Riding pillion is a particular kind of trust. You sit behind somebody, you hold on, and you give up control of the machine, and you trust the person in front of you to lean the right way, to brake at the right time, to see the road the way you cannot see it from behind. Lucia had never ridden pillion before the Saturday of the ride, and she spent the first ten miles holding on too tight, the way a person holds on when they are afraid, and Tank, feeling it, said over his shoulder, without turning around, "Relax, miss. I've got the bike. You just look."
So Lucia looked. She looked at the desert going by, gold and blue, at the truck stops, at the shelter, at the courthouse, at the faces of people watching from the side of the road, at the line of bikes behind her, stretching back as far as she could see, at the headlights, on in daylight, at the sky, which was bigger than she had ever noticed it being. She looked, and she thought about how different the world looked from the back of a motorcycle, moving, instead of from a table in a diner, waiting to be moved.
Tank rode steadily, the way a man rides when he is responsible for a girl and a thousand bikes, and every so often he said something over his shoulder, without turning around, the way a man talks when he is concentrating on the road: "That's the stop from the ledger." "That's where Harlan caught Eppes." "That's where the shelter girls waved." And Lucia answered, or nodded, or just held on, a little less tightly each time, until by midday she was holding on the way a rider holds on: firm, but not afraid.
At one point, a girl on the side of the road β young, maybe fourteen, with a backpack, standing at a bus stop β watched the line go past, and Lucia caught her eye, and the girl raised a hand, tentatively, and Lucia raised hers back, and the girl smiled, a small, surprised smile, and Lucia thought about napkins, and about how a wave, like a napkin, is a small thing, but it can mean: I see you. I am here. You are not alone.
Tank, feeling Lucia relax behind him, said, "There you go, miss. That's riding. You don't fight the bike. You go with it. Same as life, mostly."
Lucia laughed, and the wind took the laugh and carried it back along the line, and a rider behind them laughed, too, though he could not have heard it, because laughter, like a wall, is something that spreads.
By the time they turned back toward Cedar Fork, Lucia was not holding on tight at all. She was sitting up, looking around, waving at people, and Tank said, "You're a natural, miss. Your grandmother will want a picture."
Lucia said, "She'll get one. A big one. For the room in Flagstaff."
Tank laughed, and said, "Good. Put it next to the bed. So you can see it when you wake up, and remember: you rode in the lead group, in a donated jacket, with a thousand engines behind you, and you named the whole thing."
Lucia nodded, and she looked back, once, at the line stretching behind her, at the headlights, at the chrome, at the riders, and she thought: this is what it looks like when a girl stops being moved, and starts moving. This is what it looks like when a napkin becomes a ride. This is what it looks like when a wall starts rolling down a highway, at sixty miles an hour, with the sun on its back, and nobody, not Brandt, not Dolan, not anybody, can stop it.
Tank taught Lucia the hand signals as they rode, shouting them over his shoulder in the gaps between towns: left turn, right turn, slow down, stop, hazard ahead. Lucia practiced them, tentatively at first, tapping his shoulder for each one, and Tank would nod, and say, "Good. You've got it. You're a rider now, not just a passenger." Lucia liked that distinction. A passenger is moved. A rider moves. She had spent months being moved, and now she was moving, and the difference, she decided, was everything.
At a water stop, a woman rider named June β no, not that June, a different June, a woman in her forties with gray in her hair and a vest covered in patches β came up to Lucia and said, "You the girl who named it?" And Lucia said, "Yes, ma'am." And June said, "Well, honey, I rode three hundred miles to be here, because my sister didn't get a phone call made for her, twenty years ago, and I wanted to ride for her, and for you, and for every girl who didn't get one." Lucia hugged her, without thinking, and June hugged her back, hard, and the two of them stood there in a rest area parking lot, two strangers, holding each other, because that is what rides do: they make strangers into family, for a day, and sometimes for longer.
Tank, watching, said to nobody in particular, "That's the ride. Right there. That's what it's for."
Back on the bikes, Lucia practiced the signals again, and she got them all right, and Tank said, "See? You're a natural. Next year, you'll ride your own bike, if you want. We'll teach you. The club teaches anybody who wants to learn, especially girls who named rides."
Lucia laughed, and said, "Next year. Maybe. First I have to finish school. And make pie. And keep the napkin framed."
Tank said, "Fair enough. School first. Pie second. Bikes third. That's a good order."
As they rode the last miles toward Cedar Fork, with the sun going gold, Lucia thought about signals: left, right, slow, stop, hazard ahead. She thought about how life, like riding, has signals, if you know how to read them: a bruised wrist, a hand on an elbow, a napkin under a sugar dispenser. She had learned to read them. And now, riding pillion with a thousand engines behind her, she was learning to give them, too: a wave, a nod, a hand raised to a girl at a bus stop, saying, without words: I see you. Keep going. We're coming.