Considering they call it a city, the town is pretty small, 218 people at last count living in about as small town America as you can get. You could drive straight past it if you wanted, you could just watch the 281 signs burn by as you go further north until you drive through every state to Canada. Or you can wait for it to become ever so briefly Elm Street, take a left onto Kansas Road and head straight into the middle of Lebanon, Kansas.
Lebanon is what you think of when you think small town, only much much smaller. It has its Main Street, no small town worth its salt doesn't, but there's not a lot on it; the post office and bank, the market and community centre, the city hall and the church. Old boarded up buildings telling stories of a lifetime ago, and new buildings looking ever so slightly out of place, like a tuxedo on teenager. Gaps where buildings used to be, and no doubt every boarded up window and every overgrown lot has its own story of life and loss in small town America. But that's not the story she came to hear. She came to hear about the Winchester Boys.
Sam and Dean Winchester. Legends. Legends in her circle, legends in many others. Sometimes they were the heroes, sometimes they were the villains, but always talked about like they would hear anything you said. There were stories of epic battles, of monsters and gods, of death and resurrection and every time the names of Sam and Dean Winchester would be heard. No one knew how many of the stories were true, how these two mean could live their hard brutal lives and still be standing, but standing they were. And she was here to find out if Sam and Dean Winchester, gods among men, defenders of the faithful and the faithless where actually real.
She'd read the books, and followed the trail. She knew about Palo Alto and she spoke to people there. Sam Winchester, they'd said, yeah we remember Sam. Quiet kid, but really smart, was definitely going places he was. Well until, well you know. She'd stop writing, put her pen down and look at them, like she hadn't heard the story ten times before, tell me, she'd whisper, tell me what you remember. They'd look around, like Sam was there behind them, listening, waiting, like they were afraid. Which they were. He disappeared, they'd say, just vanished. His weirdo brother arrives, then Jess dies like that, my god it was horrible, and then poof, they're both gone. Then the next thing they're both on the news killing people. It's always the quiet ones, you know?
But she knows better than most that Sam and Dean Winchester aren't quiet, they're just well hidden. Hidden enough that she has spent thousands of hours and driven thousands of miles, just to find out that they are now living less than four hours from where they were born, where the whole thing began. Where the books ended, she just kept following the signs. The signs that she knew the Winchester boys would have used to get to a place were the same signs she used to follow them back. Some were dead ends, others had potential but felt like she was a dollar short and a day late. A visit to Hibbing to talk to Kathleen Hudak was a dead end, she left the Sheriff's department not long after all the bodies were found out on the old Bender farm, including her brother's. No one mentioned Sam and Dean, like they never even existed. Not quiet, just hidden. It's a shame you weren't here last week, they said. We had a convention here and Donna, one of our girls was here. She's the Sheriff over in Stillwater now, but she started here. She said she joined because of Kathleen. She might have been able to tell you something about these Sam and Dean guys. She looks over the list of attendees, another name catches her eye. Sioux Falls. What are the chances that the Sheriff from the same town as Bobby Singer, and the Sheriff from the same town as Kathleen Hudak don't know Sam and Dean Winchester. Sometimes life throws you leads disguised as curveballs, and Hibbing was certainly that.
But the hidden ones stay hidden for a reason. They make friends, they make connections, they save lives. People do things for them that mean if they were ever discovered everything would be at risk. Sam and Dean Winchester, by simply being the forces of nature they are, create a trail of voluntary indebitude that invariably saves their lives without them even knowing. They think they move through life invisible without even noticing the wake of gratitude that ripples ever further outwards. They think they clean up when they leave, but don't realise that trace elements of Winchester left on the souls of the people they touch will always be the thing that protects them. And those traces are strong and loyal, and sometimes scary. And all of that together meant that Donna Hanscum and Jody Mills, who absolutely, unquestionably knew Sam and Dean, and were without doubt in contact with them, probably even regularly, had no idea who she was talking about. Not a clue, never heard of them. Sorry can't help you. At all. Maybe you should go. Now.
Loyalty is a powerful motivator. But resentment is just as strong. For every eight absolute blanks, she got a just as resolute those dicks, yeah I know them. But they were ultimately just as unhelpful. The loyal ones wouldn't tell her out of love, the pissed off ones wouldn't tell out of fear. They'd seen what happens to people who betray the Winchester boys, retribution may not come quickly, and it may not even come from them, but come it does, and when it does, it's brutal and messy, and if you're lucky, fatal. Gratitude wasn't the only wake they left behind.
So for years now she has tried to find them, she's searched papers and registers, conspiracy theory chat rooms and paranormal websites, she's barked up every tree and gone down every rabbit hole, and she knows there was just nothing left to do but go back to where it all started. So she goes back to Lawrence. She goes back to Stull Cemetery. She sits there for hours thinking about the stories that cemetery held, not just Sam and Dean's but everybodies. The legends that are generally thought to apocryphal but anyone who knows the world the Winchesters inhabit know better. She simply doesn't know what the next step to take would be, maybe it was time to rethink. Maybe she just needs to focus, to take a long drive and have a long think. A pilgrimage is what I need, she is already packed and she has nowhere she needs to be. She already knows where she is going. Where better to get centred, than the centre itself.
So she drives, and she drives. She drives through cities and she drives through small towns, she drives past along highways and she drives down back roads. She drives past 181 signs over and over and then they become 281 signs. And she drives. She's looking at the boarded up buildings that tell the million stories of the broken hearts of small town America, she looking at the road signs, she sees the sign that changes the 281 to Elm Street. She sees the Midway Co-Op on the corner of Elm and Grove. Small towns and their trees she thinks to herself. She sees the 1967 Chevrolet Impala at the pumps. She slows down to see the price of gas and reminds herself to stop on the way back to fuel up. She thinks it's just up here, look for 191. And then like some mental Rube Goldberg, balls start falling and wheels start turning. Levers crank and pullies pull. Handles are turning but not fast enough and she knows she's missing something, like the song in your head you can't finish or the smell you can't place. What am I missing? What am I missing? What am I missing? And then everything clicks in time, the final ball falls and suddenly with no effort at all, the 1967 Chevrolet Impala is there. And so is Dean Winchester. And after all this time, after all these miles she finds him, not because he was lost, but because she was.