Part 4 – When It Rains Again
McDowell County, West Virginia
August 15, 2002 – 5:22 PM
The rain came again on a Thursday.
Not a storm.
Not yet.
Just a steady tapping on the roof of the temporary trailer like someone asking to be let in.
Inside, Maddy Tanner stood barefoot in the kitchen, holding a bowl of kibble.
Her hands trembled — just a little.
The bowl rattled against the counter.
Across the room, August wagged his crooked tail.
He was six weeks old now.
Or maybe eight.
No one knew for sure.
His paws were too big for his body.
He tripped over himself twice before reaching her feet.
Maddy still hadn’t called him “mine.”
But she no longer flinched when he licked her wrist.
She knelt slowly.
Put the bowl down.
August dove in with the kind of hunger only a survivor knows.
Maddy sat on the floor beside him, knees tucked to her chest.
The rain hit harder now — faster.
A rhythm that echoed memory.
Her father was in town, helping gut a neighbor’s ruined house.
Her mother was boiling water for laundry.
Her grandma was upstairs with a headache.
So when the thunder cracked, no one noticed Maddy freeze.
Except August.
He lifted his head, tiny white chin wet with food.
He stared at her.
Not moving.
Not blinking.
Maddy pulled the denim ribbon from her wrist and stared at it.
It was damp from her palm.
Frayed at the edges.
Still knotted — exactly how she’d tied it around Rufus’s paw.
She whispered, “Don’t be him.”
August tilted his head.
“Don’t try to be,” she added.
“I can’t do that again.”
She stood.
Went to the window.
The yard was mud and wood planks, with one wild sunflower blooming near the back fence.
And there, just beyond it — water.
Not rising.
Not dangerous.
Just water.
Still, her stomach clenched.
A month ago, she wouldn’t have looked away.
Now, she couldn’t stop looking.
August padded over, pawed her bare ankle.
His nails still too soft to scratch.
His eyes round and wondering.
She sighed.
Turned away from the window.
And whispered, “Okay. We’ll go out. Just a minute.”
They stepped into the rain together.
Maddy in an oversized coat.
August hopping in and out of puddles like each one was a new country.
She led him to the edge of the field behind the trailer lots.
That’s where the grave was.
Rufus’s grave.
Still marked by the wooden cross, still guarded by the sycamore tree.
The cereal box nameplate had curled at the edges.
But it was still legible.
RUFUS
Good Dog. Better Friend.
Maddy knelt in the grass.
The earth was soft but settled.
She didn’t cry.
Not this time.
Instead, she pulled the denim ribbon from her pocket.
Untied the knot.
Let it fall into the weeds beside the cross.
“You don’t have to stay in me anymore,” she whispered.
“You can go now.”
August didn’t bark.
He sat beside her.
Quiet.
Solid.
The rain lightened.
Clouds pulled apart like old curtains.
A golden edge began to show in the west.
August stood and wandered off a few steps.
Maddy watched him sniff the tall grass.
He barked once — sharp, high-pitched, but proud of it.
She smiled.
Then the wind shifted.
The air changed.
And so did August.
He turned his head toward the treeline.
Body stiff.
Nose twitching.
A second bark — louder.
His paws dug into the earth.
Maddy stood.
“August?”
He growled.
Low.
Small — but certain.
And then they saw it.
Between the trees.
A shape.
Dark. Low to the ground.
Moving slow.
Maddy’s breath caught.
A bear?
A coyote?
Another stray?
August barked again and stepped forward.
“No,” Maddy said sharply.
She grabbed his collar.
“You stay with me.”
The shape paused.
Maddy squinted.
The light shifted.
And the shape collapsed.
It wasn’t an animal.
It was a man.
She ran.
August at her heels.
When she reached him, he was breathing.
Barely.
Face caked in mud.
Jeans torn, one boot missing.
His lips moved, but no sound came out.
“Dad!” she screamed toward the house.
“Grandma!”
She bent low.
“It’s okay,” she told him, though she didn’t know if that was true.
“You’re okay.”
August sat beside the man.
Didn’t move.
Didn’t lick.
Just sat — like he knew he needed to keep watch.
Maddy pulled off her coat.
Wrapped it around the stranger’s shoulders.
His eyes fluttered.
And then, a whisper.
Just one word:
“Charlie…”
Maddy froze.
She knew that name.
Charlie Whitaker.
The firefighter’s son.
Missing since the night of the flood.
Presumed dead.
She blinked fast.
Her knees hit the wet grass.
Her breath came in short bursts.
“You held on,” she whispered.
Then louder:
“He’s alive! Somebody — HE’S ALIVE!”
Behind her, the trailer door slammed open.
Boots in the mud.
Voices in the rain.
August lay beside the man — still, proud, guarding something fragile and returning.
And Maddy?
She looked up toward the clouds — wide-eyed, breathless.
A second chance had just walked out of the woods.
And this time,
she hadn’t gone back…
but someone else had found her.
Part 5 – The Boy Who Didn’t Drown
McDowell County, West Virginia
August 15, 2002 – 6:12 PM
The rain had stopped.
But the ground still pulsed with water, like the land hadn’t finished crying yet.
Inside the Tanners’ trailer, the boy lay on the couch, wrapped in quilts that smelled of cedar and river silt.
His face was drawn. Pale. Lips cracked like dry clay.
But he was alive.
And Maddy couldn’t stop looking at him.
He hadn’t said another word since “Charlie.”
Hadn’t opened his eyes, either.
But that one whisper was enough.
Charlie Whitaker.
Seventeen years old. Junior firefighter.
Vanished the night of the flood while helping an elderly couple evacuate.
No one had seen him since.
People had searched for days.
They’d pulled two bodies from the creek.
And a third, found three miles downriver, was never fully identified.
Everyone assumed Charlie had been one of them.
Until now.
Maddy sat beside him in silence.
August curled up beneath the couch, head resting on her bare foot.
Her father had returned.
Her mother boiled clean towels.
Grandma prayed softly in the kitchen, thumb circling her rosary like a clock that couldn’t stop ticking.
“I don’t understand,” her mother said, voice hushed but tight.
“How did he survive? Where’s he been all this time?”
No one answered.
A medic finally arrived from the relief station in Welch.
Middle-aged, gray-stubbled, steady hands.
He checked vitals, cleaned wounds, shook his head.
“Malnourished. Hypothermic. Dehydrated. But no broken bones.”
He looked at Maddy.
“Did you find him like that?”
She nodded.
“And the dog didn’t leave his side,” she added quietly.
The medic raised an eyebrow.
“Well, then. That pup saved his life.”
Maddy glanced down at August.
He didn’t react.
Just blinked, then closed his eyes again.
She wondered if he knew what he’d done.
Or if dogs just did things because hearts don’t stop to ask why.
Later that night, the boy stirred.
His eyes fluttered, then opened slowly, like a curtain pulled halfway across a window.
Maddy leaned in.
He looked at her — not startled, not confused.
Just… tired.
“You’re safe,” she whispered.
“You’re home.”
He blinked once.
Tried to sit up. Failed.
Then whispered, “The couple… the old man… did they…?”
Maddy hesitated.
Then shook her head gently.
“I don’t think so.”
He turned his face toward the wall.
Didn’t cry.
Didn’t speak.
Just breathed — the kind of breath that sounds like it hurts going in.
She stayed beside him.
Didn’t say much.
Didn’t need to.
It was the same kind of silence she’d shared with Rufus.
And maybe that’s why she understood him without asking questions.
The next morning, Charlie sat up.
He wore one of her father’s flannel shirts and a pair of gym shorts tied at the waist with twine.
His skin was sunburned at the collar, dirt still deep under his fingernails.
He ate two boiled eggs, a slice of toast, and drank half a jar of well water without stopping.
Then he looked at Maddy and said,
“I don’t remember your name. I’m sorry.”
“Maddy Tanner.”
He nodded.
Then looked at the dog.
“What’s his name?”
“August.”
“That his birthday?”
“No,” she said. “It’s mine. I gave it to him. Because he came when everything else left.”
Charlie nodded again.
Didn’t smile.
But something in his face softened.
After breakfast, they walked — slowly — to the edge of the field.
The air was thick with the scent of wet leaves and wood smoke.
Maddy led him past the sunflowers to the grave under the sycamore.
She said nothing.
Just stood beside it.
Charlie read the name.
Touched the wooden cross.
Ran his fingers over the cereal-box nameplate.
Then said, “Was he yours?”
She nodded.
Then added, “He’s the reason I went back.”
Charlie sat down in the grass.
“They said I was dead.”
Maddy sat beside him.
“They said that about Rufus, too.”
He stared at the dirt.
His eyes were the color of the creek — muddy, shifting, alive beneath the surface.
“I got swept past the old mill,” he said, voice flat. “Everything was noise. Wood. Water. Screaming. Then… black.”
He paused.
“Next thing I knew, I was in the woods. On my back. Mud in my mouth. I couldn’t move for two days.”
“Then what?” she asked.
“I crawled. Ate berries. Drank rain. Slept in a deer blind.”
“Alone?”
“Not really.”
He looked down.
“There was a dog.”
Maddy’s breath caught.
“Describe him.”
“Red fur. White paw. Looked like a ghost.”
She blinked.
Her voice barely audible:
“Did he have a sock on his front left leg?”
Charlie turned.
“Yeah. Like he stepped in paint.”
Maddy stood up too fast.
Her heart slammed in her chest.
“That can’t be. He died. He—”
She stopped.
Charlie looked confused.
But not disbelieving.
“Maybe it wasn’t him,” he said slowly.
“But he was there every night. Curled up beside me. Warm.”
Maddy put her hand over her mouth.
The field spun.
August sat quietly beside her, ears twitching.
Then Charlie added:
“And he was gone the morning I saw your dog.”
They stared at each other.
The boy who didn’t drown.
The girl who went back.
And the two dogs who had walked with them through the water.
After a long silence, Charlie whispered,
“Maybe love stays longer than we think.”
Maddy didn’t answer.
Just looked at Rufus’s grave.
And smiled.
Part 6 – Where Memory Sleeps
McDowell County, West Virginia
August 20, 2002 – Just Before Dusk
There are places where memory clings to the trees.
Where footsteps echo even after they stop.
Where a name whispered into the woods can sometimes come back.
Maddy Tanner and Charlie Whitaker stood at the edge of such a place.
Behind them was the world rebuilding — chainsaws, hammers, plastic sheeting.
But in front of them: the slope into the woods where Charlie had survived for nearly two weeks.
Where he swore a dead dog had laid beside him in the dark.
Charlie wore her father’s old backpack and held a flashlight.
August trotted ahead, nose to the ground, tail stiff as a branch.
Maddy walked slowly.
She wasn’t sure what she was looking for.
But something inside her — something that hadn’t rested since Rufus died — was pulling her forward.
The path was faint.
More deer trail than road.
But Charlie knew it by heart.
He pointed to a notch in the tree bark.
“First night, I crawled here. Slept with my back against that tree.”
He moved a few feet and tapped a rotted log.
“Second night, I had a fever. Dreamed I was under water.”
Maddy didn’t speak.
She watched his eyes.
He wasn’t telling her a story.
He was reliving it.
They reached a small rise near a thicket of ferns.
“This was it,” Charlie said.
“The deer blind. My last shelter.”
Maddy stepped forward.
It wasn’t much.
Two planks nailed between three saplings.
Moss growing up one side.
Inside, a nest of dead leaves.
But something about it made her throat tighten.
August sniffed the corners.
Let out a soft bark.
Charlie crouched and pulled a ragged cloth from the pile.
It was gray, stained, and chewed at the edge.
He handed it to Maddy.
“Found this here. Used it for a pillow. Didn’t realize until later it smelled like dog.”
She turned it over in her hands.
It was a piece of a towel.
Thin stripes — blue and orange — like the ones her family used to dry off Rufus after a bath.
Her knees gave slightly.
She sat on a flat rock and stared into the trees.
“I keep thinking I’m crazy,” Charlie said.
“That maybe I imagined him.”
Maddy didn’t look at him.
“Maybe you didn’t.”
He waited.
“Rufus was the kind of dog who never left your side,” she said softly.
“Even after he went blind. He’d find you. Somehow. Always.”
A breeze passed through the leaves.
Soft. Cool.
It carried the smell of rain-wet bark and something older — like fur left in the sun too long.
Charlie reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded square of paper.
“Found this under the plank.”
He handed it to her.
Maddy opened it with care.
It was faded — maybe once white, now the color of creekstone.
In a child’s handwriting, barely legible:
“I’m not afraid of the dark. Not if you’re there too.”
No name.
No date.
Just that.
Maddy felt her breath catch.
“That’s mine,” she said.
“I wrote that to Rufus… the first night I slept outside after Grandpa died.”
Charlie stared.
“Then maybe this is his trail, not mine.”
They sat in silence.
Behind them, August barked once — sharp.
Maddy turned.
He stood on the other side of the clearing, looking toward a patch of tangled brush.
His tail low.
Ears forward.
They rose and crossed to him.
Charlie pushed aside the undergrowth.
There, nestled between rocks and broken branches, was a hollow.
Inside it — fur.
Faded red-brown. Tufted.
Pressed into the earth like something had curled there and stayed.
Maddy dropped to her knees.
Ran her fingers over it.
It was dry.
Old.
But real.
“Rufus,” she whispered.
Then louder.
“You were here.”
She wasn’t crying.
Not quite.
But her chest ached the way it does when something buried too long finally surfaces.
Charlie crouched beside her.
He didn’t touch the fur.
Just bowed his head.
“You kept me alive,” he murmured.
Not to her.
To the hollow.
To the memory.
Maddy reached into her coat pocket.
Pulled out the last scrap of the cereal-box nameplate.
The ink had nearly faded.
She pressed it gently into the earth beside the fur.
“I don’t need a grave,” she said.
“This is enough.”
The trees seemed to lean in closer.
As if they’d heard.
As if they remembered, too.
That night, back at the trailer, Charlie stayed for dinner.
They ate beef stew from paper bowls.
Her father laughed for the first time in weeks.
August curled under the table, paws twitching in his sleep.
After everyone else had gone to bed, Maddy stood outside.
The moon was thin and silver.
She held the chewed towel and the note in her hands.
Folded them together.
Pressed them to her heart.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“To whoever — whatever — sent him.”
In the distance, a whip-poor-will called once.
Then silence.
Inside, August lifted his head.
Not to bark.
Just to listen.
Then rested again,
as if the night had finally told him all it needed to say.
To be continued…
(In Part 7: The town rebuilds. A girl learns to run again. And a storm of memory returns uninvited.)