Frankie straightened up and looked around the shop — at Jerry, at Pete, at Ray — and he said, "Who found it?"
Jerry looked at the kid. The kid's face was carefully blank, but his eyes were shining, and Jerry felt something in his chest shift and settle, like a part seating home.
"He did," Jerry said.
"Come here, son," Jerry said. "Tell me your name."
Chapter 6
Sam's Hands
Sam Reyes kept his hands busy because busy hands didn't shake.
He sat at the workbench in Iron & Oil, rag in one hand and carburetor in the other, cleaning parts that didn't need cleaning, while the Shovelhead ticked as it cooled behind him. The men had gone home. Jerry had left the lights on and the door unlocked and said, "Stay as long as you need," in a voice that tried hard to sound casual, and Sam had stayed because there was nowhere else to be that didn't cost something.
His hands knew this work the way other kids knew video games. He could feel the difference between a bolt that would come free and a bolt that would fight. He could tell by the weight of a wrench whether it was the right one before he looked at the number stamped on it. His grandfather had taught him that. Not in a classroom. In a garage smaller than this one, with a radio that only played one station and a coffee mug that said WORLD'S OKAYEST MECHANIC.
"Listen to the machine," his grandfather used to say. "Everybody wants to tell it what's wrong. Nobody wants to listen."
Sam had been eight the first time he held a wrench. Ten the first time he changed oil by himself. Twelve the first time he diagnosed a problem before his grandfather did — a bad alternator on a neighbor's truck — and his grandfather had looked at him over his glasses and said, "Well. All right, then," like he'd passed a test.
His grandfather had been a Navy mechanic, hands like leather, a voice like gravel, and he never once raised it. He died when Sam was thirteen. Heart, the doctors said. Quick, they said. Sam had not believed the second part.
A year ago, his mother had died too. That one had not been quick either, not really. She had been sick a long time — the kind of sick that made her tired in a way sleep couldn't fix — and Sam had watched her get smaller and smaller in the bed in the apartment, the way a candle burns down. He had made her soup, read to her, done the things the nurses showed him, because somebody had to. The last thing she said to him was his name, and then she was gone, and the world had rearranged itself around the hole she left.
After that, the system had tried. Sam gave it that much. There had been a caseworker, and a placement, and a house with too many kids and not enough food, and a man who looked at Sam the way men look at things they want to take apart. Sam had left in the night with his backpack and his grandfather's tools and the last twenty dollars from his mother's dresser drawer. He had not gone back. He had told himself he would figure it out. He was still figuring it out.
He slept where he could. Sometimes a shelter, when there was a bed and nobody stole his shoes. Sometimes under the overpass near the freeway, where the concrete held the day's heat and the traffic noise covered the sound of his own breathing. Sometimes in the doorway of Dot's diner, where the exhaust fan blew warm air and Dot pretended not to notice him and left a sandwich on the step like it was an accident.
School had been fits and starts. He liked school, in a way he didn't tell anyone, because liking school when you were homeless felt like admitting you wanted something you couldn't have. He liked math. Math was honest. Math didn't change its mind. He had a counselor once who tried to help, who filled out forms and made phone calls, and then the counselor had transferred to another district, and the forms had gone nowhere, and Sam had stopped expecting the forms to save him.
Engines made sense when people didn't. That was the whole of it. An engine didn't lie. It didn't promise to come back and then not come back. It didn't look at you and decide you were too much trouble. It told you what was wrong if you listened, and if you fixed it, it ran. That was a fair deal. Sam had not found many fair deals.
Jerry came back in with two mugs of coffee and set one down beside Sam's elbow. "You still here," he said.
"Yeah," Sam said. "I'm still here."
Jerry sat on the stool across from him and didn't say anything for a while, which Sam appreciated more than he could have explained. Then Jerry said, "You know, kid, I've been running this shop for a long time, and I've had a lot of people walk through that door. I still don't know your name."
Sam looked at his hands. The rag. The carburetor. The grease under his fingernails that never quite came out, the same grease his grandfather had carried. He thought about all the reasons not to answer. A name was a thing people could use to find you. A name was a hook.
But Jerry had left the lights on. Jerry had left the door unlocked. Jerry had not asked for anything.
"Sam," he said. "Sam Reyes."
Jerry nodded like it was the most ordinary thing in the world. "Good to meet you, Sam Reyes," he said. "You hungry?"
Sam was always hungry. He said yes.
Dot's food was still warm in the foil. Jerry talked while Sam ate — about the bike, about Saturday, about the ride — and Sam listened the way his grandfather had taught him, and the garage felt, for the first time in a long time, like a place where a person could sit down without owing anybody an explanation.