Part 7 – What Carries Us Forward
Two weeks after the plaque went up, the neighborhood started calling it “Vergil’s Garden.”
It wasn’t a garden, not really—just a narrow lot with some scraggly herbs, the lemon tree, and a handful of hand-painted rocks that kids had started sneaking in after school. But something had changed. People walked a little slower past the fence. Someone added a chipped ceramic bench. A wind chime showed up one morning, made of bent spoons and keys.
Luis visited every few days.
Sometimes with Dot.
Sometimes alone.
Always with something in his pocket—an eraser, a folded sketch, half a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. Little offerings, like he was still trying to say thank you in a language the earth might understand.
At school, the mural was no longer new.
Kids walked past it without staring now. The novelty had faded. But something deeper had settled in its place—a quiet kind of respect. Even the kids who used to ignore Luis now nodded when they passed him in the hall. One of the second-graders called him “The Dog Boy,” but not in a mean way. It almost sounded like a title.
Luis didn’t mind.
Vergil had earned that.
Then came the essay contest results.
Ms. Alvarez called him into the front office before first period.
“You won,” she said, beaming.
Luis blinked. “What?”
“First place. District-wide.”
She handed him a folder with a certificate, a letter from the school board, and a gift card to a local bookstore. “They said your piece made the judges cry.”
Luis looked down at the envelope. His name was printed in bold, block letters:
Luis Mendez
“The Dog on the Wi-Fi Roof”
They published the essay in the school newsletter. They read it aloud at the next PTA meeting. The librarian made a little display with a cardboard rooftop and tiny cutouts of a dog and a bowl.
Luis felt proud.
But not the way he expected.
Not like he’d won something.
More like he’d returned something that never really belonged to him.
At home that night, Rosa put the certificate in a dollar store frame and hung it near the kitchen table.
Dot sniffed it once and sneezed.
Luis laughed. “She says I’m getting a big head.”
Rosa smiled. “Maybe just a big heart.”
The bookstore gift card sat untouched for a few days. Luis didn’t know what to buy—he’d never picked out a brand-new book before. Most of his books came from the swap shelf at the laundromat or a milk crate someone left out after moving.
Eventually, Rosa took him to The Book Nest on Boca Chica Boulevard. The bell above the door jingled like in the movies.
Luis wandered slowly, touching the spines, feeling the weight of stories.
In the back corner, he found a slim hardcover with a blue dog on the front.
“Sounder,” it said.
He turned the first few pages.
By the second paragraph, he was gone—somewhere else.
A porch. A boy. A dog who meant everything.
He clutched the book to his chest like it might disappear.
At the register, Rosa added a sketchpad and a new set of pencils.
“Early birthday,” she whispered.
Luis didn’t argue.
That night, he drew long past bedtime.
Dot curled at his feet, belly full, tail twitching in her sleep.
Luis sketched Sounder first, then Vergil, then a dog that was somehow both. He added rooftops and stairwells, bowls and stars, a boy with tired eyes and a backpack full of questions.
And when he was done, he turned to a clean page.
This one was for Dot.
He drew her sitting beneath the mounted dish, eyes alert, one ear flopped forward like she was listening to some secret frequency no one else could hear.
Underneath it, he wrote:
“She heard the call of the rooftop, too.”
By the end of April, the school announced a new annual tradition.
The principal stood in front of the mural during morning assembly and raised a small silver bowl—engraved and newly polished.
“This,” she said, “is the Vergil Bowl. Each year, we’ll give it to a student who brings quiet strength to our community. Not loud achievements. Not shiny trophies. But kindness. Consistency. Presence.”
Luis felt his heart thump.
Carlos elbowed him. “You know that’s yours, right?”
Luis shrugged. “I’m just glad they remembered him.”
When his name was called, the applause was loud but not overwhelming.
He walked forward with Dot on a short leash, her new red bandana fluttering at her neck.
She didn’t bark or pull. She just walked beside him, ears high, eyes scanning the crowd like she was keeping guard.
He accepted the bowl. It was lighter than it looked.
But he felt the weight of it anyway.
He held it up once, then looked to the mural.
Vergil’s eyes seemed to glow a little under the gym lights.
Luis whispered, “Still with me.”
And maybe he was.
In every dish filled.
In every signal found.
In every quiet rooftop under a waiting sky.
Part 8 – Dot at the Gate
Dot had been with Luis for three months when she finally barked.
It was early summer. The air was thick with the kind of heat that made the pavement shimmer. Luis was on the front steps tying his shoe, when Dot stood up from her patch of shade under the stairwell and let out a low, sharp bark—once, then again.
He looked up, startled. Dot’s ears were forward, her body still, but alert. Not scared.
Focused.
Across the lot, a man in a blue maintenance uniform had dropped a crate of extension cords. He paused, smiled at her, and waved.
“That’s our new tech guy,” Rosa said, appearing behind him with a basket of laundry. “Installing routers in the next building.”
Luis patted Dot’s side. “She’s not used to strangers.”
“Neither were you, once.”
Luis grinned. “Still not.”
Later that day, Dot barked again—this time at the garden gate.
Luis had gone out to water the lemon tree. He brought a little bucket of kitchen scraps for the compost bin and a bottle cap with a ladybug floating inside, something he meant to draw later.
He was on his knees, pulling weeds from around the grave, when Dot growled, then barked—louder, sharper than before.
Luis stood up fast.
There was a girl at the fence—maybe seven or eight, tall for her age, with flyaway braids and a purple folder pressed to her chest like a shield.
She didn’t flinch when Dot barked. Just waited. Quiet.
“You need something?” Luis asked.
“I read your essay,” the girl said. “The one about the dog. We got it in class.”
Luis blinked. “At your school?”
“Yeah. They said you were from here. My cousin lives in Building 5. I’m visiting for the summer.”
Dot gave a low whine, still watching.
“I wanted to see the grave,” the girl said. “If that’s okay.”
Luis hesitated. Then opened the gate.
“Come on in,” he said.
Her name was Jordyn. She wore worn-out sneakers and carried three pencils in her pocket. She knelt without being asked and placed her folder down gently near the lemon tree.
“I never met him,” she said. “But I thought he might like this.”
She unfolded a sheet of lined paper, revealing a drawing of a dog and a boy under a night sky, stars shaped like hearts.
Luis stared at it. The style was shaky, but the feeling was clear.
“You draw?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “Mostly when I’m mad.”
Luis nodded. “That’s a good reason.”
Dot circled once, then sat between them.
“Is this your new dog?”
Luis nodded. “Her name’s Dot.”
“She doesn’t look new. She looks like she’s been here forever.”
Luis smiled. “Yeah. She does.”
They sat together for half an hour, saying little. Dot stayed close, her tail sweeping slow arcs in the dirt.
When Jordyn left, she gave Luis the drawing.
“You should keep it,” she said. “For the notebook.”
He did.
And later that night, he added a line beneath it:
“Some people bring flowers. Some bring memory.”
The next day, Luis brought Dot to the rooftop again.
The air was heavy, a storm rolling in from the Gulf. The sky looked like bruised cotton.
Dot sniffed every corner. She sat beside the dish for a long time, looking out over the city like she had something to say.
Luis sat with her.
He pulled out his sketchbook and began to draw without thinking—Dot, the rooftop, the storm in the distance.
But when he shaded the sky, he added something else.
A second dish. A little smaller. Beside the first.
One for Vergil.
One for Dot.
He stared at the image, heart thumping.
Then he wrote:
“Some legacies are quiet. But they leave space for others to follow.”
By evening, the clouds had broken open.
Rain fell fast and hard, bouncing off the windows, flooding the curbs.
Dot lay under the kitchen table, paws twitching in her sleep.
Luis sat by the window, sketchbook in his lap, watching the garden disappear behind a curtain of water.
He wasn’t sad. Not exactly.
Just still.
Like the rooftop in the rain.
Like a signal waiting to be picked up again.
The next morning, when the storm passed, the air smelled like metal and lemons.
Luis opened the window and breathed deep.
From the stairwell came a soft sound—tap, tap, tap.
Dot’s tail.
Always steady.
Always waiting.
He closed the notebook and followed it.
Some things, he’d learned, you never leave behind.
You just carry them higher.