"Maybe," Sam said, and took a bite of the sandwich, and the cafeteria got a little less loud.
Shop class was in the annex, a big room that smelled like sawdust and oil, and Mr. Delgado β no relation to the math teacher, he told Sam twice β had a lawnmower engine on the bench that wouldn't turn over. "Anybody?" he said. Sam kept his hand down for exactly three seconds, then raised it. "Check the spark," he said. "Then the fuel line. Then the ground." Mr. Delgado raised an eyebrow. "You know engines?" "Some," Sam said. He checked the spark plug first, the way his grandpa had taught him, and found it fouled black. He cleaned it, put it back, and the engine coughed and caught on the second pull. The class went quiet. Mr. Delgado looked at Sam like he was seeing him for the first time. "Well," he said. "Looks like we got ourselves a mechanic." Marcus whistled low from the back. Sam sat down, and his ears were burning, but it was the good kind of burning β the kind that comes with being seen for something you can actually do.
After school, he did his homework at the garage workbench, the way he'd done everything that mattered for weeks now β with the smell of oil around him and the Shovelhead watching from under its cover. Jerry sat on a stool nearby, pretending to sort bolts, which Sam knew was pretending because Jerry had sorted those same bolts yesterday.
The fractions worksheet fought him for a while. He got one wrong, then two. "Stuck?" Jerry asked, peering at the page. "Fractions," Sam said. Jerry squinted. "You know, a fraction's just a bolt that hasn't found its hole yet. Find the common denominator β that's the thread size. Match 'em up, and she goes in smooth." Sam snorted. "That's terrible." "Terrible and true," Jerry said. Then Sam remembered what Ms. Delgado had said β one piece at a time β and he thought about the way his grandpa used to take an engine apart: not all at once, never all at once. One bolt. One part. One job. He worked the problems slow, the way he'd work a stubborn carburetor, and one by one they gave up their answers.
"How'd it go?" Jerry asked.
Sam held up the worksheet. "I think I got it."
The next day, Ms. Delgado handed it back with a red B at the top and a little note underneath: Nice work. Keep going.
Sam folded it careful and put it in his backpack like it was made of glass. After school he walked home to Dot's β home, the word still new in his mouth β and Dot was at the stove and Tom was setting the table, and Sam laid the paper on the counter and said, "I got a B."
Dot looked at it. Then she looked at him. Then she did something Sam had never seen anybody do with a school paper: she stuck it on the fridge with a magnet shaped like a chili pepper, right in the middle, where everybody could see it.
"There," she said. "Now it's official."
Sam stood there looking at it β his B, on the fridge, next to the coupons and the lunch menus β and felt something settle in his chest, something that had been loose and rattling for a very long time.
Chapter 14
Bill's Story
It was Thursday evening, and the garage was quiet except for the hum of the heater and the tick of the Shovelhead cooling after Jerry's last test run. Frankie sat on a stool beside the bike with two mugs of cocoa β one for him, one for Sam β and for a long time he didn't say anything at all. He just looked at the machine the way a man looks at an old photograph.
"You asked me once why I kept her," Frankie said finally. "I told you she was Bill's. That was true. It just wasn't the whole truth."
Sam waited. He had learned, from engines and from people, that the listening was the important part.
"Wild Bill Henderson was my best friend," Frankie said. "Since we were kids. He was the one who could fix anything β anything. Give him a busted toaster and a paper clip, he'd hand you back a toaster that made toast and told jokes. He laughed loud. He rode fast. He had a heart so big it got him in trouble, because he never learned how to say no to anybody."
Frankie smiled into his cocoa. "We rode everywhere together. Up the coast, down to Big Sur, out to the desert just to see if the bikes would make it. He was the one who started the poker runs. He was the one who said a riding club ought to do more than ride β ought to show up for people. That was Bill's idea. All of this β" He waved a hand at the garage, the club photos on the wall. ""All of this was Bill's idea."
"One winter," Frankie said, "a family got stranded up on Skyline in a snowstorm β car dead, two kids in the back, no phone signal. Bill heard about it on the radio and rode up there in the middle of it, snow coming down sideways, with blankets and a thermos of soup strapped to his bike. He stayed with them till the tow truck came. Wouldn't take a dime. Said the look on those kids' faces was payment enough. That was Bill. He didn't ride to be seen. He rode to be useful.""
Sam pictured it without trying: two young men on two old bikes, the coast road, the wind.
"Thirty-one years ago," Frankie said, and his voice went quieter, "I asked him to ride out one night to pick up parts. He didn't have to go. I could've gone myself. But I had a bad knee that week, and Bill said, 'Stay put, old man, I'll get them.' It was raining. And a drunk driver came across the line on Highway 1." Frankie stopped. He stared into his mug. "He never made it home."
The garage was very quiet. The heater hummed.
"For a while after," Frankie said, "I couldn't look at the bike. Then I couldn't look away from it. Every year on the anniversary I'd go out to that stretch of Highway 1 and just stand there. The club kept going β the poker runs, the charity rides β because Bill would've wanted that. But the bike stayed in the corner. It was easier to keep her parked than to admit she was the last piece of him I had left."
He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out an old photograph, creased and soft at the edges. A young man with a wild grin, leaning on a motorcycle, one boot up on the peg. "That's him," Frankie said. "Twenty-eight years old. Thought he was invincible."
Sam held the photo careful, like it might tear. "He looks happy."
"He was," Frankie said. "Right up to the end, he was."