PART 7 – The Boy Who Followed Pawprints
The fire was nearly out when Marnie burst through the door.
“No time,” she said. “They’re back.”
Jamie scrambled to his feet. Buckshot was already at the door, snarling low and steady.
“How many?” Hollis asked, reaching for the rusted shotgun he kept above the hearth.
“Two. Maybe three,” Marnie said. “Flashlights. I saw ‘em past the east fence.”
Jamie’s heart hammered in his chest.
“Get the dogs in the cellar,” Hollis ordered.
Marnie turned to Jamie. “Go. Now.”
Jamie didn’t argue. He sprinted to the pens, calling names as he went. Elvis stumbled out of the shadows, blinking. Junie turned in circles, agitated by the tension in the air. Gravy barked once, a hoarse, raspy yelp.
One by one, Jamie coaxed them toward the back of the cabin where the old storm door led to a root cellar—dark, musty, lined with shelves of canned tomatoes and brittle rope.
The dogs hesitated.
“Please,” Jamie whispered. “It’s just for a little while.”
Buckshot herded them gently, nudging Junie down the steps with his shoulder.
Jamie followed last, closing the door behind them. A heavy thump sounded as Hollis dropped the wooden bar across it.
“Stay here,” Hollis told him.
But Jamie pressed close to the cellar’s one dusty window. He could see slivers of movement through the slats—dancing light, shadows shifting beyond the fence line.
And then—a voice.
“Hey, old man! We know you’re in there!”
Another voice, louder. “You got no right keeping those mutts! You think a leash makes you God?”
A pause.
Then: glass shattering. A window. Cabin, north side.
Jamie flinched. Buckshot stood stiff beside him, a low growl rising in his throat.
Hollis shouted from somewhere above. “We don’t want trouble!”
“You got it anyway!”
Then a crack. Not wood this time. Not glass.
A gunshot.
Jamie felt everything go still.
Gravy whined in the dark. Junie pressed her head into Jamie’s chest.
Marnie’s voice rang out sharp as a bell. “We’ve called the sheriff!”
A lie. But maybe it would work.
Another shout. Fainter now. Angry, fading. Then silence.
Long, aching silence.
Twenty minutes passed before the cellar door creaked open.
“It’s okay,” Marnie said softly. “They’re gone.”
Jamie stepped out into the cool night air. The porch light flickered weakly overhead. One window was shattered, glass scattered across the rug like ice.
“They shot at us?” he asked.
Hollis nodded, rubbing his leg. “Warning shot. Into the trees.”
“But why?”
Marnie answered, voice low. “Because hurting things smaller than you makes some men feel big. Because kindness scares people who’ve forgotten how to feel it.”
Jamie looked out at the yard.
Every dog was accounted for. Shaken. Quiet. But safe.
“I want to do more,” he said.
Hollis studied him. “More?”
Jamie’s voice wavered, but he didn’t back down. “More drawings. Signs. Stories. But not just for us.”
Marnie raised an eyebrow. “For who then?”
“For town,” Jamie said. “For the people who think this place is just a bunch of strays and crazy dog people. They need to know the truth. That this place matters.”
Marnie opened her mouth to respond—but Hollis beat her to it.
“Then you better get to work.”
Over the next week, Jamie worked like a boy on fire.
He turned every free minute into a drawing—portraits, names, rescue stories. But also scenes: Gravy curled in the crook of Marnie’s arm, Hollis hand-feeding Junie with a spoon, Buckshot standing proud in the sun with his head tilted skyward.
Jamie brought the drawings to school.
He asked Mrs. Talbert if he could put some on the bulletin board.
She stared at them for a long moment—then nodded. “Hang them up.”
By lunch, kids were clustered around the display.
“That one’s missing a toe.”
“Look at this one’s eyes. They look real.”
“Where is this place?”
And then something unexpected happened.
Tommy Frazier—Jamie’s loudest classmate, who once made fun of his quiet voice—walked up and said, “My grandma has a rescue pug. Maybe I could bring some food.”
Jamie blinked.
“Really?”
Tommy shrugged. “Yeah. He’s old and farts a lot. I think he’d like your Buckshot guy.”
Jamie smiled—small, but real. “He probably would.”
On Saturday, the real miracle happened.
Three cars pulled up to the sanctuary gate.
First was a mother with her two kids, both carrying bags of dry kibble. Then a teenage girl in a letterman jacket, holding a leash and a tennis ball. Then a man in dusty work boots with a carton of old blankets in his truck bed.
Word had spread.
Not fast, not loud—but steadily. Whisper to whisper. Sketch to sketch.
By noon, there were seven new volunteers.
Jamie stood near the porch, stunned.
Hollis stepped beside him, shaking his head.
“I spent thirty years trying to keep this place quiet,” he said. “And here you are—making it loud with pencils and paper.”
Jamie looked up at him. “Is that okay?”
Hollis smiled. “Son, it’s better than okay. It’s belonging.”
Marnie called from across the yard, where a kid was brushing Elvis. “He’s smiling,” she said. “Elvis is actually smiling.”
Jamie laughed—and Buckshot barked, a single, proud sound.
The wind shifted. The leaves danced.
And for the first time in a long time, the old cabin didn’t feel like a secret anymore.
It felt like hope.
PART 8 – The Boy Who Followed Pawprints
The next week passed in a kind of golden blur.
Every day after school, Jamie returned to the sanctuary to find someone new waiting by the gate. A quiet man with a limp carrying canned food. A pair of teenage sisters with crates of towels. A bus driver who’d brought bones left over from her husband’s barbecue joint.
And every day, Buckshot met Jamie at the gate like clockwork, tail thumping once, then settling into step beside him like he belonged there—as much a fixture of the place as the crooked porch swing or the smoke from Hollis’s chimney.
The wounds of the break-in hadn’t healed, but something else had taken root in the scar: community.
Even Marnie began to soften. Not smile, exactly—Jamie wasn’t sure she remembered how—but she stopped scowling quite as often.
By Thursday, a local reporter showed up. Jamie spotted the camera first, poking out of the woman’s canvas bag as she climbed out of her car and introduced herself as “Ms. Kenner from the Clinch River Gazette.”
“I heard there’s a boy drawing dogs out here,” she said, squinting in the sunlight. “I’d like to see what’s going on.”
Jamie flushed but nodded. “It’s not just me.”
Ms. Kenner smiled. “That’s even better.”
She spent the afternoon talking with Hollis, photographing the signs Jamie had made, and jotting down quotes from volunteers. At one point, she knelt beside Junie, who licked her notebook and knocked over her pen.
“This one’s a star,” she said.
“That’s Junie,” Jamie told her. “She dances when the fiddle plays.”
Later, when the story was posted on the town bulletin board, Jamie read the headline out loud:
“A Place for the Broken—and the Boys Who Heal Them.”
He didn’t know whether to be proud or embarrassed.
His mother cried when she saw it.
“I just wish your dad could’ve seen this,” she whispered. “He’d have been so proud.”
Jamie handed her the drawing he’d kept folded in his sketchbook—the one of Buckshot and his father standing in the background, side by side.
“He did see it,” Jamie said.
She held the paper for a long time, tracing the lines with trembling fingers.
Then she hugged him so tightly he felt his ribs shift.
That weekend, Jamie arrived early.
The sky was the kind of blue that looked washed clean. Sunlight spilled through the thinning trees in ribbons, and the dogs barked like they were celebrating something.
Hollis waved him over.
“I’ve got a job for you,” he said.
Jamie perked up. “What kind?”
Hollis pointed to the old barn near the back of the property. “We’re clearing that out. Thinking it might be time for a new kennel. Something with insulation. Maybe even heat.”
Jamie grinned. “Really?”
“Really,” Marnie said, appearing beside them. “Place is finally getting too crowded. And loud.”
“She means she’s finally smiling more,” Hollis whispered behind his hand.
“I heard that,” Marnie muttered, but there was no venom in it.
They spent the morning sweeping dust and raccoon droppings out of the barn, hauling scrap wood and rotted crates out into the sunlight. Jamie pulled on gloves that were too big and found a rhythm in the work.
He uncovered old bones, a rusted collar, even a tiny, moth-eaten sweater with the name “Otis” stitched in red thread.
“Otis was a good one,” Hollis said quietly. “Used to sleep in my boot.”
“Did he bark a lot?” Jamie asked.
“Nope. Snored louder than a freight train, though.”
Jamie grinned and tucked the sweater into his backpack. “For remembering.”
By mid-afternoon, the barn had been cleared. Shafts of sunlight broke through the slats in the walls, catching floating dust in golden trails. It didn’t look like much—but to Jamie, it looked like beginning.
That night, Hollis surprised him.
They sat on the porch, the dogs asleep or dozing nearby, when the old man reached down and opened a wooden box Jamie had never noticed before. Inside was a thick leather collar. Stiff, worn, but still strong.
“This,” Hollis said, “was Kip’s.”
Jamie sat forward.
“I’ve never given it to another dog,” Hollis said. “Didn’t feel right. Kip was one of a kind.”
Jamie didn’t say anything. Just waited.
“But,” Hollis went on, “a boy came along and started bringing the dead back to life with pencils and hope and too-big gloves. And I think maybe it’s time this collar had a second chapter.”
He held it out.
“To Buckshot.”
Jamie took it with reverence, as if it were made of gold.
“Will he wear it?”
Hollis nodded. “He already does. You’re just making it official.”
Under the starlight, Jamie fastened the collar gently around Buckshot’s neck. The dog stood still, eyes deep with understanding.
“There,” Jamie whispered. “Now you belong, too.”
Buckshot nudged him once, then laid his head on Jamie’s knee.
And in that moment, something clicked—like a final piece falling into place.
This place…
This dog…
These people…
They weren’t just part of Jamie’s life anymore.
They were his life.
The sanctuary was no longer just a secret place in the woods.
It was home.