Boomer's Bucket List

by Sue Pethick

  “Who ordered the chicken-fried steak with scrambled eggs?” she said.

  Boomer whined and pawed the truck’s bed as if to say his patience was wearing thin. Jennifer nodded and changed the setting on her phone to video.

  “I asked them to cut it into small pieces,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean you can just snarf it down.”

  She set the box down in front of him and hit the “record” button, trying not to laugh as Boomer devoured the food like he hadn’t eaten in days. Scrambled eggs and bite-sized pieces of breaded beef were sucked up like dirt in a vacuum cleaner; Boomer’s whiskers had so much gravy on them he looked like he’d grown a mustache. When the show was over, Jennifer set the phone aside and picked up the second box. That was another video she’d have to send to Stacy, she thought. Nothing like watching a dog slurp up an entire breakfast to give you the giggles.

  “Pardon me,” she said, unwrapping her plastic fork, “whilst I savor my own repast.”

  While Boomer snuffled around, looking for any overlooked morsels, Jennifer dug into her blueberry pancakes. It wasn’t long, though, before two things became apparent. First, although they were delicious, there were way too many pancakes for her to finish, and second, they would not go to waste.

  Jennifer set down her plastic fork. “Want to finish these up?”

  Boomer, who had been following every bite that went into her mouth, needed no encouragement, and it wasn’t long before Jennifer’s box, too, was spotless.

  “Nothing like a hearty breakfast to start the day, huh?”

  She took out a package of baby wipes, cleaned the last of the gravy from his face and paws, and returned Boomer to the backseat while she discarded their trash. Then she cracked open the passenger’s side window, strapped Boomer into his harness, and started down the road.

  “Look out, world,” she said. “Here comes Boomer!”

  CHAPTER 7

  There are few things more exhilarating than a NASCAR race. As the drivers approach their rolling start, the rumble of forty-three engines shakes the ground, touching something primitive in the human mind. Close your eyes and you could be standing in the middle of a buffalo stampede.

  —“Gentlewoman, Start Your Engine,” by Nathan Koslow, staff reporter

  Rudy Koslow might have been two thousand miles away, but his irritation was coming through the telephone loud and clear.

  “Route 66? What the heck are you thinking? It’ll take you twice as long to get my car out here that way.”

  Nathan was working on his article for the Trib, typing away at the narrow desk in his motel room while he listened to his brother rant. He’d known this was going to happen, which was why he hadn’t bothered telling Rudy about the change of plans before leaving Chicago. So it took him a little longer to get out to LA. What difference did it make?

  “It’s the deal I made with my editor,” he said. “I send her travel articles on the way out there and she doesn’t hire someone to take my job while I’m gone.”

  “Seriously? Nate, I don’t know why you’re still working for those people. First they take away your column and now they’re making you scrounge for work. Who needs that kinda crap?”

  “It was a business decision; times are tough.”

  “Maybe in Chi-Town they are, but not out here in Cali. Listen, I’ve got a script that needs a page one rewrite: Vampire Sluts from Mars. It could be your first screen credit. What do you think?”

  “That’s okay,” Nathan said, rereading the last line of type. “I’m good.”

  “No, you’re not. You’ve been moping around ever since Sophie dumped you.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Are you kidding? Every time I get a call from the family, it’s ‘Nate’s depressed,’ and ‘He looks so sad.’ Blah-blah-blah. I’m sick of it.”

  “Uh-huh.” Nathan deleted the word “primal” and replaced it with “primitive.” “Tell them to mind their own business.”

  “No, you tell them,” Rudy said. “I’ve got a movie to shoot.”

  Nathan glanced at the time: ten forty. Checkout time was eleven, and he had to get his article sent off to Julia before he left. He’d spent the night before writing about the trip to Chicagoland Speedway, but it still needed a little polish—something that wouldn’t get done as long as he was stuck on the phone, talking to his brother.

  “Look, I don’t like this any better than you do,” he said. “You asked me to drive the car out there and this was the only way I could get the time off. My boss says Route 66 is hot right now, so that’s what I’m writing about. Besides, we’re only talking about a few days.”

  Rudy wasn’t buying it.

  “There’s tons of stuff along the Interstate. Why can’t you write about that?”

  Nathan shrugged and almost dropped the phone. He couldn’t believe he was defending this miserable assignment to his brother. Oh, the irony.

  “The stuff along the Interstate is all the same,” he said. “Fast-food joints, gas stations, and cheap motels.”

  “You’re telling me Route 66 doesn’t have any of those?”

  “No, I’m telling you they’re different—older, more authentic.”

  Rudy snorted, clearly unconvinced.

  “Okay, so when will you get here?”

  “Depends on what condition the roads are in and what I find along the way. Eight, maybe ten days.”

  “Ten days? Geez, I thought you were going to save me some money. Now I gotta pay for a bunch of extra nights in a motel?”

  “No, no.” Nathan stopped typing and took the phone in his hand. “That’s the upside of this whole thing. Since technically I’m on the job, I can expense the trip. I’ll be showing up later, sure, but it won’t cost you a dime.”

  His words had the desired effect. When he realized that his good deal had just gotten even sweeter, Rudy’s fury suddenly vanished. Getting his Mustang a little later and a lot cheaper suited him just fine.

  “All right,” he said. “Go write some stuff for your editor and call me as soon as you know when you’ll be here.”

  “Thanks, bro.”

  “But listen, that road’s pretty old so be careful, it could be dangerous. I don’t want my car getting dinged.”

  “Got it. Fine. Good-bye.”

  Nathan hung up and tried to clear his head for the final push. Only a couple of paragraphs to go, and he’d shoot this thing off. He just needed to get into the zone. If he could just focus on the words in front of him, he thought, the rest of the world would fade into the background. The lost column, his lousy personal life, even his family’s concern about his low mood could be shut out through the simple process of putting one word after another on the page. Whatever issues he had at the moment, he’d deal with them the same way he always dealt with the problems in his life: Ignore them until they went away. That’s what Sophie had done, hadn’t she?

  It had been a long time since Nathan had been to a NASCAR race, and he’d almost forgotten what a thrill it was. He wanted to convey to his readers how the raw power of the cars vying for position on the track stirred the crowd and made the atmosphere crackle with emotional energy. It wasn’t just about seeing how fast a bunch of high-octane cars could go around a banked oval; there were strategies involved, grudge matches to settle, and personal rivalries to contest. For the drivers and their teams, the stakes were astronomically high. A win could mean endorsements worth millions; a loss might snatch those millions away. Sitting in the stadium, watching the cars as they battled toward the finish line, he’d felt that. Nathan wanted his readers to feel it, too.

  Satisfied at last with his story, he wrote a quick e-mail to Julia, reminding her what a good turn he’d done filling in for Morty, and sent it as an attachment. He’d kept up his end of the bargain; now it was up to the guys in the Sports section whether to use it or not. He hoped they would, of course. Nathan took pride in his work and hated it when anything he’d written had to be scrapped, but there was always anoth
er story out there. The truth was, since losing his regular column, he’d been pretty much indifferent to the fate of anything else he wrote.

  It had been a pretty heady experience, getting his own byline. Having his own column gave him a chance to stand out from the crowd. It was a reflection of his personality, a statement of how he saw the world. Was it possible he’d gone too far poking fun at the high and mighty? Sure, but that was the point, wasn’t it? Controversy sold newspapers. Besides, some people deserved to be taken down a notch.

  He stood up and started throwing his stuff back into the duffel bag. It was a cheap motel, not one with the kind of charm and history he’d be writing about on this trip. Julia might have been willing to pay for his accommodations, but that didn’t mean he’d be staying at the Ritz. The way Nathan figured it, the per diem she’d allowed him would barely cover two meals a day. Even so, he was happy to help his brother out and it would be good to get out of the city for a while. The last few months, his life had been locked in a routine he couldn’t seem to break out of. Most days it was just get up, go to work, come home, watch sports on the tube, and go to bed. It felt as if he were walking through life on a treadmill.

  As he zipped the duffel closed, grabbed his keys, and headed out the door, Nathan could almost hear his old man telling him to stop sniveling and get over it. He still had a job, after all; still wrote stories that people enjoyed, or said they did; still had a decent place to live and even a few friends—though fewer, now that Sophie was gone. Was he depressed? Maybe, but so what? Join the club.

  He threw his duffel into the Mustang, jumped inside, and heard the tires squeal as he peeled out of the parking lot. The problem, he thought, was that he was thirty-five years old and the life he’d always imagined his thirty-five-year-old self living was still nowhere in sight. Big stories were expensive to cover, and budgets were tight. There were no mysteries to solve anymore; no clandestine meetings in darkened car parks à la Woodward and Bernstein; no feeling that you were doing anything at all besides selling entertainment and ad space to an increasingly indifferent public. With very few exceptions, the life of a newspaper reporter had become a soul-sapping grind; most days they just handed out assignments and you completed yours without much enthusiasm.

  The corner of Nathan’s mouth quirked up. He had gotten a peek at one mystery recently: the blind woman at the speedway. Or rather, the woman with the phony guide dog who was pretending to be blind. What was her story? he wondered. At the time, he’d supposed she just wanted to get her dog inside, but he’d never heard of a dog that enjoyed watching NASCAR. Maybe if the security guard hadn’t shown up when he did, Nathan could have gotten a chance to talk to her and find out. His reporter’s instincts told him there might be a very interesting story there.

  Yeah, right, his inner voice said. Like that was all you cared about. What are you, a monk now? You meet a beautiful woman and all you can think about is whether or not she’s got an interesting story. Come on, who are you trying to kid?

  Nathan frowned. He hated being reminded that his love life stunk, even if he was the one doing the reminding. He’d always been able to bounce back quickly when a relationship ended, but losing Sophie had knocked him back on his heels. At the time, he hadn’t really cared all that much. The Trib had just eighty-sixed his column, and Nathan was too busy trying to recover from that deathblow to deal with any problems there’d been between the two of them. When Sophie finally called it quits, he told himself he’d get over it, that he just needed some time, but it had been almost a year now and he still wasn’t back in the game.

  The clouds parted as he left the city limits, and Nathan smiled. What was he worried about? He had a hot car, perfect weather, and miles of open road ahead of him. As the Mustang picked up speed, the sunlight dazzled, making the sapphire-blue finish gleam. Now, he thought, all he needed were some new sunglasses.

  CHAPTER 8

  A drive along Route 66 is a trip back to a time when American power was in its ascendancy. We were a newer nation then, rich beyond imagining, and we wanted the world to know it. The Appian Way was in ruins, we had the Mother Road; the horses of the Light Brigade had been buried at Balaclava, we had horses made of steel; the Colossus of Rhodes was a faded memory, we would build our own giant men.

  —“They May Be Giants,” by Nathan Koslow, staff reporter

  It was a beautiful day to be out on the road. As Jennifer drove southeast from Joliet, freshly mown fields replaced the concrete, brick, and steel of the city, and the depthless blue sky grew wider, creating the illusion that they’d left the ground and become airborne. She stole a glance at Boomer, who was resting his chin on the edge of the window, his tongue lolling, and felt a pang. He hadn’t been interested in anything they’d seen so far that day.

  Their first stop had been in Wilmington to see the Gemini Giant. Jennifer, who’d grown up listening to her grandfather’s stories about the space race, thought that the pictures she’d seen of the thirty-foot statue were charming. She’d been certain that Boomer would love it. Seeing it in person, though, had been a disappointment. Not only did the Giant’s silver helmet look more like a welder’s mask than anything from NASA, but the pint-sized rocket in his hands could have easily passed for a torpedo. Even worse, Boomer had all but ignored it. After snuffling in the grass at the statue’s feet, indifferent to the giant man staring down at him, he began tugging at his leash, eager to get back into the truck. Jennifer took a couple of quick photos for Stacy, and the two of them drove off.

  Another big item on her list—the Paul Bunyon statue in Atlanta—was also a bust, and when Boomer lifted his leg to pee against the giant man’s foot, Jennifer had begun to panic. Of course he didn’t like the statues, she thought. What kind of person takes a dog to see a couple of big plastic men? Sure, they were interesting in a kitschy, old-fashioned way, but since when did a dog care about aesthetics? Maybe if they’d been carved out of butter like that cow at the Iowa State Fair, then yeah, but for the moment there was nothing about them that a dog could get excited about. From Boomer’s perspective, Paul Bunyon’s enormous legs might as well have been a pair of blue telephone poles. After a quick stop at a nearby dog park, they’d gotten back on the road.

  Jennifer wished she’d been able to make better plans before they left home. It had been such a shock when she found out how little time Boomer had left that she’d just decided to throw caution to the wind and trust that she could figure things out along the way. Now, in hindsight, she was realizing that the things she found charming or memorable held little attraction for a four-legged animal. What if they never found anything that Boomer liked? Would the entire cross-country trip turn out to be nothing more than an extended car ride?

  “Okay, smart guy,” she said. “What do you want to do?”

  Boomer lifted his chin and looked around for a moment, then glanced over at her and licked his chops.

  “Already? I’m still full from breakfast.”

  He swallowed and gave her a significant look.

  “All right,” she said. “I guess I shouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know the answer. But after that, we’re going to walk off some calories, Mister. I can’t afford to buy a new wardrobe.”

  And before that, she thought, checking her dashboard, she needed to get some gas.

  *

  Generally speaking, Nathan enjoyed doing research. Back when he’d had his column, following leads and tracking down people who, with the right incentive, could be persuaded to divulge incriminating information was a rush, like being a con man without the possibility of serving any jail time. But sitting in the Historical Preservation Society’s cramped, airless office that morning was excruciating. The docent, Mabel, had been droning on about the history of Route 66 for almost an hour, and Nathan was no closer to uncovering an interesting detail than he’d been when he walked through the door. The only rush he was looking forward to would be the one that swept him back outside.

  It wasn’t th
at he didn’t appreciate the effort. The more she talked, in fact, the more Nathan suspected that Mabel herself would make a more interesting story than the information she was imparting. Plump and apple-cheeked, with pale auburn tresses swept up in a bun and made stiff with a generous application of hair spray, she seemed like the quintessential Midwestern farm wife: sturdy, devout, and no-nonsense. Try as he might, though, he couldn’t steer the topic onto anything of a personal nature.

  Mabel got up and went looking for the file of surveyor’s reports that they kept in the back room, and Nathan checked his watch, stifling a yawn. This interview had already been both too much and not enough, he thought. Too much technical detail and not enough of the human drama that made for an entertaining article. Rather than waste any more of the woman’s time, he decided to cut things short. When she returned with a three-inch-thick file in her hands, he stood up.

  “This has been great, Mabel, but I think I’ve taken up enough of your time for one day. I’d better let you get back to work.”

  The docent’s smile flickered, but she was savvy enough to know when her audience had had enough. There was no sense in beating a dead horse.

  “Of course,” she said. “You’ve probably got a lot more places you want to check out. Can I get you anything before you go? We’ve got pop in the fridge.”

  “No, thanks. I’m fine.”

  “All right, then, but if you have any more questions, don’t hesitate to call. We’re always happy to help.”

  Nathan felt like a reprieved convict as he got back in the car and checked the GPS for a gas station nearby. The Mustang was not only a gas-guzzler, but judging from the spots it had left in the motel parking lot that morning, it was leaking more oil than his babcia’s potato pancakes. If, as he suspected, the car had a leak in its head gasket, Rudy was going to hit the roof. He’d better hurry up and write some good stuff for Julia, or the entire trip was going to be a disaster.