Leon watched all of it from his milk crate. He watched Frank lean over the engine, always working from above or from the side. He watched the same tools make the same circuits around the machine. He heard the words "spark," "coil," and "short" often enough that their sounds became familiar, although he understood little of their meaning. And on Thursday afternoon, while searching beneath the motorcycle for a washer that had rolled away, he saw something the adults did not.
A length of dark wire had slipped near the underside of the frame. Its coating looked damaged, and a mounting point pressed against it at an ugly angle. The exposed metal was almost invisible unless somebody was down on the floor, looking up past the broad underside of the engine. Leon stared at it for several seconds. He could not have said where the wire led, but he knew the other wires were not flattened and scraped like that one.
He almost spoke. Frank was a few feet away, swearing under his breath and testing another part. Leon had opened his mouth once before that week to ask whether a loose cable mattered, and Frank had snapped that questions were not repairs. The boy remembered how hot his face had felt. This time he kept quiet. He returned the washer to the tray and sat on the crate, but he did not forget the wire.
Friday began with a sky bleached nearly white and a forecast promising another afternoon above a hundred degrees. The tin roof trapped the heat until standing underneath it felt like crouching beside a radiator. Frank drank three cups of black coffee before noon, barely tasting them. He had a headache behind his eyes and a thin cut across his knuckle from a slipping wrench. The Shovelhead stood in the center of the garage, exposed and silent, with tools arranged around it like evidence of a losing argument.
At three o'clock, the low rumble of three motorcycles rolled across the yard.
Frank heard it before Leon did. He turned from the workbench and stared at the open door, already knowing who was coming. Three bikes pulled up outside. Their engines stopped one after another, and the sudden quiet seemed worse than the noise. Gravel crunched beneath heavy boots as Jim entered between two younger club members.
Cole came first, large enough to fill a doorway, rolling a splintered toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. Wilson followed, lean and impatient, his gaze traveling immediately to the scattered tools and the unfinished engine. Jim walked into the middle of the bay without looking at either man. He stopped by the Harley and took in the open covers, the loose wiring, the shallow drip pan, and the thick greasy handprint across the tank.
"It ain't running," he said.
Frank swallowed. "No."
Jim waited. That was one of the things that made talking to him difficult. He did not hurry people into excuses. He stood there until they supplied excuses of their own.