Sam looked at the rag. He ran his thumb over the letters. Then he looked up at Frankie, and for just a second, the wariness dropped away, and Frankie saw the kid underneath it — fifteen years old, tired, brave, and trying very hard not to cry in front of a man he had met yesterday.
"Thank you," Sam said.
Frankie clapped him on the shoulder, gentle, like you would a bird you didn't want to startle. "Don't thank me yet," he said. "You haven't seen Pete's coffee order."
Sam laughed. It was a small laugh, rusty from not being used, but it was real. And Frankie Callahan, who had been riding for fifty years and had heard every sound a man could make, thought it might be the best sound he had ever heard in that garage.
Chapter 9
The Test Ride
Jerry Mercer had owned Iron & Oil for twenty-two years, and in that time he'd learned one thing above all others: a motorcycle will tell you the truth about a repair, and it will tell you in public.
You could bench-test an engine — run it on the stand, check the timing and compression, nod and say it sounded good. But none of that meant anything until the bike was out on the street, under load, with a rider on it and the world pushing back. That was when the little problems showed up: the bolt you didn't torque quite right, the hose that looked fine until it got hot, the rattle you couldn't hear in the shop but could at forty miles an hour.
That was why Jerry insisted on a test ride before Saturday. The Shovelhead had sat silent for twenty-three days and roared to life yesterday, but roaring in a garage and running right on the road were two different things, and Bill Henderson's bike deserved better than a roadside breakdown in the middle of a memorial ride.
Thursday morning, the fog was thick enough to taste. Jerry stood in the doorway with his coffee and watched Frankie wheel the Shovelhead out, the old bike gleaming like something from another century. Pete stood beside him, arms crossed, trying not to look nervous. Ray checked the tire pressure twice, because Ray checked everything twice. Sam stood a little apart, hands in his pockets, watching the bike the way a man watches a horse he's about to bet on.
"All right," Jerry said. "Let's see what she's got."
Frankie swung a leg over the seat, settled in, and thumbed the starter. The Shovelhead caught on the first kick, settled into that deep, loping idle, and Frankie gave it a twist of the throttle that made the windows rattle. He nodded once, and rolled out onto the street, slow at first, then picking up speed, the sound of the old engine rolling down the block like thunder with somewhere to be.
Jerry watched him go. "Goes good," Pete said, grudgingly. "Sounds good."
"Wait for it," Jerry said. He had been doing this too long to celebrate early.
They waited. The fog drifted. A truck went by. Dot came out of the diner with a tray of coffee and stood in the doorway, watching the street like everyone else.
Frankie came back around the corner minutes later, and Jerry knew before the bike stopped that something was wrong. Frankie rode one-handed, coaxing the clutch, and the engine had a hiccup — a stumble, a cough, the kind of thing you felt more than heard.
Frankie pulled in and killed the engine. "She coughs at the light," he said. "Idles fine, runs fine, but when I come down to a stop, she stumbles. Like she's missing."
Pete frowned. "Could be the idle jet. Could be timing."
"Could be a dozen things," Ray said.
Sam, who had been standing quiet with his hands in his pockets, stepped forward. He didn't say anything at first. He walked around the bike once, slow, looking at it the way he had looked at it yesterday — not at the shiny parts, but at the spaces between them. Then he crouched down and pointed at the fuel line where it ran along the frame.
"There's a drip," he said.
Jerry crouched beside him. Sure enough — a tiny wet spot where the fuel line met the carburetor, no bigger than a pinhead, seeping just enough to smell. Moving, the air blew it dry. Stopped at a light, the fuel pooled, the mixture went rich, and the engine coughed.
"And that bolt," Sam said, pointing at the exhaust bracket. "It's loose. Feel it."
Jerry reached out and wiggled the bracket. It moved. Not much — a hair's worth, a whisper — but it moved. At speed, the vibration would have worked it looser and looser, and by Saturday, on a long ride, it would have been a rattle, and then a problem, and then a breakdown on the side of the road with fifty bikes behind it.
Pete stared at the bolt. Then at Sam. Then at the bolt again, like it had personally offended him.
"Well," Pete said, at last. "The kid's got the ear."