📍 Part 5: “The Name Beneath the Skin”
After that night, Blake no longer hesitated.
The dog was Buddy.
Not “Boy,” not “Stray,” not “Maybe.” Just… Buddy.
He started saying the name out loud again—soft at first, as if testing the air for something sacred.
“Come on, Buddy.”
“Good boy, Buddy.”
“It’s okay, Buddy. I’m right here.”
Each time, the dog responded like the name was stitched to his bones.
Like he’d been waiting for someone to remember it.
Blake didn’t tell anyone what he believed. Not the vet. Not his neighbor Linda, who always waved from her porch and once said, “That dog of yours watches like he’s guarding something.”
And certainly not the mailman, who paused one day to ask if Blake had adopted from a shelter.
“No,” Blake said simply. “He found me.”
One morning in early November, Buddy limped.
Not bad. Just a hesitation in his step as they walked along Beech Run. His black paw—the same one from all those years ago—pressed into the gravel with a slight wince.
Blake noticed it instantly.
“You okay, old friend?”
Buddy stopped, lifted the paw briefly, then set it down again.
Like he didn’t want to make a fuss.
Back at the house, Blake knelt beside him, running gentle fingers down the leg.
He found it.
The same scar the vet had mentioned. Thin. Twisted slightly near the muscle. Old, but deep once. His fingertips trembled over it.
He remembered the mud. The smell of blood. The way Buddy had looked at him then—not scared, not in pain, just watching.
Now, decades later, that same look returned.
And it hit Blake like a flood.
“Why’d you come back?” he whispered. “After all this time?”
Buddy leaned his weight into him, just slightly.
Enough.
That night, Blake sat in his workshop—a small converted room off the back of the house where he used to carve wooden toys for the grandkids who rarely visited.
He pulled down an old shoebox labeled “’Nam – Keep.”
Inside: faded photos, a dull dog tag, the red shoelace.
Still dirty.
Still tied in a careful knot.
He laid it on the table and turned to Buddy.
The dog had curled up in the doorway, just like he used to outside tents back in the jungle. Head resting on his paws. Guarding without being asked.
“I don’t know what you are,” Blake said softly. “But you were mine. And maybe—just maybe—I was yours too.”
He started writing again that week.
Not just in notebooks, but on the old Underwood typewriter he hadn’t touched since the ’80s. The one his wife once said made too much noise and “dragged the war in with every keystroke.”
He typed at night, when the house was quiet and Buddy snored gently on the rug by his feet.
The story that came wasn’t fiction.
It was the story.
The jungle.
The rain.
The sniper.
The scar.
And the dog who didn’t leave.
By Thanksgiving, he’d typed 83 pages.
He printed them out, stacked them neatly, and tied them with twine.
Then mailed a copy to the local veteran’s group with a short note: “In case someone else remembers too.”
Buddy’s limp grew worse in December.
Some mornings, he didn’t get up with the first knock of Blake’s boots.
But he always rose by the second.
Stubborn.
Like always.
The vet confirmed what Blake already suspected—arthritis, likely spreading. Probably kidney issues worsening too.
“We can manage the pain,” she said gently. “But he’s old, Tom. You might not have much time.”
He nodded, eyes wet but steady. “We never did.”
On the first snowfall of the year, Blake took Buddy for a walk behind the house.
The ground was quiet. Soft.
The fallen dogwood still lay where the storm had dropped it—like a grave marker no one dared move.
Blake stood by it and reached into his coat.
He pulled out a fresh cigar tin.
This time, he filled it with all five letters.
The old ones.
And a sixth.
*“Buddy —
They say not all dogs go to heaven.
But I know better.You were never just a dog.
You were the reason I came back.
And maybe…
…the reason I’m still here.”*
He closed the tin, wrapped it in a new red ribbon, and slid it gently beneath the trunk.
This time, he didn’t bury it.
He let the snow do that.
Softly. Quietly.
Just like Buddy would’ve wanted.
Christmas came.
Blake didn’t put up lights.
But he lit a single lantern and placed it on the porch beside Buddy, who lay wrapped in an old army blanket, watching the snowfall like it was the first time he’d seen peace fall from the sky.
Blake sat beside him, one hand resting on the dog’s shoulder.
He hummed a tune from childhood.
And Buddy listened, eyes half-closed, ears twitching in rhythm.
That night, Blake had a dream.
He was young again, boots caked in red mud, the jungle pressing close.
Rain fell like music.
And Buddy stood before him—strong, unhurt, tail high.
He didn’t bark.
He just turned, looked once, and started walking toward the trees.
Blake followed.
And didn’t feel tired at all.
He woke with tears on his face.
And an empty blanket beside him.
Buddy was gone.
But the door was closed.
No prints in the snow.
No sound.
Just warmth, somehow, still lingering in the shape of where the dog had lain.
Blake stood, knees aching, and whispered, “Thank you.”
Then added, “I’ll see you again. Just don’t keep me waiting too long.”