Part 6 – “The Dog Who Sat at the Polling Station”
October crept in on the wind.
The kind that carried whispers—of woodsmoke, of raked leaves, of things long buried. Troy, Alabama, smelled like endings and beginnings. The kind of air that made folks linger a little longer on their porches and say each other’s names with more weight.
Election Day was coming.
Not the big one, but the kind folks forget: local judges, school board seats, county amendments. The kind that decides textbooks and bus stops and water lines. The kind that Leonard Ray had waited for.
The Justice Ray Express had never been busier.
Two new volunteers, Danielle and Terrence—both seniors at the high school—took over scheduling. They mapped routes with color-coded stickers, printed brochures on Mr. Willis’s old inkjet, and brought in a folding ramp for accessibility.
The van now stopped at the women’s shelter every Tuesday.
The parole office every Thursday.
And the old Wal-Mart parking lot on Saturdays, where farm workers gathered at sunrise with thermoses and calloused hands.
Darnell still came along when he could, though the steps were slower now. He sat in the passenger seat mostly, hat low, coat folded on his lap. Not the weather for it anymore, but he kept it close.
Some days, he swore it smelled faintly of cedar and dog hair.
—
One evening, they visited an assisted living center.
A woman named Mrs. Winona Givens shuffled to the van with the help of a walker, her floral dress flapping in the breeze.
“I haven’t voted since 1978,” she said. “No ride. No ID. No point.”
Maribel, home again for a long weekend, knelt beside her.
“Well, today we’ve got all three.”
They wheeled her into the van, where she filled out an absentee application with trembling fingers. When she finished, she placed her hand on the mural painted across the interior wall.
She traced Justice’s ear.
“Dogs remember better than people,” she said.
Darnell nodded. “This one did.”
—
That night, after the route ended, the students sat in the back of the van, passing around a bag of kettle corn and telling stories.
Darnell leaned against the open door, watching the stars punch through the dusk like old ghosts blinking back into memory.
“Mr. Willis?” Danielle’s voice broke through the chatter. “Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“Why’d you keep showing up? Even before the van?”
He looked down at the collar resting in his lap.
Because he didn’t, for so long.
Because he owed it.
Because sometimes, the best you can do is stand still and let the people who were silenced walk through the door you once failed to open.
“I made a mistake,” he said.
The van went quiet.
“A long time ago. A student of mine… I saw him get turned away. And I didn’t speak up.”
He folded the collar back into the coat.
“I’ve been trying to speak up ever since.”
—
The next morning, a note was taped to the polling station door.
In shaky handwriting, scrawled in blue ink:
I remember Leonard too. He shared his sandwich with me once. Nobody else did.
I see the van. I see the kids. I know he would’ve smiled.
— D
No one knew who D was.
No one ever came forward.
But Darnell read the note three times and tucked it into his inside coat pocket, beside the letter from the Friend and the picture of Leonard and Justice.
He didn’t need a name.
Just the knowing.
—
On the Sunday before the election, a storm rolled in. The kind that pounded the roof and knocked the lights out. The kind that made dogs pace and old men ache.
Darnell sat by his window, the coat folded neatly on the ottoman, the collar resting atop it.
Outside, the mural was soaked.
But still visible.
The figures didn’t run or fade.
Leonard sat beneath the oak, paper in hand.
And Justice, as always, watched the door.
Waiting.
Not for someone to let him in.
But for someone else to walk through.