Road Trip (10 page)

“So, uh, what’s up?” I ask.

“I couldn’t resist pulling your leg like that, so I jumped in the car. Made way better time than you all did. You two are always going off doing things together. I feel a little left out sometimes. This seemed like a dramatic way to make an entrance. Like something Dad would do.”

“Good one.”

“Besides, I have excellent news: The house sold—we have a deal.”

“We?”

“The company is called Duffy and Son. The ‘and Mom, too’ is implied.” She smiles.

“Dad flipped his first house.” I’m proud of him. He
did
know what he was doing.

“
We
flipped
our
first house,” Dad says.

“And we put an offer in on a second one,” Mom tells me. Even Dad looks surprised. “Strike while the iron’s hot, right?”

“That’s a very Dad-like move, Mom.”

“It wouldn’t hurt if we all tried something new from time to time,” she says, smiling.

“Because it’ll all work out,” Dad and I say together.

“I’m taking this one.” Gus is walking out of the shelter with a teacup Chihuahua tucked in the bib of his overalls. The dog’s tiny head and front paws pop out the top, like he’s in one of those baby-carrier things. “Sign on his cage says his name is Gizmo. A garage can’t have too many gizmos.”

I take their picture. Alison’s looking at me and Theo. “Are you brothers?”

“Yes,” Theo and I answer together.

“We all belong to each other,” Mia adds.

“Family,” Gus says.

“And I need to get a picture,” I say. “Everyone huddle up with the dogs.” I hand my phone to Alison to take a group shot and jump in the middle.

She’s scrolling through my photos by the time I get back to her side to get my phone back. “These are really good,” she tells me. “You should take pictures of the dogs we’re trying to find homes for to post online. The better the picture, the better chance the dog has of finding a home. C’mon, I’ll show you the rest of them.” She takes my arm. I let her.

I look back as I walk inside. Dad and Mom are leaning against the fence, his arm around her shoulder,
watching Atticus and Conor play in the yard. Theo and Mia are each feeding a kitten they scooped up from a box in the shade. And Gus is making kissy faces at Gizmo.

Alison and I take pictures of all the animals and exchange phone numbers and email addresses and we Facebook friend each other on my phone. Then we head back to the crowd in the yard.

Alison sinks to her knees and buries her face in Conor’s ruff to wipe her ears in his fur and to kiss him good-bye. “I love you. Everything in me knows that they’re good enough for you.” She reaches down and unties her vowel-less apron, pulling it off and handing it to me. “Will you take this for him? It’s got my smell. Maybe that way he won’t forget me.”

I take the apron and she hugs me. Mia feeds Conor a few potato chips from the bag she’s saved from the last rest stop, and Gus pets his silky ears. Theo puts his hand in front of the puppy and says, “High five, little dude,” and then laughs when Conor licks his fingers. Dad drops to one knee and watches the puppy chew on his shoelace. Conor likes everyone; he greets them with kisses and wiggles. But he always looks back to Atticus and Mom. Them, he loves.

“Will you come to the shelter’s fund-raiser this fall?” Alison asks. “We’re going to have food and games and a silent auction, and people who have adopted animals
will come back and tell how they found each other. I think you’ll have the best story.”

“We’ve got our own bus, so transportation isn’t an issue.” I point to the bus at the curb. “In fact, we might still be on our way back home by the time the party happens.”

“You never know.” Her smile. Whoa.

Everything
does
work out.

I wish the boss and my boy had told me they were getting someone like me. I wouldn’t have worried. I thought we were just getting a dog.

At Alison’s shelter, there were eight dogs Conor and I had to keep in line. We scared them with our piercing gaze. Everyone was afraid of our dropped shoulders and raised rumps—it was like we hypnotized them. A couple of the younger dogs who didn’t get what was happening tried wandering away, but we straightened them out real fast.

We work together like we were born for it.

We were happy to get back to the bus and get everyone on. See our new family heading back home.

We got in the car with the real boss, the one who smells like flowers. Enough with the bus. The car doesn’t bounce and the real boss doesn’t sing or speed. I was ready for a nap. Conor and I curled up in the backseat and slept all the way home.

This is going to work out just fine, we agree.

The Time After

Today’s the last day of summer. Feels like it was just a minute ago that vacation and the road trip started.

In hindsight, I can see that Dad’s plan turned out fine, just like he always says it will. I can hardly remember why I didn’t want to go or being mad at my parents or upset about hockey camp.

When we left the shelter, Mom had to get back home to work, so she took Conor and Atticus in the car with her.

No one on the bus was in a real hurry to get back, not even me. So it was easy for Dad and Mia to talk us into doing touristy things that we hadn’t had time for on the way to get Conor. Theo and Gus and I pretended to grumble, but we had the best time of all, I think.

We saw scale replicas of the great architectural works
of Frank Lloyd Wright constructed out of sugar cubes. We stopped at souvenir shops and ate pecan logs until we were sick from the sugar, and bought dribble mugs and trucker hats and T-shirts, and had our pictures taken poking our heads through holes in painted plywood that made us look like bullfighters and mermaids and cowboys and giant spiders.

We went to an amusement park and broke the record riding the roller coaster the most times. Theo and I were barfy for most of the day, and Dad and Gus had to divvy up driving because of their dizziness, but it was worth it to get the certificate and have our picture taken for the wall of fame.

We won a few bucks at the racetrack, too, enough to pay for gas, motels, and food. We needed a couple races to get the hang of betting, and we all had different techniques for choosing the right horse and jockey. Everyone bet on Conor’s Friend. We couldn’t resist. He didn’t win, but that didn’t stop us from running to the paddock to have our picture taken with him. The jockey said he’d never ridden such a popular fourth-place mount before.

We hit a state fair, too, and won a karaoke contest. We sang “On the Road Again,” natch, and no one could touch us. Dad took credit for the win because he claimed we’d all been inspired by the country music stations he plays.

We finally rolled back home after a few days, sunburned and carsick. But we’d been checking in with Mom every day. I called her a lot and Dad talked to her every night. I’d see him wandering around the parking lot of each motel with his phone. Talking and listening. And laughing.

Things aren’t perfect at home; Mom still spends way too much time at the kitchen table surrounded by the checkbook and a stack of bills, and Dad works crazy sick hours on the houses. But we eat dinner together every night and Dad’s moved back into their room. That’s a start.

As soon as the first house sold, Dad closed on the second house. Before that project was complete, he bought a third place. He hired a couple guys part-time to help him out, and he taught me to hang drywall. We’re taking a drive after dinner to look at another property. See if it has potential.

Turned out we had money in time to get me to hockey camp after all. But I didn’t want to go. Not when Duffy and Son had so much work lined up. I’ll go next summer. I’ll go every summer if we keep working this hard. I joined a summer league at a rink in town so I didn’t have to miss hockey altogether. Worked out for the best; those older guys really pushed me and I’ve got mad skills now. Probably as good as what I’d’ve picked up at camp. Made a bunch of new friends, too.

I’m not sure what’s going to happen with our business, because you just never know, but if I’ve learned one thing this summer, it’s that great things can happen from little starts.

Oh, and that everything works out.

Conor and Atticus figured out how to live together, just like Dad said they would. Probably because neither of them thinks they’re a dog. Conor and I get along fine, but he’s decided he belongs to Mom, not me, after all. Dad promised that the very next border collie rescue he hears about, that’ll be my dog.

I can’t wait. Because another thing I learned this summer is that good things come in sets of three: Theo, Gus, and Mia, the three houses, and, pretty soon, three border collies.

Gus comes over every weekend. To bring Gizmo to see Conor and Atticus and to make sure Dad doesn’t violate building code with the wiring in his houses. Gizmo hasn’t touched the ground except to pee since Gus picked him up at Alison’s shelter and shoved him in the front of his bib.

Mia and Theo aren’t a couple, even though that’s what he’d like. They’re Just Friends, she always says. He winks at me and shakes his head behind her back, hopeful. He’s going to have to get past Atticus first. Atticus thinks no one sees that he won’t let Theo sit by Mia even now that we’re off the bus. But I notice.

Mia works at Gus’s lady friend’s diner and lives above her garage, just like Gus promised. It’s a good job—no creepy customers—and she’s saving for school.

Theo wound up only having to do about two weeks at the county lockup because of overcrowding and his good behavior. We had a huge pizza party for him when he was released. He’s working at Gus’s garage, and after fall semester, he’ll have enough credits to graduate from high school. He’s trying to talk Mia into enrolling at the same community college so they can be roommates. She shakes her head about living together, but she doesn’t say no to going to the same school, and the last time they were over, they were looking through a course catalog with Gus.

I finally posted a bunch of pictures from the road trip on my Facebook page. There are shots of tattoos, bloody Kleenex, cops and paramedics and firemen jumping off their rigs, two border collies and a teacup Chihuahua and close-up portraits of eight other rescue dogs, a roller coaster record certificate, a racehorse and his jockey, and the talent-show stage at the state fair.

If you don’t know the whole story, the page looks like a lot of crazy. The pictures crack me up.

No one turned out to be like I thought they would. I wonder if they think the same about me. I know I sure do.

Lastly, I look at a picture of Alison. Like Theo and
Mia, we’re Just Friends. Like Theo, I like her more than that, even with the long distance. We keep in touch, and I’m hoping.

Next month, we’re all going to the shelter’s fundraiser. All back on the bus, with Atticus and Conor. We couldn’t go anywhere without them. Not that they’d let us—now Dad and I have two border collies trying to get in the truck every time we go anywhere. They work as a team and run the whole house.

Plus, Conor’s the poster boy for the shelter. I sent Alison a picture I took of him and she talked the committee into using it on the website.

He should play a big role.

He brought us all together.

Gary Paulsen is the distinguished author of many critically acclaimed books for young people, including three Newbery Honor Books:
The Winter Room, Hatchet
, and
Dogsong
. He won the Margaret A. Edwards Award given by the ALA for his lifetime achievement in young adult literature. Among his Random House books are
Crush; Paintings from the Cave; Flat Broke; Liar, Liar; Woods Runner; Masters of Disaster; Lawn Boy; Lawn Boy Returns; Notes from the Dog; Mudshark; The Legend of Bass Reeves; How Angel Peterson Got His Name; Guts: The True Stories Behind
Hatchet
and the Brian Books; The Beet Fields; Soldier’s Heart; Brian’s Return, Brian’s Winter
, and
Brian’s Hunt
(companions to
Hatchet
); and five books about Francis Tucket’s adventures in the Old West. Gary Paulsen has also published fiction and nonfiction for adults. His wife, Ruth Wright Paulsen, is an artist who has illustrated several of his books. He divides his time between his home in Alaska, his ranch in New Mexico, and his sailboat on the Pacific Ocean. You can visit him on the Web at
GaryPaulsen.com
.

Jim Paulsen is a sculptor and former elementary school teacher. He lives with his wife and two children in Minnesota.
Road Trip
is his first book.

Gary Paulsen is available for select readings and lectures. To inquire about a possible appearance, please contact the Random House Speakers Bureau at
[email protected]
.