“Eight,” he said over his shoulder. I thought I heard a small laugh before he closed the door. It might have been gas.

My tractor-trailer rig was parked at Island 2. Eight was on the far west side of the truck stop. I stood for a minute and looked out the window at the blowing snow. Not much accumulation. Ice beneath a thin dusting of white. The fine flakes eddied around the high arc lights of the truck stop like a scene from a low-rent snow globe. Outside I paused and glanced in the direction of Island 8. Nothing I could see.

The inside of my cab was warming up. I was in favor of getting on the road and starting my day. Who would leave something for me at a truck stop? It couldn’t be that important or valuable or it wouldn’t have been left outside. Maybe this was a joke. I could take a joke. Anytime. Later. Cecil’s smile floated in and out of the restless snow beyond my windshield. That smile, if that’s what you wanted to call it, seemed to dare me to swing by Island 8 and take a peek. No matter what Cecil said, I felt no obligation to take it with me.

I jockeyed my twenty-eight-foot tractor-trailer rig in a wide turn and slowly approached Island 8. What looked like a short pile of clothes was stacked against a battered trash can—nothing that couldn’t wait, or be ignored entirely. I began to pull through the cluster of canopied fuel pumps and kept an eye on my side mirror to be sure I cleared the concrete stanchions that protected the pumps from idiots in motorhomes and U-Hauls and once, years ago, when I was hungover, me. The clothes stirred and launched a small wisp of snow into the wind.

I set the brakes and jogged back toward the island, slipping on the ice a couple times and barely managing to stay upright. A large white dog was tightly curled into itself and raised its long nose up an inch or two as I approached. Its pink eyes followed me and then settled intently between my shoulders and head—my neck. No growl or bared teeth. This was a dog that meant business—and it knew its business well. I stopped several feet away and the two of us discussed the situation in silence.

Our conversation ended when the dog uncurled and stood, stretched, and shook the powdery snow off its fur. Its thick coat was still white. Not just white, an impossible luminous white that made the animal almost a blurred white shadow floating inside the blowing snow. The dog was also larger than I first thought, an indeterminate mix of husky and German shepherd, with maybe a little timber wolf thrown in for good measure.

A pair of black, almond-shaped eyes rose like timid fish to the surface of the furry white lake.