Jack turned off the radio and sighed. It was morning, and he'd barely slept a darn wink. He wiped the engine oil from his calloused hands with an old rag that might have once been part of a bed sheet and took another sip of his lukewarm coffee. Something had woken him up a little before 3 am and he had gone outside to check it out, took his gun with him too, what with all the queer things that been happening around here last couple'a months. Not that kept stock in any of that, but it doesn't hurt to be careful. It had been nothing, but still, Jack hadn't been able to get back to sleep after that.

At first he had gone back inside, turned the T.V. on low and tried to doze on the sofa, but that hadn't done any good. In the end he had found himself back outside in his workshop, working under the Buick's rear axle. After 5am he had admitted that he had been defeated in the sleep department and stuck a pot of coffee on. While he had been heading back into the barn he thought he had heard... no more... felt... something then again. But when he stopped and tried to pinpoint it, it was gone, so he had shrugged it off and gone back to work. 

And now it really was morning. The radio had just switched from that pre-dawn monotonous blur of insomniac friendly tired ballads and smooth tones to the bright and perky yapping of the breakfast programming. The good folks of Boca Diablo would be waking up to beautiful day, a little bit of low hanging mist but that would burn off as it heated up. Right about now they'd be putting on their percolators and pouring milk onto their cornflakes. He snorted in derision at the image.

He stepped out of his oil-stained overalls and pulled a dark grey T-shirt over his head, it snagged slightly on his well muscled arms. He would leave the Buick sit for the rest of the day, he had promised Don Hathaway that he'd go out and take a look at those fences he been talking about mending this morning. Wasn't the sort of the work that Jack liked, but it would pay something. However, before that he needed to eat something.

Jack lit a cigarette and stalked out of the barn. The scrubby lot of dirt and rusted metal cast long shadows in the dawn light and he found his eyes involuntarily wandering over to the empty kennel that sat at the foot of his porch. It had been about a month he guessed since he  had seen Al. The dog had wandered off for a night or two before, but never anything like this. At first he had thought he might come back,  but as the days went on that possibility looked slimmer and slimmer. He would have seen something driving around if Al had been hit by a truck or a car, but there were still gators out the swamps, big ones too if you believed the stories. They said one had got a ten year old a few years back a couple of townships over, so it was possible. Still, he couldn't bring himself to think about getting a new one yet.

The house was in a sorry state. It had never been much, but at one point it had been a tidy little cabin. Jack had never been any good with house keeping. The step up to the porch were sagging and the whole place needed a new coat of white wash. The garden was all weeds and junk, roof could do with few new shingles to top it off. Maybe in the summer he thought as he exhales another puff of smoke. Inside was much the same story, half the living room was taken up by a motor bike engine he had been tinkering with last winter and the kitchen was a swirl of old pans and empty bottles. He opened the fridge.

"Damn." He sighed as he looked inside.

He had forgotten to pick up any worthwhile groceries. There was half a pint of off milk and a few take-away containers that weren't particularly fresh either. Looks like he was stopping off at one of the diners in town before he went to see Donald. Oh well, he could do with a slice of pie.