The result made his pulse quicken. There was a clean ignition signal where a few minutes earlier there had been none. Frank did not announce victory. He had repaired enough old motorcycles to distrust anything they had not proved by running.
"All right," he said, wiping his hands. "Try her."
Jim stood beside the Shovelhead and rested his palm on the handlebar. For a strange instant, he seemed reluctant to move. An old motorcycle that refuses to start is disappointing; an old motorcycle that might start after days of failure is something else entirely. Hope was the emotion Jim had spent a lifetime teaching himself to handle cautiously.
"Kid," he said without turning, "you want to turn the key?"
Leon blinked. "Me?"
"You noticed it. You can stand beside Frank and turn the key. Then you get clear." Jim nodded toward the ignition. "You understand?"
Leon looked to Frank. The mechanic gave a brief nod and moved close enough to supervise. The boy reached toward the old key, his fingers still grimy from sweeping. He had expected the motorcycle to feel cold, but the metal beneath his hand held the afternoon heat. He turned it carefully, as though too much pressure might break something important.
A light flickered across the instruments. Frank guided him back behind the workbench. Jim checked the controls and settled his considerable weight over the machine. His expression changed into the serious focus of a man greeting a difficult old friend.
The first attempt produced a heavy mechanical rotation and nothing more. Cole shifted a fraction. Wilson glanced toward Frank. The old mechanic said nothing, but his jaw tightened.
Jim tried again. The engine coughed. For one terrible beat Leon thought the sound would fade like all the others. Then the Shovelhead caught with a violent, unmistakable roar that rattled the windows and sent dust drifting from a rafter.
Leon jumped, clapping his hands over his ears. The sound filled every corner of the garage, an uneven mechanical thunder that no small automobile could imitate. The floor seemed to tremble beneath his shoes. He smelled old exhaust and hot metal, and beyond those familiar odors he sensed something he could not name: the arrival of life where everybody had agreed life was gone.
Jim's face changed. It happened slowly, like the sun creeping over a dark mountain. The deep lines beside his mouth shifted, the hard set of his eyes softened, and a smile spread across the scarred face that made both younger bikers look away in surprise. He listened to the engine settle into its heavy, uneven idle, each pulse arriving in a rhythm he knew better than some songs.
For a moment Jim was not standing in a crumbling garage at sixty-two. He was twenty-eight, somewhere beyond the Nevada border with his brother laughing behind him and the highway stretching toward dawn. He remembered two cups of gas-station coffee resting on the saddle. He remembered his brother shouting that they had made a wrong turn. He remembered the effortless certainty of a future that had not yet taken anyone away.