first day they met, when Harold pulled him from a pile of trash behind the shop and said, “You’re not done yet, boy.”
Now it was Harold who wasn’t done. Not yet.
He moved slower each morning. His joints flared. His stomach soured if he skipped a meal — which he often did. The dizzy spells came and went, silent as shadows. But he didn’t tell anyone. Didn’t call the doctor. Didn’t call anyone.
Because there was Jasper.
Still here.
Still trying.
So Harold did too.
The bell jingled just after noon.
It was Lila Wainscot, the one with the bright orange scarves and the whispery voice. She didn’t speak at first — just handed him a shoebox covered in brown paper.
On top: a label in blocky pen.
For Jasper’s Box. From All of Us.
Harold raised a brow. “What is it?”
“Open it later,” she said. “When it’s quiet.”
Then she turned and walked out, scarf fluttering behind her like a prayer.
He set it behind the counter.
Didn’t touch it again for hours.
That afternoon, he tried carving again.
He could hold the blade, but not steadily. His fingers cramped. The grooves came out uneven, the curves too tight. The little bird in his hand looked crooked, lopsided — like something halfway between flying and falling.
He tossed it gently into the scrap bin.
Sat beside Jasper instead.
The dog’s ears didn’t twitch anymore. His breathing had settled into something deeper — not worse, just closer. Closer to stillness. Closer to whatever came after the staying.
Harold brushed the fur behind Jasper’s ear. It used to be jet black. Now it was silvering, like the frost that came early on the windows each October.
“You know,” he said, “I never asked for much in this life.”
Jasper’s chest rose once.
“I didn’t want a big house. Didn’t want promotions. Medals. Speeches.”
He swallowed.
“I just wanted one thing. One soul to stick around long enough to know me — all of me. Even the parts I don’t like to admit.”
The wind pushed at the windows then. A soft rattle.
Like the town was listening.
Jasper didn’t lift his head.
But his paw — slow, trembling — moved until it rested against Harold’s wrist.
The same wrist that wore a medic’s ID band from a war three decades ago.
The same wrist Jasper had nuzzled when Harold collapsed in the shop six years back, hypoglycemic and too stubborn to admit it.
Harold closed his eyes.
“Yeah,” he whispered. “You knew me.”
That night, he opened the box Lila had brought.
Inside were cards. Dozens. Maybe hundreds.
All hand-cut, hand-colored, hand-folded.
Each one from a different person.
Some simple: “He made me feel seen.”
Some poetic: “The dog didn’t need to speak. His eyes were enough.”
One from a child: “Jasper is my hero. I want to be like him. I won’t leave when things get sad.”
One from Paul, the widower: “Harold, you let me cry when no one else could. Jasper just sat beside me. I swear he knew her name.”
And at the bottom, a single photograph.
An old one.
A photo Harold didn’t remember anyone taking.
It showed the front of the shop — Harold sitting on the bench out front, head bent over a tiny bird carving.
Jasper was beside him, ears up, looking not at the camera, but at Harold.
Looking like he always did — like Harold was the only person left in the world who mattered.
Harold stared at the photo until the edges blurred from tears he didn’t bother to wipe away.
Then he placed it in the biscuit box.
Closed the lid.
And sat with Jasper for the rest of the night.
When the dawn came, it did not come loud.
It crept in.
Softly.
The heater kicked on. The shop filled with golden light. A truck passed on Main Street, too fast, scattering dry leaves.
Jasper did not move.
But Harold was still there beside him.
And the biscuit box had never been more full.