Adults usually said more.
Sorry for your loss.
He’s in a better place.
Everything happens for a reason.
John only said sorry.
That somehow felt better.
“My boy died,” John said after a while.
Leo stopped eating.
“Your son?”
“Yeah.”
“How old?”
“Would’ve been nineteen now.”
Leo looked at the ground.
“What happened?”
“Drunk driver.”
John rubbed his beard.
“Five years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
For several seconds, the two sat beside the motorcycle while heat pressed down around them.
A homeless fourteen-year-old.
A hardened biker old enough to be his father.
Two people joined briefly by machines and the dead.
John eventually stood.
He pulled something from inside his vest.
A silver Zippo lighter.
Heavy.
Scratched.
Engraved with a winged skull and his road name.
BIG JOHN.
He tossed it toward Leo.
The boy barely caught it.
“What’s this?”
“Mine.”
“I can see that.”
“Keep it.”
Leo stared.
“I don’t smoke.”
“Good.”
“You start, I’ll kick your ass myself.”
Leo almost laughed.
John pointed at the lighter.
“If Silas or anybody else bothers you, show them that.”
“Tell them Big John gave it to you.”
Leo looked doubtful.
“That really works?”
“Depends how stupid Silas is.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
John mounted the Panhead.
“I’ll come back through next week.”
Leo’s face changed.
People said things like that.
Then disappeared.
John saw it.
“I mean it.”
“You need a better fix on this carb anyway.”
Leo nodded.
“Bring the right needle.”
“You charging labor?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
Leo thought.
“Food.”
John grinned.
“Deal.”
He kicked the engine alive.
Before leaving, he pointed toward Leo.
“And if Silas shows up before I get back, stay out of his way.”
“I try.”
“Try harder.”
John accelerated onto the frontage road.
Leo watched until the red Panhead disappeared.
Only then did he look down at the silver lighter.
He turned it over.
BIG JOHN.
For the first time in months, Leo possessed something that suggested another person expected to see him again.
That feeling frightened him more than he wanted to admit.
Hope was dangerous when you lived on the street.
Hope made you wait.
That evening, the temperature finally dropped.
Leo searched the weeds for scrap metal he might sell the next day.
He organized his tools.
Ate the remaining half of John’s sandwich.
Then darkness settled over the Texaco station.
At 10:17 p.m., headlights appeared.
Not motorcycles.
Cars.
Three of them.
Leo immediately knew.
He grabbed the tool roll.
Too late.
The first sedan stopped across the garage entrance.
Second behind it.
Third near the frontage road.
Doors opened.
Five men.
Silas walked in front.
“Leo!”
The boy backed into the garage.
“Come on out.”
Nobody came to the abandoned station by accident at night.
Leo slipped the Zippo into his pocket.
“Kid!”
Flashlights swept through the bay.
“There you are.”
Silas entered.
His face looked worse under artificial light.
Eyes too bright.
Cheeks hollow.
“You owe me.”
“I told you I don’t have fifty dollars.”
“That’s why I gave you another option.”