Walt Grady had not always been Tank. Once he had been a kid from a dry town outside Tucson with a bad temper and a fast bike, and the Desert Hawks had taken him in when he was nineteen and taught him the difference between being hard and being useful. He was fifty-four now, with a gray beard and a belly he carried like a man carries a toolbox β because it was there, and because it had earned its place β and he had run the Desert Hawks for eleven years on one rule, which he had written on the wall of the clubhouse in his own hand: We are the wall, not the fist.
He was at the garage in Cedar Fork when Nora's call came, changing the oil on a member's bike, his hands black to the wrist. He listened to her without interrupting, the way a man listens when he knows the person on the other end is afraid and trying not to sound it. When she said the girl had passed a note, he set the wrench down very carefully on the bench, the way a man sets down something he does not want to break.
"I'm coming," he said. "And I'm not coming alone."
He made three calls. The first was to his vice president, a lean man named Reyes who answered on the first ring and said, "Talk to me," and Tank said, "Crossroads CafΓ©. A girl. A man who won't let her go. No touching. We stand and we witness. Bring everybody." The second was to the clubhouse, where the Saturday breakfast crowd was already gathering, and he said the same thing, shorter. The third was to a friend in a neighboring club, a man named Preacher who ran a chapter two towns over, and he said, "I need bikes at the Crossroads in Cedar Fork, and I need them quiet."
Then he washed his hands, put on his vest, and rode out of the garage with the sun at his back and the road open in front of him, and behind him, one by one, the engines started up like a storm deciding to happen.
Nora, back at the cafΓ©, did what she had promised. She kept the coffee hot. She kept the rhythm. She did not get between Brandt and the girl, because Tank had told her not to, and because she knew that the worst thing she could do was make Brandt decide to leave early. She refilled cups. She wiped the counter. She smiled at the trucker and asked about his route. And all the while she was counting the minutes in her head, and thinking about the sound she knew was coming down Route 89.
Brandt was getting restless. He had finished his eggs. He kept looking at his watch, at the door, at the girl. He said something low to Lucia, too low for Nora to hear, and Lucia nodded, and Nora saw the girl's hand tighten around the water glass again. Brandt stood up and put his jacket on, and Nora's heart went up into her throat, because a man putting his jacket on in a diner is a man about to leave, and she had promised Tank she would not let him leave, and she did not yet know how she was going to keep that promise.
She walked over to the table with the coffee pot, because the coffee pot was the only weapon she had ever trusted, and she said, "More coffee before the road, hon? It's a long drive to Flagstaff." Brandt looked at her, and for a second she saw the calculation in his eyes: was this waitress a problem, or was she just a waitress? He smiled, the smooth smile, and said, "We're fine, thanks," and reached for Lucia's elbow.
And that was when the sound came.
It did not come all at once. It came the way weather comes in the desert β first a low roll on the edge of hearing, then a tremor in the windows, then a roar that filled the whole building and made the cups rattle in their saucers. Nora felt it in her feet before she heard it properly, a vibration coming up through the floorboards, and she looked out the window and saw the first bikes turning off Route 89 into the lot, and then more, and then more, until the parking lot was full and the street was full and the windows of the cafΓ© went dark with chrome.
Brandt froze with his hand on Lucia's elbow. He looked out the window, and Nora watched his face change, the smooth confidence draining out of it like water out of a cracked glass. He had expected a waitress. He had expected a small room and a quiet road. He had not expected a wall.
Tank came through the door first, alone, the way a leader should, and he took off his sunglasses and looked around the cafΓ© the way a man looks at a room he intends to keep safe. He did not look at Brandt. He looked at Nora, and he nodded, once, and Nora nodded back, and that was the whole conversation.
Behind him, through the windows, the bikes kept coming. The lot filled. The street filled. The sound rolled down Route 89 and kept rolling, and Nora, standing at the counter with the coffee pot in her hand, thought about her sister, and thought about the phone call she had almost not made, and thought, this is what a wall sounds like when it arrives.