True North
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Synopsis
From the author of Raft of Stars comes a heartfelt novel of marriage and whitewater rafting, following one couple as they navigate the changing currents of family, community, and the river itself.
As the summer of 1993 begins, Sam and Swami Brecht roll into town with a twenty-six-foot Winnebago camper van, their three young kids, and the deed to Woodchuck Rafting Company. Sam and Swami met as young, adventurous river guides but, a decade later, find themselves weighed down by money worries and the demands of adulthood. The town of Thunderwater, in Wisconsin’s Northwoods, could be the fresh start their marriage needs. But Woodchuck, once the property of Sam’s eccentric uncle, has seen better days and will need a serious overhaul if it is going to stand a chance at survival.
Soon Sam and Swami learn they are not the only ones looking for change and profit on the river. A competing rafting outfit, clashing raft guides, stubborn townsfolk, and an exploratory mining company begin to threaten their tenuous livelihood. Then nature intervenes, in the form of historic floods throughout the Midwest. Amid tumultuous currents both on and off the river, Sam and Swami struggle to maintain the new life they’ve built. Before the summer draws to a close, the Brechts must learn to face the floodwaters together in order to create a sustainable future for their family, the town, and the pristine river from which it all flows.
Release date: January 2, 2024
Publisher: HarperCollins
Print pages: 320
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True North
Andrew J. Graff
THEY WERE HALFWAY THERE. THEIR NEW HOME IN THE WOODS. SAM Brecht pulled the brand-new twenty-three-foot Winnebago Brave to the gravel shoulder of County Road A. Darren needed to pee. Sam stepped out into the long grass with his son and took a deep breath. Even the ditches up here smelled the way ditches should, just the way he remembered them smelling, sweet and sandy, with pine in the air. There were pines all over this far north, white pine and jack pine and spruce bordering leaning barbed-wire fences, abandoned cow pastures Sam knew would fill with goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace by summer’s end. The setting sun made a perfect orange-and-purple sky behind all that fresh northern pine. The sun would rise over it too. New horizons.
Sam stepped into the tall grass with Darren. At ten years old, the boy had only known the city, and was a bit shy at first about peeing roadside. North of Green Bay, Sam had had to set the example and go first. The camper had a toilet, but Darren didn’t want to use it while driving, and as long as they had to stop, Sam thought they may as well conserve the water tank. “Let her rip,” he said, and Darren smiled and did so. This move up north was going to be good for him. Sam had purchased Darren a folding green compass that the boy wore around his neck. The compass swayed on its lanyard as Darren leaned forward over the ditch grass. There was so much to show the boy and his little sisters.
Sam finished first and buckled his belt. “See those shoots growing there?” he said. “You know Queen Anne’s lace is really a wild carrot? You can dig down and pull up a little clump of carrots. Your great-uncle Chip from Woodchuck taught me that when I was a kid. Can’t wait for you to meet him.”
Darren pushed his lower lip out and raised his eyebrows, looking at the wild carrot shoots and pulling the waistband of his sweatpants back up.
Swami leaned out the high passenger window of the Brave.
“Check for ticks,” she said.
“No ficks!” yelled Dell, Sam and Swami’s three-year-old daughter, standing with her hands on her hips at the open side door of the camper. Dell had her mother’s dusty blond hair. Darren had his father’s red. The new baby had a tuft of strawberry-colored fuzz.
Darren strode toward the door, shaking his head at his little sister and knotting his pants back up. “No Dell. Ticks with a T,” he said. “T. Tuh, tuh. Ticks.”
“No ticks!” shouted Dell, and then made T sounds—tuh, tuh—as Darren corralled her back up into the camper. Swami peered out the window again, irritation on her face, her arms looped around the baby, pulling the child in close to nurse. “We need to get there, Sam. The kids are going to need supper and bed.”
Sam nodded, took another deep breath, and trudged up the ditch. It smelled good. Sam hoped someday soon Swami might like to stand out in one of these fields with him and smell the sweet grass and pine and agree how wonderful it was. They could be in love again, the way they were in the summer of ’79, when they both had summer jobs as raft guides down in West Virginia. This journey north was a bit of a last chance for them, and more than Swami even knew. The thought of what was at stake made Sam feel like holding his breath, like he had swum out to water too deep and the silty bottom was no longer there. He reassured himself that they had fallen in love near a river, and maybe another river could make everything right again.
Sam walked around the front of the idling Brave. Its new motor idled smoothly. It was nice to have something in his life that worked. Sam ran his hand across the warm, truncated hood as he passed, brushing a peppering of dried mosquitoes from the smooth paint. The paint job was incredible. Sam loved it. Darren loved it. Dell loved it. DeeDee loved it, even though she couldn’t lift her head or talk. The Brave was tan with teal and blue stripes, plus a hot pink dealer-installed water splash decal that ran up along both sides. It looked like something right out of one of those
Juicy Fruit commercials. Driving it made Sam feel younger and more fit, like an extreme skier carving down the freeway in bright ski pants. He’d carved up from Chicago, through Milwaukee, up through Green Bay, onto Highway 41—up past the palm and thumb and up to the fingertips of Wisconsin, straight north, true north, as he explained it to Dell. Darren showed his little sister which way north was on his compass, the big N.
“What’s at the fingertips?” she asked her dad.
“Marigamie County,” he said. “Forests and rivers and sky.”
“And deers?” she asked.
“So many deers,” he said.
“Baby ones?”
“Baby ones too,” he said, and Dell smiled at him.
Sam opened the driver door and pulled himself up into the cab. Swami had the baby pulled up into her breast.
“Do you want me to wait?” he asked. They had car seats, and Sam usually insisted on them.
Swami shook her head. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m buckled, and I’ve got her.” She looked tense, like she always did when she nursed, like the world beyond her baby bothered her, Sam included. “The kids are going to get overtired.”
Sam pulled the Brave into gear. “Off we go! Home to the woods!” he called back to his kids, hopefully. He was speaking of the campground where they planned to stay May through August. What Swami didn’t know was that he’d actually booked it beyond summer—as a precaution only—all the way until the park closed in late October.
“Home to the woods!” shouted Darren, too loudly. His little sister echoed him. They both sat on the bench at the fold-out table in the galley, eating a stack of flaxseed crackers Swami had chosen for them.
“It’s not home, you guys,” Swami corrected them. She looked right at Sam. “It’s camping, and only for a few weeks until we can figure out a more permanent situation.”
Sam winced. He knew Swami didn’t like him filling the kids’ heads with ideas, but Sam couldn’t resist their enthusiasm. He liked watching them light up when they asked him about how long they could stay up north, or the baby deer, or if the river could really tear a raft in half. He’d just give them a wide-eyed shrug that they knew meant, Who knows? Maybe. Probably.
“It gives them false hopes,” said Swami. “Don’t say it if it’s not true.” Swami had studied geology in college. She knew about fixed layers of rocks, the way they formed and the way they didn’t. Sam was an art teacher with a degree in ceramics. He knew about clay.
“Well,” he said, peering toward the shoulder to read a road sign. “We could live in the woods forever if we wanted to.”
“We don’t,” she said.
“But we could,” he said, and Swami just looked at him and then at the road.
Jack pines and white pines marked several silent curves in the road. Dogwood
grew in the ditches and sumac atop the sandy bluffs. Sam’s seat belt fluttered in the breeze of the open window. He hoped this would work. He needed this to work.
“Swami?” Sam asked in a quiet voice.
He waited for her to look at him. She did, hunched over their youngest.
“I love you,” he said.
Something softened in her neck and she looked out the window.
“Thank you,” she answered.
County Road A seemed narrower in the dark, just a faded yellow line, a grass shoulder, and cedar trees in the headlights. Sam muscled the Brave through a few slow curves. It wasn’t far now. The older kids turned the light on at the galley table behind them. Sam and Swami and the baby sat in relative darkness in the cab.
“Hey, Dell?” Sam called back.
Dell looked up from a travel brochure Darren had picked up from a gas station in Crivitz. Sam had gotten a look at it while they pumped gas, a trifold of images of river bluffs and bridges and creeks, people riding tractors and snowmobiles and horses.
“What, Dad, what?” she said.
“You want Daddy to take you to your uncle Chip’s deer farm this week?”
Darren looked up. “What’s a deer farm, anyway?” he asked.
“What, Dad?” Dell yelled. She spoke a lot of words for her age, more than Darren had when he was three, but Dell was working on volume control. She either whispered secrets or yelled.
“It’s like a petting zoo,” he said. “But with deer in it. You can pay a few quarters for alfalfa pellets and feed the deer. You guys want to feed the deer?”
Darren pushed out his lip and nodded.
Dell screamed, “Yay!”
“Don’t get her riled up before bed,” said Swami. She held the sleeping baby now. The baby’s name was Deidra—DeeDee—after Swami’s mom, but it had taken Swami four weeks to name the girl. She’d insisted on getting to know the child. Sam had insisted it was hard to know a child without a name, and still found himself referring to her as “The Baby.” The baby hung in Swami’s arms now, like a plump rag doll, her belly full of milk, her mouth hanging open in bliss.
“I’m not riling her up,” Sam said. “I just want her to see a baby deer. My uncle
still has the deer out at his place. I’m not sure if it’s still open to the public. I went there as a kid.”
“I hole a baby deer!” Dell shrieked with glee.
“I know, Dell,” Sam said. “Stop yelling, honey.”
Darren said, “Not hole, it’s hold. D. Duh. Duh.”
Dell yelled, “Duh! Duh!”
Swami gave Sam a cool look. Sam looked away from it, out at the road ahead. The sky had been red behind the pines, and now it was black, the moon hanging in it. Sam sank in his seat. He knew what Swami’s look meant. It meant, You are not doing a good job. That’s the way it felt, anyway. Those looks started coming not long after the first teaching job, then their first baby and lack of sleep, more opportunities to disagree, Sam’s worsening anxiety and bad moods. Swami’s raised eyebrows made Sam’s body tense. There had been too many fights. Sam promised himself there would be no more fights. Fresh starts. Home in the woods. He could hear the kids yelling now, and feel Swami’s gaze growing more intense.
“Mom, Dell’s poking at me!” yelled Darren.
“No!” yelled Dell.
Sam looked into the rearview mirror just in time to see Darren whack Dell with the travel brochure, and then Dell lean in to try to bite Darren, her mouth wide as a shark’s. Then Swami huffed, and Darren whacked Dell again, and Dell howled, and then the baby squawked. Sam looked up in the mirror and took a deep breath to bark at the kids.
And then the deer jumped out.
Sam gripped the wheel, instinctively stomping the brake as the animal leapt from the shadows into the light. The deer’s mouth hung open, its leaping body stretched out in flight, crossing the path of the Winnebago, its black-and-white eye wide, angled unnaturally backward and downward at the charging headlights of the Winnebago.
The kids’ crackers slid from the galley table. Swami reached out for the dash with her free hand. A set of nested pans slid from a shelf. It was them or the deer, Sam knew, and so instead of swerving he clipped the animal midflight, its rear quarter, and watched the animal spin violently off into the shadows. He felt the collision in the steering wheel as much as he heard it, and his heart sank as he maneuvered the Brave to a rolling stop on the thin gravel shoulder.
His left headlight was out. The short hood steamed. Sam looked at the temperature gauge, and watched the needle spike to boiling and then fall dead. He shut the motor off.
Dell was crying, but Sam knew she was more startled than hurt. He’d seen her plop off the bench to the carpeted aisle the way she sometimes slid from a kitchen chair. It was a gentle enough bump. Darren stood gripping the table.
“What happened?!” he asked.
Swami pursed her lips and shook her head. The baby was crying, and she bounced her, looked back at Darren and Dell. “Sam, get Dell!” she demanded.
Sam twisted from his seat and began to step over the carpeted center console in time to see Darren jump over his crying sister and dart forward.
“What happened!” he asked again, peering through the windshield.
Sam couldn’t get past him. “Darren, move back,” he said.
“Did we hit a car?” Darren demanded. He was as wide-eyed as the deer.
“Sam!” demanded Swami.
“I’m trying!” Sam yelled, one sandaled foot still held midstep over the console.
Maps and a foaming soda can and crackers were all over the floor. “Darren, back up!”
Dell cried even harder, really screaming now. The baby yelled. Darren craned his neck to try to get a view out the windshield. The Brave smoked. Swami smoked. Sam smoked. He brushed past Darren and scooped up his screaming daughter. She was pure, sobbing weight. He pulled her to his shoulder and bounced her and said, “Shhh,” as much to himself as to her.
Darren was standing on the center console, arguing with his mom about wanting to see, and Swami was saying something to Sam at the same time, and Dell shuddered and shook, and it was all too much noise now, the way the art class mess and lunch duty and bad teacher coffee and pay and life itself all made too much noise. Sam felt it rising, a hot fog threatening to burst from his mouth, so he quickly unlatched the side door and escaped into the cool night air.
The moon was large and round and the stars were bright, and something about stepping out into that darkness and sweet-smelling air made Dell stop crying immediately. She picked her head up from his shoulder and sniffed and looked out at the dark cedars. She held her head really still as she heard the singing frogs. She looked at the moon and then at the glow of the headlights, her wet cheeks shining.
“You okay? Are you hurt?” Sam asked her, and she buried her head in his neck again to dry her face on his T-shirt. She shook her head.
The Brave gave a sharp hiss. A final shot of steam burst into the air.
“It broke, Dad?” she asked him.
Sam walked closer to the front end and groaned.
“Yeah, sweetie. It’s broke,” he said, and the two of them just stood there in the dark for a time, staring at how broken it was. It smelled hot. Like rubber and steam.
“Fix it, Dad,” she said.
Sam surveyed the sizzling Winnebago, the dented hood and shattered headlight. Inside the cab he heard Swami and saw her make a grab for Darren’s arm while she clutched the baby to her chest. Darren bolted, and Swami made to chase him but remembered the baby. Sam knew she couldn’t see him holding Dell just outside the beam of the headlight. She slumped back in her seat and clenched her eyes shut.
“Fix it,” Dell said again.
As Sam stood there, only feet from his wife, but so far away, while their potentially permanent home smoked on the side of a dark road, he couldn’t bring himself to tell his daughter he would fix it. He didn’t know if he could. What his family didn’t know was that he wasn’t entirely certain his teaching job would be there for him after this summer break. The week after they purchased Woodchuck, the school board and superintendent announced
that arts funding was “being reviewed.” Arts and metal shop might be cut. Sam still hadn’t received a contract for fall. His throat felt too tight to speak. Sam felt that familiar fog in his body, that looming shadow of frustration and fear that Swami’s looks had a way of amplifying. The fog became even thicker when Sam held one of his crying children, because he knew that child depended on him to tell them life would somehow work out and that they would be happy.
Sam looked at Dell and nodded his head. He looked up at his wife, leaning back in the passenger seat. For the space of several breaths, Sam just closed his eyes too.
* * *
BACK IN JANUARY, WHEN SAM first brought up the idea of buying his uncle’s whitewater rafting company in northern Wisconsin, Swami was washing a few dishes. The winter night was cold beyond the window, and the dishwater felt warm on her hands. Swami was eight months pregnant.
Sam held a clipped ad from Thunderwater Realty. His uncle had mailed it to him, he said, the listing circled, the first time Sam had heard from him in years. It was snowing heavily outside in the streetlights. The bushes still held Christmas lights Sam failed to take down even though it was three and a half weeks after New Year’s. Swami stopped washing. Sam had had these bad ideas before. He was always dreaming, coming up with some “new vision,” instead of just living in the present and helping to live well where they were. Like the blueberries. The previous fall, Sam came home from work after visiting an apple orchard with the school, and already had a plan to start a pick-your-own blueberry farm. He had it all written out, his art teacher math scribbled in the margins. We could plant next spring, he said, find the land, move out there. There aren’t many blueberry farms near Chicago because the soil is too alkaline. But, he said, I looked into that today too, and if we bring in a truckload of sulfate per acre—probably twice every season—we should be able to yield about ten pounds of berries per bush. His eyes widened, as if what he’d say next would knock her over. That’s ten grand an acre, Swami.
Swami didn’t know what to say to him then or now. After they’d had Darren, Swami’s annoyance with Sam’s dreaming had grown exponentially. Sam’s annoyance at her refusals grew too. She’d watch him wrestle the garbage cans out to the road and stare at the sky, shake his head at the air, mope for days. When they first met, Swami liked to play along. She never thought he was serious, but she’d humor him. The summer after his first year of student teaching in college, Sam mused over a bottle of beer that he wanted to move to West Virginia near the New River and sell pottery from a van in winters and raft in summers. They
could live in the van, he said, in Fayetteville. Swami stole his beer and took a drink. I’ll be your pottery model, she said, and they laughed, and then they stopped laughing and made love instead. It wasn’t like that anymore. Swami had lost her ability to humor him. They couldn’t daydream about living in vans.
Swami scrubbed a cutting board beneath the warm dishwater. Her back ached. She’d sit down soon and Sam could finish.
“Just think about it,” he said. “All I’m asking is to think about it. We could go up there for one summer, get it really rolling again. It’s an investment. We could resell it. This is me thinking of our future,” he said.
“And what about Darren’s school year, and yours? You can’t leave in May.”
“I’ll take some vacation. And we can take Darren out early just once. It’ll be educational. My uncle is off-loading this place cheap. I already spoke with him.”
Swami spun around. “You already spoke with him?” she asked.
“Well, I wanted to know details,” said Sam. “Before I talked with you.”
Swami shook her head while he tried to say more, turning back to the sink. She heard Sam shift his weight for a moment. He stood and walked away to the living room, where Dell begged him to read a book. It was bedtime. Darren was reading in bed. Dell had brushed. Swami looked out the window at the Christmas lights, drained the sink, listened to Sam read the story to Dell too quickly and tersely.
“You’re skipping, Daddy,” Dell said. “Don’t skip.”
The next morning, Swami called her mother to talk it out.
Her mom sighed. “Oh, honey,” she said. “I watched your father do this. It was always this or that. Don’t let it grow. You were only seven, but you remember. Don’t let California happen to you too.”
Swami remembered. It was fun until it wasn’t. Her dad convinced their mother to sell their home and move the family to Encinitas when Swami was seven. He wanted to surf, he said, wanted his family to have sun on their backs. He turned them poor instead. They moved back to Chicago when the money dried up. Swami wished it was different with Sam. But it wasn’t. Sam wanted to go. Needed to go. He was thirty-five and already wilting in his teaching job, no longer the guy she’d met down in West Virginia, happy as a wet dog shaking river water out of his shaggy hair. Maybe rafting in summer would do him good, keep him grounded in winters. Maybe saying yes would be like a controlled burn to prevent the coming of a larger fire. It wasn’t California. It was just a summer business.
“Listen,” her mom said, after a long conversation. “I wouldn’t entertain it. I entertained your father when I was expecting you, let him start subscribing to surfer magazines, and it landed us in a hut we couldn’t afford and took us twenty years to build back what we left behind.”
“But there were sea lions,” Swami tried.
“No,” her mother told her. “You’ve got a baby coming. Just tell him no.”
Swami could hear the woman shaking her head on the other end of the phone, and her mother was still shaking her head when they packed the new camper later that spring. Brave, it read, in bright teal.
letters. Swami didn’t know quite what made her say yes to Sam—it was almost a whim—but two weeks after the baby came in February, something in the little girl’s gray eyes, the very gift of them, opened Swami momentarily to other possibilities. Something about the sleeping face of her new baby allowed her to say yes to Sam. He kissed her lips when she did.
Sam unwilted, busy each night after putting the older kids to bed, planning what they’d need for the summer, ordering river gear from catalogues, a new paddle, a helmet, life vests for the family. The day he leapt from the brand-new camper in their driveway, arms held wide with pride, Swami quickly carried DeeDee into the house to take a few breaths. Maybe her mom had been right. Sam sold his car and used some of their retirement savings to make down payments on everything. He reassured her that the moment they returned in the fall, he’d sell the RV and put the money back where it belonged. He said something about a tax write-off covering depreciation—basically half the camper is free, he beamed. By fall, they’d have the extra income from a season with the outfitter. Swami kept breathing deeply for several days, held her baby very closely.
Swami took one last walk around their home before they left, inside and out, while Sam double-checked the bikes strapped to the back of the idling camper. Sam seemed nervous, eager to get there. Swami was nervous about leaving things behind. The lilies by the foundation had their full leaves now and were just beginning to push up bulb-tipped stems. It was a shame she’d miss them this year.
“I put all the houseplants in the tub,” she told her mom as she handed her the keys.
Her mom folded the keys into her crossed arms and gave a stern look at Sam as he climbed the steps of the Brave. He didn’t notice. He leaned out from the steps and waved like a sea captain leaning out from the rigging. Swami’s dad clapped his hands, waved at the kids looking out the sliding side window. “Living the dream!” her dad called to them. He still had a long gray ponytail. “Wish I could come with you!” he said to Swami.
“You’ll visit, Dad,” Swami said. “You know the campground where we’ll be.”
“We’re coming,” he said.
“Maybe,” her mom added. She looked at Swami, tried to smile, softened a bit.
Swami hugged her. “Wish me luck,” Swami whispered into her mom’s perfumed, dyed hair.
Her mom hugged her back, only a little of the old fear in her eyes. “Call if you need me,” she said.
“I will,” Swami said.
* * *
“DAD, WE HIT A DEER!” Darren yelled, plowing into Sam in the darkness.
“What, Dad? What?” asked Dell.
Sam shook his head, told Darren to wait, just wait a second, which was all too often his automatic response when he felt overwhelmed. He tried to hear the frogs again. He hoisted Dell farther up his side and gave her a squeeze. The way Dell trusted and loved so freely often made Sam feel like crying—Dell the shining miracle with glitter in her hair. He loved her.
“Dad, a car is coming,” said Darren.
Sam walked to the road and watched the approaching headlights illuminate the mound of deer lying in the road fifty yards back. It was a big pickup truck on tall tires. It slowed, drove around the deer, and came to a squeaking stop beside them. Sam peered up into the open passenger window. Two young men in their late teens or twenties sat inside with a huge dog between them. The cab smelled like beer. The radio was loud.
“You cream that buck back there?” said the driver, more an acknowledgment than a question.
The passenger smiled and lifted a can of beer from between his legs and took a sip. The dog shifted in its seat, a big Siberian husky.
“We did,” said Sam.
“What, Dad?” asked Dell.
“Nothing, sweetie,” Sam told her. “We’re in a bit of a bind,” he said to the men. “Any chance you know of a tow truck in town?”
The driver leaned forward to take a look at the steaming front of the Winnebago. He winced. “Oh—buggered your rig!” Sam heard a hint of accusation in the words, as if he were the negligent owner of some lame horse. He didn’t know how to reply. Darren asked his dad what the man meant.
Then the driver adjusted his ball cap. “Well, hey,” he said. “I got some tow chains in back. How far you headed?” the driver asked.
“Thunderwater,” Sam answered. “But really, if you could just let me know of a tow driver in town.”
The driver opened his glove box, grabbed a big Maglite, then stepped from his cab. He rummaged around in the bed of the truck for a moment and came back around front holding two beers. He smiled a warm smile. Sam relaxed a bit.
“I’m your only tow at this time of night,” said the driver. “Coldie?” he asked.
“What?” asked Sam.
“Want a coldie?” the man asked him again, and held out one of the beers.
“Thanks,” said Sam, reaching out for the beer with a free hand. He didn’t want to be rude, even though he didn’t drink much anymore. Swami
didn’t like it, unless it was a craft cider or maybe some red wine, and then no more than two or three ounces. Sam held the unopened beer in one hand and his silent daughter in the other. Dell just watched everything, quiet, wet eyes blinking.
The man turned to Darren. “Hey, bud, hold this for me, eh?” The man handed Darren his open beer, turned his ball cap backward, and lay down beneath the front of the Winnebago with his Maglite. He wore Carhartt coveralls with grease on them, boots with mud, and Sam hoped that maybe this man scooting around on the gravel was a mechanic. Darren stared up at his dad with a wondering grin on his face, holding this stranger’s beer in the darkness.
Then the man in the cab turned the radio up a bit more. It was Def Leppard, “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” The man bobbed his head a few times, cracked open another beer.
“You gonna want that buck?” he called from the window.
Sam didn’t know what he meant.
“That buck you hit. You want him? My name’s Pete. That’s Randy. And this is Bear,” he said. “She’s a good girl, husky mix,” he said, ruffling the dog’s thick mane. Pete held his hand out the window to shake. He was brown-skinned, a bit older than the other man. He wore a flannel and had two long black braids of hair trailing from his camouflage hat. Sam shook, introduced himself, and reassured Pete he didn’t want the dead deer. The huge dog nuzzled Pete to be pet again. Pete ruffled her hair again. The dog was massive, colored like a husky but thicker, taller. Sam saw Dell just stare at it with wide moonlit eyes.
“What kind of mix is . . . Bear?” Sam asked.
Pete shrugged. “Wolf,” he said. “Uh-oh—Radio drink!” He chugged his can of beer as he turned up the knob of the stereo. His bobbing head got away from him, and he spit foam on himself before barking along with the chorus. He turned it back down again and chuckled. “Every time that song says ‘sticky sweet,’ you gotta drink,” he said. “Hey, Randy!” he shouted out his window.
Randy didn’t answer from underneath the Winnebago. Pete went on.
“This guy says—What’d you say your name was?—Sam says he don’t want that buck back there. ...
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