Comet's Tale by Steven Wolf Read Free Book Online Page A

sleeping Comet. “If we weren’t stopping for gas, how would we know when she needs to get out to potty?”
    A reasonable question. Comet had suffered only one accident— one!— since I adopted her, and that happened the day after she arrived at my house. Perhaps confused about where to relieve herself, she had let go on the carpeted space between the master bedroom and the kitchen.
    â€œHey!” I had shouted, and the poor dog had shut off her flow in midstream. Her long tail slapped down between her legs, and she glared at me in astonishment.
    â€œI’m so sorry, Comet,” I had whispered as I stroked her back. “Let me get the leash and we’ll spend some time outside.” From that day forward, Comet informed me of her need for a bathroom break by standing directly in front of me with an intense stare, one ear perked sideways over her head while the other horizontally hovered out in the same direction, all accompanied by a very short high note from the back of her throat.
    â€œShe’s never been in a car this long, but I assume she’ll cry like she always does,” I told Freddie as she dodged into the car lanes at a truck stop. After that break, we realized that Comet’s bladder would not be an issue. Her pee mileage far exceeded the SUV’s gas mileage.
    All the way to Albuquerque, earlier summers shimmered in my memory, in contrast to what was sure to be the upcoming disaster movie. The discordant scenes outside the window echoed my internal agitation. Bulky casinos were planted in front of ancient pueblos. The distant Sandia Mountains formed a painterly backdrop to billboards urging teens not to use meth. The theme continued as we turned north onto I-25. Santa Fe, a center of government since the conquistadors, was surrounded by hillsides packed with peach-colored stucco houses. In Denver the Brown Palace Hotel, an eight-story marvel when it opened in 1892, was dwarfed by granite skyscrapers.
    Two days of gloomy introspection later, Freddie exited the highway in western Nebraska to give us another break. “Wolfie, you have to get out of your head,” she told me. “Paralysis by analysis—isn’t that one of your pet peeves?” Her light, teasing tone was betrayed by the tension in her arms and face as she opened the hatch, allowing me to slip a leash onto Comet.
    I didn’t notice the cool evening air, but it must have been invigorating. The collar had barely encircled Comet’s head when she flashed by me like one of her celestial namesakes, snapping the end of the leash in my hand, then spinning like a prairie windmill. I’m convinced she stopped only because she got dizzy. Her eyes had hardly refocused when she took off down an invisible path, following an intriguing scent located somewhere in the bottom of a roadside ditch.
    â€œHold on, Comet! I can’t go down there!” For the first time in two days, the corners of my mouth tugged upward into a smile. Comet’s frenzied joy reminded me of how our preteen daughters used to react on family vacations when they found out the motel had a pool. All the eye-rolling boredom and demands to have various sisters placed into foster care magically vanished. If life was still so exciting to Comet that she didn’t have time to unpack the emotional baggage from her racing days, I could sure as hell try to emulate her attitude.
    Our three-day multistate marathon finally ended at the lake. As we pulled into the driveway, I was struck by the different spring that awaited me here. Instead of blooming succulents and newly leafed mesquite trees, I saw muted shades of brown pierced with the vivid green of young grasses. The prairie bloom of wildflowers had painted a deep blush on the cornfields across the lake. Low gray moisture hovered just above the branches of the cottonwood trees, where tiny buds were shedding the annoying resin that stuck to every exposed surface, especially