佚名/Anonymous
The Topps stood on the shoulder of the road and watched as their truck‘s engine shuddered and died. Nancy and Joe, their two children, Jodi, twelve, and Matthew, fifteen, and their elderly dog, Snoopy, were 1，500 miles from home, stranded on a highway in Wyoming, with the old truck clearly beyond even Joe’s gift for repairs. The little dog, peering around the circle of faces with cataract dimmed eyes, seemed to refect their anxiety.
The Topps were on the road because five months before, a nephew had told Joe there was work to be had in the Napa Valley and he and Nancy decided to gamble. Breaking up their home in Fort Wayne, Indiana, they packed up the kids and Snoopy and set out for California. But once there, the warehousing job Joe hoped for didnt materialize, Nancy and the kids were very homesick, and their funds melted away. Now it was January and, the gamble lost, they were ontheir way back to Fort Wayne.
The truck had taken them as far as Rock Springs, Wyoming, but now there was nothing to do but sell it to a junk dealer for twenty-fve dollars and hitch a ride to the bus station. Two pieces of bad news greeted them at the station. Four tickets to Fort Wayne came to much more money than they had, and dogs were not allowed on the bus.
“But weve got to take Snoopy with us.”Nancy pleaded with the ticket-seller, tears welling in her eyes.
Joe drew her away from the window. It was no use getting upset about Snoopy, he told her, until they fgured how to get themselves on the bus. With no choice but to ask for help, they called TravelersAid, and with kind effciency, the local representative arranged for a motel room for them for the night. There, with their boxes and bags piled around them, they put in a call to relatives back home, who promised to get together money for the fare and wirer it the next day.
“But what about Snoopy?”Matthew said as soon as his parents got off the phone.
“We cant go without Snoopy，”Jodi stated fatly. At seventeen, Snoopy had a bit of a heart condition and some kidney problems, and the family worried about her.