Part 4: Rust and Reverence
The next morning, Jack woke to a sharp cramp in his lower leg. It felt like a fist squeezing bone. He gritted his teeth and sat up slow, blinking against the gray light filtering through the blinds.
Rex was already awake.
The dog lay in the same spot by the space heater, head up, ears twitching slightly, nose pointed toward Jack like a compass needle that had finally found home.
“You beat me to it,” Jack muttered, swinging his legs off the mattress.
He shuffled into the kitchen, cracked the tap, and took his insulin the way he always did—quiet, deliberate, without fanfare. He didn’t measure breakfast. Just poured a mug of stale cereal and drank the milk.
Rex didn’t beg. Never had.
But when Jack broke off a piece of toast and dropped it beside the water bowl, the old dog ate it without looking up.
The days fell into a rhythm neither of them needed to discuss.
Jack walked slowly. Rex slower.
They took two laps around the block in the morning, another in the afternoon. Sometimes kids from the neighborhood would wave, and the dog’s ears would perk—but no one came close. Not yet.
Jack found a little peace in the silence.
He didn’t say much to Rex—didn’t have to. A tap on the thigh, a soft word, the scrape of a chair—Rex followed it all. Not with the snappy discipline of wartime, but with the understanding of two things grown old together.
He slept through most nights now. Jack did, too. Fewer nightmares.
Still, the bad days came.
Late one afternoon, after a walk that took twice as long as it should’ve, Jack stood at the kitchen counter staring into the fridge.
Half a loaf of bread. Some mustard. A carton of eggs two days past the date.
The headache behind his eyes pulsed in a familiar rhythm: the low throb of hunger and high blood sugar dancing out of step again. His limbs felt thick. Heavy.
He opened the bread, sniffed it, then tossed the heel into the trash. The rest he saved. Maybe tomorrow it would seem fresher.
He poured Rex’s kibble, using the last quarter of the bag. The scooping sound brought the old dog limping in from the heater. No tail wag this time—just tired eyes and a grunt.
“You and me both, partner,” Jack said.
That night, Jack sat on the porch steps, sipping lukewarm water from a chipped mug.
The neighborhood was quiet. Crickets and screen doors, the occasional rustle of wind through bare trees.
He thought about calling his sister. About telling her Rex was back.
But she hadn’t answered the last five times. Not since she’d told him he was a drain on the family. That if Dad were alive, he’d be ashamed of what Jack had become.
“A war hero living off handouts and government pity,” she’d said once. “Grow up.”
He never called again.
But that night, sitting in the cold with an old dog snoring at his feet, Jack found himself whispering into the dark.
“I’m trying,” he said. “I really am.”
The next morning, something shifted.
Jack woke early. The light was still blue. A cold snap had blown in overnight, and the space heater whined louder than usual.
Rex wasn’t at his usual post.
Jack sat up fast—too fast—and his head swam. He reached for the edge of the bed, steadied himself, then called out.
“Rex?”
Silence.
A beat later, he heard it—a soft thump from the kitchen. A click of claws on linoleum.
Rex emerged, slow and deliberate. In his mouth, he carried something Jack hadn’t seen in years: the old leash. Frayed. Dull green. Smelled like sand and time.
He dropped it at Jack’s feet.
Then he sat down.
Waiting.
Jack didn’t ask questions. Just nodded.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere.”
He dressed in layers, pulled on boots that still pinched his bad foot, and wrapped a scarf twice around his neck.
Rex stood patiently by the door as Jack locked up.
They didn’t go far—just down the street and around the corner to the old Veterans Park. A tiny lot of grass and stone benches, wedged between a gas station and a shuttered laundromat. Most people didn’t even notice it driving by.
But Jack remembered.
There was a plaque there—brass, tarnished, half-covered in leaves. It had the names of every local boy lost in every war since Korea.
Torres. Mancini. Davis.
He brushed away the leaves and sat down.
Rex laid beside him, head resting on one paw.
Jack didn’t speak.
He just sat.
And for the first time in years… he didn’t feel quite so forgotten.