It was a 1978 Harley-Davidson Shovelhead, or at least it had once been one. The machine leaned at an awkward angle, its old paint almost entirely erased, its seat torn open, the chrome dull beneath layers of dirt. Heavy steel and worn rubber made it look as though it had been assembled from the remains of several forgotten decades. Its fuel tank carried thick patches of primer and filler, some cracked by years of desert heat. Chloe could barely believe it had arrived at the yard recently; it looked as though it had waited there for generations.
"Tow operator brought it in from a drainage ditch near Route 58 three days ago," Arthur said. "No plate. Identification marks damaged. The paperwork isn't clean, and I'm not going to pretend it is. I called about it, and nobody could tell me what to do except hold it for parts."
Chloe went closer, her father's old wrench heavy inside her pack. The handlebars were pitted, the fenders scarred, and one side of the frame showed the kind of damage that made her stomach tighten. She had ridden smaller motorcycles with David's friends years earlier, but nothing this large. This was no ordinary solution. It was the kind of risk that could end her escape before it began.
"Does it run?" she asked.
"For a minute yesterday," Arthur admitted. "I had it coughing when I checked whether the engine was seized. That doesn't mean it's roadworthy. It means it made noise. There's a difference, and your father would be the first to tell you that."
She sat on the damaged seat and felt the machine settle under her weight. The bike seemed to outweigh every hope she had carried into the yard. Yet for the first time that day she could picture the trailer disappearing behind her and the road continuing without Richard at the end of it. She reached into her pocket and held out the money.
"All forty," she said. "Please."
Arthur looked at the bills for a long time. "If we do this, I'm giving you a receipt for the salvage transfer," he said. "It won't be a registration. You understand that? You're not buying a safe legal motorcycle. You're buying a problem I can barely identify."
"I understand," Chloe answered, though she did not fully understand anything except how desperately she wanted to leave.
He took the money reluctantly, then folded it into his pocket without counting. "David would haunt me for this," he muttered. "And he'd haunt me worse if I sent you back down that road with nowhere to go."