📗 Part 6 – A Name for Each
January 3rd, 2023 – Danner Hollow, Missouri
It happened without thinking.
She was scooping out their morning meal — scrambled eggs with a little bacon grease, because what was cholesterol at her age — when she turned to the mophead and said,
“Slow down, Skippy. You’re gonna choke.”
The words slipped out, round and easy, like she’d said them a hundred times before.
She froze. Spoon halfway between bowl and skillet.
The dog wagged like he understood. Like he’d been waiting to be seen.
Later that day, she took out three old cat food bowls from a box under the register.
Washed them clean. Dried them slow.
Then, with a black Sharpie that barely worked, she wrote:
GRAMP – for the old Bulldog, the quiet watcher.
BUD – for the steady Pug with the patient eyes.
SKIP – for the tongue-lolling scruffball who never stayed still long enough for his fur to lie flat.
She placed the bowls on a folded towel by the space heater.
When the three of them came padding in, she pointed and said, “No mixin’ now. We’ve got rules here.”
Gramp sniffed. Bud blinked. Skippy sat straight like a schoolboy being told his seat.
She smiled.
Then caught herself.
Then let the smile stay.
Names changed things.
Not because the dogs were different — but because she was.
A named thing could be called. Could be missed. Could be remembered when it was gone.
She’d resisted that truth for thirty years.
Now, it felt like a relief.
That afternoon, she wrote their names in a little lined notebook she kept beside the register.
Not under “inventory.”
Not under “expenses.”
Under “company.”
Then, on a whim, she turned the page and wrote:
Duke.
Good boy. Gone too soon.
She didn’t cry. She didn’t linger.
But when she closed the notebook, her hands were steadier than they’d been in weeks.
A customer came in just before dusk — a young woman looking for canned soup and a loaf of bread.
The woman spotted the dogs curled up in the front room and smiled.
“Oh my goodness, are those yours?”
Martha, behind the counter, said without hesitation,
“They live here.”
The woman knelt down and reached toward Skippy.
“What’s his name?”
Martha started to correct her. Started to say, “I don’t name dogs.”
But the words didn’t come.
Instead, she said, softly but clearly, “That one’s Skip. The little troublemaker.”
She pointed at Bud.
“That’s Bud — eats too slow, but never complains.”
Then to Gramp.
“And that’s Gramp. Keeps the porch safe.”
The woman laughed. “They sound like old men.”
“They are,” Martha replied. “Just in dog suits.”
That night, after closing, she made a second cup of tea and sat down on the front step.
The wind was sharp, but not mean.
Skippy laid his head on her foot. Bud leaned into her side. Gramp sat two feet away, like always — watching the road like it owed him something.
She looked out across the snow-covered town.
Not much moved these days.
But she didn’t feel alone.
She whispered their names aloud, one by one.
Then added her husband’s, for the first time in a long time.
“Tom,” she said, into the dark.
“I’m doing it again. You’d be mad. Or proud. Or both.”
None of the dogs stirred.
But she thought maybe, just maybe, someone was listening.