It was a cash register receipt. There was no mention of the dog, without which the boy might well have frozen to death. I read through it several times.

Pedro was the tire man at the truck stop. The tire shop was in an old metal building hunched behind the truck stop where the crumbling concrete turned to gravel. We were friendly in the way strangers who infrequently came in contact with each other were friendly: I knew his name and he knew mine. Not much else.

The month before I had bought new tires. They gave me a hell of a deal on brand-name rubber. Pedro and I engaged in the usual bullshit banter. He had never mentioned he had a son. I hadn’t felt shortchanged by not knowing much about him. Why he would turn to me when he was in trouble, any kind of trouble, especially entrusting me with his son, didn’t make any sense. I did not feel particularly honored by his trust.

My options were limited. Call the local cops or take him with me. If I called the police I’d have to wait for them to arrive. When they arrived there would be questions, most of which I wouldn’t be able to answer and Cecil wouldn’t be much help, if he showed up at all. When you tell cops “I don’t know,” all they ever hear is “I won’t tell you,” which in my experience always made for long and frustrating conversations.

Leaving the boy with Cecil was not an option. My guess was that Pedro had left him inside and Cecil, the sick asshole, put the kid and his dog outside in a snowstorm just for giggles. The second option had only a single downside, and it was a big one—I just didn’t want to babysit a damned little kid in my truck all day—or his dog, which I wasn’t going to take under any circumstances.

I jerked a long-handled squeegee out of its canister and flung it through the snow in the general direction of the office. It was a pathetic gesture. The squeegee fell way short of hitting the side of the building. The icy apron of Island 6 took it without a sound.

I cautiously picked up the boy and carried him to my cab and opened the door. The dog scampered past me and quickly made itself comfortable on the warm floorboard. I sat the boy on my passenger seat and grabbed two big handfuls of white fur and readied myself to yank the animal out of my cab. I would have done just that if not for those pink eyes. Those eyes asked me one simple question: How badly do you want to keep your hands? I answered by letting loose of the fur and slamming the door.

2

It took some fiddling to get Juan’s tiny frame secured in a seat belt made for adults. He stared ahead and made no effort to resist or speak. At his age I suspected I was the same way—a half-breed orphan always being shuttled from one place to another. There were always different faces, different rooms, and different vehicles. You learned to go with life and always keep yourself inside, protected—untouchable. Juan’s steady, unemotional attitude toward me—toward the ice and snow and wind—made me wonder about his brief life, and about a father who would leave his child alone at a truck stop.

The dog’s ears perked.