Leo hugged him.
Jim froze.
The great intimidating enforcer who frightened grown men stood with both arms awkwardly extended while an eight-year-old wrapped himself around his waist.
Rusty witnessed it.
Jim pointed at him.
“You say anything, I deny it.”
Rusty nodded.
“Absolutely.”
He told everyone.
A year after Dutch's memorial ride, the FXR returned to Apex for routine service.
This time nobody feared it.
Rusty placed it in the center bay.
Leo, now nine, walked around the motorcycle with a clipboard he had made himself.
Pete watched.
“What are you doing?”
“Writing down what we check.”
“Why?”
“So next time nobody has to remember everything.”
Pete smiled.
“That might be the smartest thing you've said.”
Leo looked at him.
“My dad didn't write enough down.”
The sadness in the sentence silenced Pete.
Leo looked toward the engine.
“If he'd written everything, maybe we wouldn't have had to guess.”
Pete nodded.
“True.”
“So I'm writing.”
From then on, Apex started keeping better records on custom builds.
Not just parts installed.
Why.
What had been modified.
What no longer matched factory specifications.
What the next mechanic needed to know.
Rusty called it the Hayes Rule.
Leo hated the name.
Which guaranteed it stayed.
Years passed.
Not quickly.
Real years never did.
Leo grew.
His clothes eventually fit.
Then stopped fitting for the opposite reason.
He entered middle school.
Then high school.
He became less painfully thin.
His mother eventually found steadier employment.
Rusty's business improved.
A photograph of Dutch's restored FXR hung near the front desk, not as an advertisement, but as part of the shop's history.
Beside it was the old photograph from 1992.
Arthur and Dutch.
Professor and Madman.
Below both pictures sat one more image.
Taken on the Friday the motorcycle started again.
Jim Mercer kneeling beside an eight-year-old Leo.
Rusty standing behind them.
Big Dave, Tommy, and Pete covered in grease.
Dutch's FXR in the center.
Nobody had planned the picture.
Bobby had simply taken it.
That made it better.
Customers asked about the boy.
Rusty never exaggerated.
“Kid knew the bike.”
That was enough.
When Leo turned sixteen, he began working legally under proper supervision doing basic shop work appropriate to his training.
By then, he knew enough to be dangerous in the other meaning of the word.
He could look at a broken machine and become so certain he understood it that he sometimes stopped listening.
Rusty corrected that.
Hard.
One afternoon Leo diagnosed a fuel problem on a newer motorcycle.
He was convinced.
Rusty disagreed.
Leo argued.
Rusty let him explain everything.
Then said, “Put your hand on it.”
Leo frowned.
“What?”
“Your dad used to listen before he decided.”
Leo became irritated.
“I know.”
“No.”
Rusty shook his head.
“You remember the story. Different thing.”
He pointed toward the motorcycle.
“You've gotten good enough to become arrogant.”
Leo stared.
“That's exactly what beat us on Dutch's bike.”
Leo looked away.
Rusty continued.
“We decided we understood it because the manual told us what it was supposed to be.”
He tapped Leo's chest.
“Don't become the manual.”
Leo never forgot that.
The problem turned out not to be what he originally thought.
That bothered him for almost a week.
Then it became one of his favorite lessons.