Singer Salvage
It starts with cars—cars that have been in road accidents, cars that have had neglectful owners and just need a little TLC, or cars that have simply broken down. Bobby Singer will get them up and running for you nine times out of ten. Okay, maybe seven, if there are some real rust-buckets. And if he can't fix them—they stay.
A stray dog of indeterminable breed wanders into the yard; he's friendly enough, chases the pigeons—he stays.
Another dog, a Rottweiler, gets dumped at his gate; Bobby doesn't know what the previous owners were thinking, how they could abandon a dog that was such a sweetheart—she stays.
A bad-ass, half-wild cat takes up residence in an old bucket of all things; liberal with the claws (he scares the two dogs), Bobby's not about to start an argument—he stays.
When he's driving home from town one day, there's a black Labrador, a bag of skin and bones, wandering on the side of the road. No collar or tags, Bobby takes pity on him, stops to catch him; turns out the dog likes cooked ham—he stays.
A neighbour's selling up, not fit to keep his farm running any longer. There's a billy goat if Bobby wants it—he'll just have to be shot otherwise since he's too old to sell and he's a grumpy son of a bitch. The goat makes a good lawnmower, keeping grass trimmed between rows of stacked, rusting cars—he stays.
And Bobby says to himself one day, when the Labrador runs across the yard, whimpering, tell-tale streaks of blood on his nose from where the cat got him, while the goat has one of his horns stuck in the rusted-through door of an old truck, and when the Rottweiler's getting too big for it just to be extra fat she's carrying; he says to himself, "That's enough. No more strays. Got enough bother on my hands as it is."
But then a black car rumbles up to his house, paintwork immaculate under a layer of dust from the yard. A man Bobby doesn't know gets out with the grizzled face of a hunter, asking after lore. He has got his two kids with him. The older kid points out the goat—damned thing's got his horns stuck in a door again—and they both laugh. Faces too young to be anywhere near this life, the older one's got eyes older than his time already.
Bobby invites them inside so the daddy can have a look at a book in his ever-growing library.
Bobby's a useful resource; lots of hunters come and go from Singer Salvage.
But those Winchester boys—they stay.
THE END