August

At 5:40 in the morning, the skinny brown stray was sitting by pump 7 again. For two years a trucker named Wendell fueled at that pump twice a week. The truck stop sits off the interstate near Cookeville, Tennessee. Every time, he split his sausage biscuit with the stray. The night cashier, Tammy, started calling the dog Pump. Wendell turned 67 in September and retired. Nobody told the dog. The lot camera shows Pump trotting in from the tree line at 5:40 every morning after that and sitting down by the same pump. On the ninth morning Tammy posted the clip online and asked if anybody knew a trucker named Wendell who drove a red truck with a dented front bumper. Drivers passed it around for two days. Somebody's cousin knew him. Wendell was home in southern Illinois, about 400 miles away. He got in his pickup that afternoon. The camera caught him at 5:38 the next morning. He was down on one knee by pump 7 with a sausage biscuit in his hand, and Pump came in from the trees at a dead run. By 6 the two of them were headed north on the interstate, and the dog was sitting up front.