He walked slowly around the motorcycle, his boots leaving pale prints through the film of dust. Under the fluorescent lights, the paint looked almost black in the shadows and deep crimson where the sun reached it. Every chrome fitting had been polished. The leather seat had been repaired carefully by somebody who loved that machine, and the engine carried the squared-off rocker covers that gave the old Knucklehead its name.
"Sacramento, Fresno, Modesto, two shops in Bakersfield," Grip said. "Five people looked at this bike. Every one of them handed it back and said the same thing. They told me it was fine."
I watched his crooked fingers open and close. "But it isn't."
"At ordinary speed it's beautiful: starts every time and idles like it ought to. Then I get on the highway and it dies underneath me without warning. Not every day or every ride, but often enough that I don't trust it farther than I can push it."
"What happens right before it dies?"
Grip turned toward me. "What?"
"Does it sputter? Lose power gradually? Does it pull to one side?"
"The motor cuts clean. Like someone turned off the key. Sometimes it comes back before I can get to the shoulder. Sometimes it doesn't."
"After how long?"
"Four or five minutes at highway speed. Worse when it's hot."
I thought about that. There was nothing especially clever about the question, but it separated three possible stories hidden inside one symptom. My uncle used to make me describe the failure before I was allowed to touch a wrench. He said careless men took things apart because they were frightened of not knowing; good mechanics learned what they needed to know first.
"You've been hurt on it?" I asked.
Grip held up his left hand. "Highway Ninety-Nine. Sixty-two miles an hour, according to the report. Woke up looking at a guardrail. The doctor says I'm lucky."
His voice didn't change, but the room seemed smaller after that. An old motorcycle could be a beautiful thing and still be unforgiving. At seventy miles an hour, even a brief interruption in power could turn a rider's ordinary correction into a terrible mistake, especially if he was already fighting the machine because he expected it to fail.
"I can try to diagnose it," I said. "But I won't let you ride it if I can't prove it's safe."
Grip studied me. "You've worked on one of these?"
"I've helped rebuild two. Hector did most of the serious machine work. He made me understand every step before he'd let me put something back together."
"You have a dynamometer?"
"A small one out back. The straps are old but inspected, and the safety enclosure still works."
He looked surprised. For the first time, I thought he might regard me as a mechanic instead of a boy occupying a mechanic's building.
"I'll give you until sundown," he said. "Find what those other shops missed. If you can't, tell me straight. If you tell me it's fixed and you send me into traffic on a dangerous machine, your shop will be the least of your problems."