Salvage

"Disensouled," he said, and a chillcame over me, until I realizedhe meant only that the wreck I'd been inspectinghad already been purchased. They were all

wrecks. It was a junkyard, after all.I was looking for one the transmission,transfer case, and rear differentialmight be removed from and transplanted,

although what drew me to this onewas the shape of its wreckage: bashedperpendicularly by a tree, U-shaped downto the frame. But what had caught my eye

and held it was the flattened bench of the seatstained almost entirely a deep ochrish brown."Them people never knew what hit 'em,"he said. "Tree come down on the highway."

He shuffled his toothpick from the leftside of his mouth to the right. "Act of God."There was a rig down the way a bithe said I ought to see. "Other way around,

this one," he said. "Truck hit the tree."The impact, far to the right, blew the enginedue left and broke the bell-housing off,but the drive train looked solid and sound.

"Lookit there," he said. A perfect half-orbblasted into the safety glass of the windshield."Fella's head," he said, working around it,as he wrote on the windshield, "Sold."