She stood for a moment, taking it in, but her father brushed beside her, flipped on the light, and went over to the workbench where all of his tools used to be, where the greasy parts would sit for weeks at a time until the project was finished or until he would finally toss them into one of the wooden bins under the bench, even the parts that were no good, because you never knew when you might need to scavenge a part from a part, or look at the old part to see how the new part is supposed to go together, or, more likely closer to the truth, the parts had become too personal, had served so long and so well, that they deserved a fate more fitting than a trip to the dump in a trash truck with the rotting lettuce and soiled diapers, and so they were dropped into the wooden bin with a dull clunk, where they would be with their own kind, a camaraderie of the tough, the loyal, and the broken down, who, by the weight of their own existence in the hand of a knowing mechanic, would still have value in some as yet unknown way.

copyright 2017, joseph e bird, from the novel Heather Girl.