Brian turned toward him. "It's a nineteen eighty-seven FXRS Low Rider. My grandfather told me about the five-speed and the old Evolution engine. He said he wanted to make it sound the way it did before the trouble started, not turn it into something modern."
Rex stared. "He told you about this bike?"
"Every Sunday." Brian laid a hand on the tarp but did not pull it away yet. "He used to draw pieces of it on paper when we couldn't afford parts. He said we'd work on it together when I was fourteen. I have my birthday next month."
He paused, eyes remaining on the machine. "I don't think he has another month to wait."
The words slipped out before he could protect them with a brave face. For the first time, Rex saw the child behind the stubbornness, a boy who had made an impossible promise to himself because the alternative was admitting that someone he loved might not recover. The men in the garage looked away, giving him a measure of privacy without leaving the room.
Brian pulled the tarp back. Beneath it, the Harley was a dark accumulation of neglect, dust, and memory. The paint had dulled to a color like wet charcoal, and corrosion bloomed along the chrome where moisture had settled year after year. One side of the primary cover bore a hairline crack, and a pale stain beneath the frame suggested that old fluids had slowly seeped away.
"The fuel system's probably varnished," Brian said, more confidently now that the conversation concerned something he could touch. "The electrical connections will need checking. And somebody stored it near that leaky water heater long enough for the moisture to get into places it shouldn't. Maybe the engine is stuck. But stuck doesn't always mean ruined."
Butcher raised an eyebrow. "You planning to pull it apart with wishes?"
"I brought tools." Brian lowered his backpack to the floor and unzipped it. A battered socket case appeared first, followed by screwdrivers with polished wooden handles, a set of feeler gauges, carefully wrapped measuring instruments, and a folded notebook with a blue cover. He arranged them on a clean rag in the exact order someone had taught him to use. Rex recognized a stubby screwdriver with a chipped red handle and felt something unexpectedly sharp beneath his ribs.
"That belonged to Jaime," he said.
Brian nodded. "He said a good tool doesn't need to look new. It needs to tell the truth when you use it."
Butcher made a low sound in his throat. In the old days James had repeated that sentence whenever a younger member arrived carrying something expensive and unnecessary. Rex remembered the teasing that followed, the way James could find a flaw in a machine without making its owner feel foolish. It had been one of his gifts, though at the time they had all considered it ordinary.
The boy opened the blue notebook. Pencil drawings filled the pages: a carburetor in exploded view, the routing of wires, measurements scrawled beside diagrams, and notes in two sets of handwriting. James's letters were heavy, angular, and increasingly shaky toward the last pages. Brian's were smaller and neater, with questions written in the margins and answers added beneath them.