Chapter 2: The Prank
Inside the station, Rosa Delgado was wiping down the counter when Walt came in, and she greeted him the way she always did, with a smile and a question about Emma. Walt set his canvas bag on the counter and asked for milk and bread, and Rosa fetched them from the shelves, and they talked about the weather and the county fair coming in September. She rang up his purchase and slipped a packet of sugar into his bag, and Walt thanked her, and he was just turning toward the door when the sound of the motorcycles came back, louder this time, and closer. The seven riders had circled the block, and now they were pulling into the station lot, their engines growling, tires kicking up dust. They parked in a ragged line, revving and laughing, showing off for the whole world.
The leader was easy to spot. He was Marcus Doyle, twenty-seven, called Tank, on a black Harley with chrome pipes and a skull on the tank. He wore a vest with a BLACKTOP REAPERS patch, and carried himself like the loudest man in the room. Behind him came the others: Ray, a wiry kid with a tattoo on his neck; Jesse, who laughed at everything Tank said; Kyle and Ben, twins who had joined the club together; Chris, who was quiet and watchful; and Danny Cole, the youngest of them all, twenty-one years old, a prospect who had been riding with the crew for three months and was still trying to prove he belonged. Danny rode a battered Honda he had fixed himself, and wore a plain denim jacket with no patch, because prospects did not earn patches yet. He kept his eyes on Tank and laughed when Tank laughed, though his stomach had been tight all morning.
Walt came out with his bag, nodded at the riders politely, and started walking home along the shoulder. The road was wet from overnight rain, and a wide, muddy puddle stood near the edge of the station lot where the gravel dipped beside the ditch. Walt walked past it without a thought, his canvas bag on his shoulder, his long coat buttoned against the chill. He had gone maybe twenty yards when he heard Tank's voice behind him, loud and full of mischief, saying something to the others, and then he heard the engines rev, all seven of them, and then the laughter started, and Walt turned his head just in time to see them coming.
Tank went first, aiming straight at the puddle, and the muddy water flew up in a great brown arc and came down on Walt like a wave. It hit his coat and his hat and his face, cold and gritty, and it soaked through to his shirt, and it splashed across the canvas bag, and the milk carton inside thumped against his side. Then Ray came through, and Jesse, and the twins, and Chris, each throwing up another wave, until Walt stood dripping, his coat dark with mud, his hair plastered to his forehead, his groceries soaked. The riders pulled up and stopped, laughing loud and hard, the way boys laugh when they have done something cruel and want to hear it was funny.
Tank laughed hardest, slapped his thigh, and called out, "Look at that! Old man's taking a bath!" The others laughed again, and Tank revved his engine like a man taking applause. Walt said nothing at all. He stood dripping in the road, his face giving away nothing at all. He did not shout. He did not shake his fist. He did not beg them to stop. He simply stood there, dripping, with a quiet dignity that made the laughter sound smaller than it had a moment before, and he reached up with one steady hand and wiped the mud from his eyes, and he looked at Tank, and then he looked away, as if Tank were not worth the trouble of looking at twice.
Danny Cole did not laugh. He had laughed at first, a quick sound that came out before he could stop it, because laughing was what you did when Tank laughed. But the laugh died when he saw Walt's face. Something in the old man's stillness made Danny feel sick. He had expected anger, or fear, or at least a shout. He had expected the old man to be small. Instead, Walt stood there like a man who had seen worse things than muddy water, and who had decided, a long time ago, that he would not let boys like these decide who he was. Danny looked down at his own hands on the handlebars, and he felt a hot, uncomfortable shame crawl up his neck, and he thought about his grandfather, who had been about Walt's age when he died, and who had taught Danny to hold a door for old men and to stand up when they came into a room. His grandfather would have been ashamed of him. Danny was ashamed of himself.
Walt bent slowly, his knees creaking, and picked up the canvas bag, which had fallen when the first wave hit him. The bread was soaked. The milk carton had split at the seam, and milk was leaking into the mud. He set the bag on his shoulder anyway, and he straightened up, and he started walking again, toward home, his boots squelching in the wet gravel, his coat dripping. He did not look back. He did not hurry. He walked the way he had walked all morning, steady and even, as if nothing had happened at all, as if seven young men on motorcycles were not worth the price of a backward glance. Behind him, the laughter thinned out and died, and the engines idled, and the road went quiet again, except for the sound of Walt's boots on the gravel, and the dripping of the water from his coat, and the small, mean silence that follows a joke nobody is proud of.
Long after the engines faded, Danny could still see the old man walking away, steady and even. The image stayed with him all the way home, and it was still there when he went to bed that night, accusing.