He glanced once more toward the highway. "And if you run into trouble before that, ask for help from somebody who has a real reason to protect you. A hospital, somebody at a business, a caseworker who actually listens. Don't trust a leather vest just because it has a story sewn on it."
Leo folded the receipt and tucked it behind his father's photograph. Sully climbed onto the Road King, tested its response at low speed around the open concrete apron, and stopped beside the garage entrance. The temporary work would hold long enough to reach a more appropriate place, but he clearly knew Leo was right that the machine needed a proper repair.
"What's your last name, mechanic?" he asked.
"Gallagher. Leo Gallagher."
"Gallagher," Sully repeated. "I'll remember it."
He extended a gloved hand. Leo took it, expecting the crushing grip of a man trying to prove his size, but Sully shook it gently and released it. For a moment, the boy was standing in a garage the way he had stood beside Daniel, being treated not as a problem to manage but as a person whose knowledge mattered. The feeling was so unfamiliar that it made him uncomfortable.
Sully's motorcycle rolled into the night with a low mechanical growl and disappeared along the old road. Leo stood outside long after the taillight vanished, holding the lighter in his palm. The desert recovered its silence one sound at a time: distant insects, the movement of wind through broken sheet metal, and the occasional rattle of a loose sign. Leo went back inside and placed the silver Zippo beside the photograph of his father.
For the first hour afterward, he expected Sully to return because the repair had failed. Then he expected the men who had injured him to arrive instead, furious that somebody had helped their target. Neither happened. Eventually Leo lay down on the old cushion and slept deeply enough that he dreamed of the garage in Reno, where Daniel was setting two coffee cups on the workbench and asking whether his son was ready to learn something useful.
Morning made the world ordinary again. The abandoned station was still abandoned, the canteen still nearly empty, and the road to town still too long for a teenager with injured ribs and barely working wheels. The lighter was real, but it could not fill a stomach or convince a store owner to offer shelter. Leo kept it in his pocket and resumed repairing the bicycle because doing nothing made the loneliness worse.
He managed to true the front wheel enough to make it turn without catching the brake, but the rear tire would not retain air. He spent most of the day searching the scrap lot for a replacement and found none he trusted. At noon the metal siding burned hot enough to hurt his fingers. By evening he had a headache, and the world seemed to sway whenever he stood too quickly.