Twelve Hundred Miles
By then, the boy had passed the house three times, each pass slower than the last.
On the fourth, he stopped at the top of the hill and looked down into the cul-de-sac.
A low cinderblock place sat off the curve, chain-link gate hanging open. The boy had counted six motorcycles in and around the garage.
There was a man on his knees in the driveway, broad through the back, gray in the beard, one hand sunk deep in the engine case.
The boy coasted down the hill again and rode past, slow enough to hear metal clang against concrete.
At the corner of the driveway, just outside the gate, he put a foot down.
A radio played low somewhere inside the garage. A box fan pushed heat around.
A man in a lawn chair near the open door glanced over first. He took in the bicycle, the boy’s Timberlands gone dusty at the toes, the kid half on, half off the seat, and smiled like the afternoon had just improved.
“Looking for something?”
The boy jerked like he’d been caught. “No, sir.”
Still, he stepped off his bike and let it down in the grass. By then, his feet had already decided for him. He came through the gate slow, looking from one bike to the next.
“These all yours?”
“Depends who’s asking,” the man in the lawn chair said.
“No,” the mechanic snapped.
The boy nodded toward the one nearest him. “What kind is that?”
The man in the lawn chair opened his mouth, then thought better of it.
“Shovelhead,” the mechanic said.
“Shovelhead,” the boy said, squinting at the chrome. “Why Shovelhead?”
The mechanic kept working.
The man in the lawn chair shifted in his seat, looked at the boy, the mechanic. “Cold one?” he muttered.
The mechanic gave a small nod.
The man smiled at the boy and thumbed toward the back of the garage. “Fridge.”
The boy took one quick look back up the hill from where he’d come, then went in.
The garage was cooler by maybe one degree. Oil, rubber, and something electrical burned into the place.
A workbench ran the length of the wall. Coffee cans held bolts, washers, bent cotter pins. Open manuals curled at the corners.
On a shelf over the bench sat a piston wrapped in yellowed newspaper and tied with a shoelace.
The boy stood there looking at it until the lawn-chair guy barked, “How bout them beers?”
The boy opened the refrigerator. Cold air rolled out, smelling of metal and yeast. A six-pack of long necks, a few random cans. One bottle of mustard. A half loaf of bread gone stiff in the bag.
He grabbed two longnecks, walked them out, one in each hand.
The lawn-chair guy took his without thanks. The mechanic set his wrench down, wiped his fingers on a rag, and took the other one without looking up at the boy. He didn’t open it. Just held the cold bottle against the heel of his hand a second, then set it on the concrete beside him.
“You ride?” the lawn-chair guy asked.
The boy looked back at his bicycle in the grass.
“That ain’t what I asked.”
“No, sir.”
The man laughed. “Then what you doing here?”
The boy took in the machines again, one by one. Shrugged.
The mechanic’s hands stopped for half a beat, then went back to work.
“Live around here?” the lawn-chair guy asked.
The boy nodded. “Over in Pine Ridge.”
“With who?”
The mechanic dropped the wrench into the tray hard enough to shut the other man up.
The boy looked from one to the other.
That first Saturday, he stayed an hour. Maybe less. Long enough to learn that the mechanic’s name was Ray, that he wanted his tools handle-first, and that he never asked twice.
Long enough to learn the lawn-chair guy was called Donny, even though his name was Donnelly, and that Donny talked whether anyone was listening or not.
Long enough to hear words that made the bikes sharper around the edges. Springer. Softtail. V-twin. Pan. Shovel.
When he left, he wheeled his bicycle to the street before getting on. Donny watched him go with a smile still hanging around his mouth.
Ray never looked up.
That night, he lay in bed and said the words to himself in the dark. Panhead. Shovelhead. Springer. Softtail. He could hear the clink of tools, see the polished tanks, their chrome, the spokes throwing light.
The boy came back the next day, but the gate was shut, garage dark.
By the end of the week, he had worn a line through the neighborhood that always took him past that gate. Some days it hung open, most days it didn’t.
The next Saturday, Donny was back.
This time, the boy leaned the bicycle against the chain-link and came through the gate without being told. Donny laughed at that. Ray didn’t. A rag hit him in the chest before he’d gotten three steps in.
“Wipe those forks down,” Ray told him.
The boy worked until chrome came up bright under the cloth.
By then, the boy had learned where the clean rags were kept and why a screwdriver was never to be used as a pry bar. He knew not to sit on a bike and not to touch the painted tanks with bare hands.
He knew that Ray’s bad knee was the left one from the way he rose. He also knew the old man kept to himself. No kids. No wife in the house. No pictures out anywhere. Nothing on the walls except a clock that had stopped and a Daytona Bike Week plate screwed over the side door.
“Grab hold.”
Ray and the boy shouldered the dead bike off the stand—just a frame and front end, no tank, no seat, still heavier than the boy thought it would be.
The metal was cool and oily under his palms. When he lifted, the neck swung and the front wheel slewed. Ray caught it with his hip and a soft curse.
At home, his mother saw the grease on his cuffs and went still.
“Where’d you get that?”
“Nowhere.”
She took hold of his wrists and turned them over. Black worked into the lines of his palms.
“I asked you a question.”
“There’s a guy fixes bikes down the hill.”
“Bikes?”
“Motorcycles. Harleys”
Her face changed in a way he had not seen before. Not anger. Something quicker.
“You stay away from him.”
“He’s okay, Mom. Just an old man. We ain’t doing nothing.”
“I said stay away.”
The boy pulled free.
On the fourth Saturday, Donny was there again, beer balanced on one knee, talking more than usual.
Ray had a red Springer stripped halfway down in the drive, pieces laid out on towels like parts from a giant watch.
Donny tipped his bottle toward the stripped bike. “See that kid? That’s what happens when a man takes things for granted. Don’t tend after what needs tended to.”
“What do you mean?” the boy asked.
Ray dropped his wrench into the tray hard enough to make both of them look over.
“Ain’t you got any friends?” he said.
The boy blinked.
Donny grinned. “Yeah. Ain’t you got any friends, kid?”
“I was talking to you, Donnelly.”
The boy looked down at his boots. “Not really.”
“Nahh,” Donny snarled. “Man’s gotta have a crew, some brothers, backup, something!”
The boy shook his head.
“Where’d you say you’re from?”
“St. Clair Shores.”
Donny waited.
“Detroit,” the boy said.
Ray’s hand stopped.
Donny looked toward him, then back to the boy. “Detroit? How the hell did you get from Detroit to here?”
The boy shrugged once. “Moved here after my dad died,” he said. “Me and my mom.”
Nobody said anything for a long while.
Ray held out his hand without looking. “Nine-sixteenths.”
The boy reached for the tray, guessed wrong, then wrong again.
“Other one,” Ray snapped, then reached over, found his own wrench, and went back to work like nothing happened.
But he grew shorter with the boy after that.
Not louder. More of an edge to it. If the boy stood too close, he got sent back. If he asked a question, the answer came late, if at all. Twice, Ray told him to quit staring and use his hands if he wanted to be useful. Once, he told him to sweep the driveway just to keep him moving.
Donny noticed it too.
“He’s just a kid,” Donny said one afternoon, smiling into his beer.
Ray didn’t look up. “I barely tolerate you, Donnelly. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
For two days, the gate stayed chained, the garage quiet. On the third, the boy rolled up slow, head down.
The air hung low and wet. The radio hissed between songs. A storm was out over the gulf somewhere, not close enough yet to break the heat.
The boy stood in the doorway waiting to be noticed.
The mechanic gave a nod toward the broom.
The boy swept.
Half an hour later, Ray said, “Fridge.”
The boy brought back one beer and a bottle of water.
The mechanic took the water, cracked the cap. “Donny ain’t here.”
The boy stood there a second, then walked the beer back to the fridge.
Later, while Ray wrestled with a stuck bolt, the boy spoke up.
“She hates bikes.”
The man paused.
“My mom. She hates bikes.”
“Smart woman.”
“She says my dad used to ride.”
The mechanic leaned into the wrench. “Did he.”
He leaned harder. The bolt gave with a crack that made the boy jump.
“She says nothing good comes from men like that. Men who need everybody to hear them coming.”
The mechanic looked at him for a long time. Long enough to make the boy drop his eyes.
“Bring me that tray,” he finally said.
The boy’s mother came looking the next week.
The boy had stayed too long. Thunderheads rolled in over the rooftops, the air gone green and still.
He was on his knees in the garage, holding a flashlight, aimed where Ray told him, when a car door slammed at the curb.
She came through the gate fast, still in scrubs, face wet with work or worry or both.
“There you are.”
The boy stood up. “I was just—”
Then she saw the mechanic.
Everything in the driveway stopped. Even the box fan seemed to fall quiet.
The mechanic rose slow off his bad knee and wiped his hands on the rag tucked in his back pocket.
She said his name before she could stop herself.
The boy looked from one to the other. “You know him?”
Neither would answer.
His mother’s face had gone flat, her eyes narrow. Locked on the mechanic’s face.
“We’re leaving,” she said.
The boy didn’t move. “How you know him?”
She kept her eyes on the mechanic. “Get your bike.”
Ray bent, picked up the flashlight, set it on the workbench.
Rain started then. Big drops on the hot concrete. One hit the tank beside him and spread like oil.
“Where you know him from?” the boy asked.
Ray looked past the boy toward the street, where the rain was already whitening the asphalt.
“Twelve hundred miles,” the mother said. Not to the boy. Not even to the mechanic. Just to the air between them.
Ray reached to the bench, picked up the rag the boy had been using, and handed it to him.
“Wipe your hands before you get in your mother’s car,” he said.
That night, the boy scrubbed grease from his knuckles twice and could still smell the garage on them when he lay down.
The next Saturday, he rode past the house once.
Then again.
On the third pass, the garage stood open, chain-link gate unlocked. The red Springer was back on both wheels, chrome throwing sun.
The boy stopped at the top of the hill and looked down.
The mechanic was on one knee in the driveway, broad through the back, gray in the beard, one hand sunk deep in another man’s engine case.
The boy let go of the brakes and started down.
Terrific. Marvelous writing.