Walt lifted the little bicycle with one hand and set it upright, leaning it against his knee, and studied the chain the way he had studied ten thousand chains in machine shops and factory bays across forty working years. The principle never changed. Metal was metal. It only ever wanted to be where it belonged.
"Now," he said, mostly to Sophie, because a job went better with an audience that understood it, "what we're going to do is walk this chain back home. Back wheel first. Watch, so you know how, next time."
Sophie had stopped crying. She sat cross-legged in the gravel, chin in her greasy hands, watching him with the total attention children give to anything an adult does with his hands.
Walt looped the loose chain over the rear sprocket, then eased the front of it up onto the teeth of the chainring, holding the slack with two fingers black-nailed from a lifetime of work. He turned the pedal a quarter-turn with his other hand β slow, patient β and the chain climbed, tooth by tooth, and settled into place with a small greasy click that he felt in his fingertips like a word spoken clearly.
"There," he said. "Hear that? That's a chain saying thank you."
He spun the pedal properly then, and the back wheel whirred, and the chain ran true and smooth around both sprockets without a skip. He spun it again, forward and backward, and checked the tension with the pad of his thumb, and nodded to himself the way he had nodded over lathes and presses in shops from Gary to Indianapolis.
"She'll hold," he said. He pulled the red shop rag from his back pocket β it had ridden there so many years it was more habit than tool β and wiped the worst of the grease off his hands, then held the rag out to Sophie with two fingers. "Your turn. You've got some on your face, mechanic."
She took the rag and scrubbed her cheek, smearing the grease thinner rather than removing it, and then she looked at the bicycle, and at the chain running bright and true, and her whole face changed. The smile that broke through the tear-streaks was gap-toothed and enormous, the smile of a person whose world had been broken at three o'clock and mended before three-fifteen.
"You fixed it!" she said, as if he had done something considerably more remarkable than the facts supported. "You really fixed it!"
"It's what chains do," Walt said. "They come off, and somebody puts them back. That's the whole story of chains."
He lifted the bicycle upright and held it steady by the seat while Sophie climbed on, one foot finding the pedal with the seriousness of a pilot. She rode a wobbly, triumphant circle around the gravel lot β past his cruiser, around the diner's sign pole, back again β the chain holding, the pigtails bouncing, and then she braked in front of him with her feet down and beamed.
That was when the diner door banged open.
Megan Lane came out at a run with her apron still tied on and a worried mother's speed in every step. She had Sophie's face grown older by twenty-four years, the same fair hair pulled back, and she was already talking before she reached them.
"Sophie Lane, I looked out that window and you were gone from where I could β oh." She stopped. She took in the bicycle, upright and whole; the little girl, astride it and grinning; and the enormous grey-bearded man in leather standing in her gravel lot with a greasy rag in his hand, and her expression traveled through several countries in about two seconds.
"Mama, the chain came off and he fixed it," Sophie announced. "His name is Walt. He fixes machines."
"I see that," Megan said. She put a hand on Sophie's head β love and exasperation braided together β and looked up at Walt. "I'm so sorry if she bothered you. She's supposed to stay right by the window where I can see her."
"She stayed put," Walt said. "Sat right down next to it and guarded it till help came. Can't ask more of anybody." He nodded toward Sophie. "You've got a good one there. She'd already tried to fix it herself before I ever showed up. Grease on her hands to prove it."
Megan looked at her daughter's face β the tear tracks, the grease smear, the enormous smile β and something in her own face softened all the way through. "Thank you," she said. "Really. Thank you. Can I β come inside, at least, let me get you a coffee? On the house. It's the least β "
"Well," Walt said, "I was just stopping for coffee anyway." He hitched his chin toward the diner, where the windows glowed yellow against the grey afternoon. "But I'll pay for it. A man's coffee tastes better when he's paid for it. Lead the way."
Chapter 3: The Blue Plate