Tank put the name on the flyers himself, in his own hand, the way he had promised. He sat at a table in the clubhouse with a stack of paper and a thick marker, and he wrote, in big, careful letters: THE THOUSAND ENGINES RIDE. And under it, smaller: Named by Lucia Vega. For the shelter fund. For every girl who never got a phone call made for her.
He made fifty flyers, and then he made fifty more, and the riders took them to every diner and gas station and hardware store along Route 89, and Nora put one in the café window, where everybody could see it, and one behind the register, where she could see it, and Lucia, seeing her name on a flyer in a window, stood there for a long time, not saying anything, just looking.
"It's real now," she said, finally. "It's not just something I said in a kitchen. It's on paper. In a window."
"That's how things become real," Nora said. "First you say them. Then somebody writes them down. Then everybody sees them. Then they happen."
The ride was planned for a Saturday in April, at dawn, leaving from the Crossroads Café. Tank organized it the way he organized everything: carefully, and with a list. The route would run down Route 89, past the truck stops, past the places in the ledger, past the shelter, and back to the café for breakfast. The riders would ride in formation, headlights on, even though it would be daylight, because headlights on is how you say: we are here, and we are not hiding.
Lucia would ride pillion in the lead group, in the donated jacket, behind Tank himself, because Tank had insisted, and because Lucia had asked him to, and because some things, once decided, do not need to be debated. Elena would come down from Flagstaff to watch, and Carmen would come, and Rosa would come, too — not to ride, not yet, but to watch, and to stand at the café with a cup of coffee, and to be part of it in the way she was ready to be part of it.
The week before the ride, the café filled up with people asking about it: regulars, reporters, a woman from the shelter fund, a man from Flagstaff who had heard about it on the radio. Nora answered their questions patiently, and she gave them coffee, and she told them, when they asked, that the ride was named by a girl who had once slid a napkin across a table, and that the girl would be riding in the lead group, and that anybody who wanted to come and watch was welcome, because watching was also a kind of standing.
On the Friday night before the ride, Lucia stood at the café window, looking at the flyer, and she said to Nora, "Do you think a thousand bikes will really come?"
Nora said, "I think more than a thousand will come. I think people have been waiting for a reason to ride for something, and you gave them one."
Lucia nodded, and she touched the flyer, lightly, with one finger, on her own name, and she said, "I named it. That's mine. Nobody can take that."
Nora said, "Nobody will try. And if they do, there's a wall."
The flyers brought people out of the woodwork. A man from Prescott called the café and said he had ridden with the Desert Hawks twenty years ago, before he got married and got a job and got old, and he asked if he could ride again, just this once, for the shelter fund, and Tank said yes, and wrote his name down on the list. A woman from Tucson called and said she had two daughters, and she wanted them to see what a thousand bikes looked like when they were riding for something good, and Nora said, "Bring them. Bring everybody."
Elena called from Flagstaff and said she was coming down with Carmen, and with Rosa, and that Rosa was nervous but wanted to come, and Nora said, "Tell Rosa she doesn't have to do anything but stand and watch. Watching is enough. Watching is how it starts." Elena said, "She knows. She told me: 'I want to see what it looks like when people come.' I thought that was the truest thing I had ever heard."
The local newspaper ran a story, with a photograph of the café and a photograph of Tank's flyer, and the story said that the ride had been named by a sixteen-year-old girl — seventeen by the time of the ride, the story noted — who had once been a victim and was now, in the newspaper's words, "a young woman who named her own ride." Lucia read the story at the counter, and she blushed, and she said to Nora, "A young woman. That's me, I guess."
Nora said, "That's you. Young woman Lucia Vega, namer of rides, maker of pie, keeper of napkins."
Lucia laughed, and then she got serious, and she said, "Do you think people will really come? Not just bikers. Regular people. Mothers. Girls."
Nora said, "I think regular people have been waiting for a reason to stand somewhere and be counted. A thousand bikes is a reason. A girl who named a ride is a reason. You'll see."
On the Thursday before the ride, the café ran out of pie, twice, because people kept coming in to ask about Saturday, and staying for coffee, and staying for pie, and Nora, refilling the case for the third time, thought about how a ride, before it even happens, can feed a town, in every sense of the word.