The closer Saturday came, the less I liked hearing the word.
Before Brix arrived, Saturday had been a date on the calendar.
It meant the memorial ride.
It meant having the Shovelhead ready.
It meant finishing what we had started and making sure the motorcycle could do what it was supposed to do.
After Brix spoke, the date carried another meaning.
It was the deadline mentioned in an argument we had never heard ourselves.
Something was supposed to be found before then.
We didn't know what.
We didn't know by whom.
And we didn't know why the diner man seemed so interested in our shop.
Forty-nine hours had sounded like enough time when the only thing we needed to worry about was the motorcycle.
Now the number felt smaller.
I tried to concentrate on what was in front of me.
The workbench.
The tools.
The engine.
Ordinary things usually helped me think.
That morning, they only reminded me of how little we knew.
Odom moved around the shop, checking things without really settling on a task.
He would pick something up, examine it, and put it back.
Then he would glance toward Brix.
Reed was quieter.
He stood near the Shovelhead and seemed to be reviewing every detail of the work we had done.
I couldn't tell whether he was looking for a mechanical problem or something else.
Maybe he couldn't tell either.
Brix remained nearby with his canvas bag.
He had given us the information he could remember.
There was no reason to make him repeat it just to fill the silence.
Still, I found myself wanting to ask another question.
I wanted to know what he had seen on the motorcycle.
I wanted to know whether he had noticed anything strange.
But he had already told us the diner man asked what he had seen.
That didn't mean there was anything to see.
It only meant the man had wanted an answer.
I held back.
If we started asking Brix questions that assumed there was a hidden discovery, we might push him toward a conclusion he couldn't support.
We had to be careful.
Not just because we could be wrong.
Because once you decide what a person must have meant, it becomes difficult to hear what they actually said.
I knew that from experience.
I had done it before, in smaller matters.
I had taken a few words and built a whole explanation around them.
Later, when the facts became clear, I had been embarrassed by how certain I had sounded.
I didn't want to repeat that mistake here.
Odom eventually turned toward Reed.
"Do you remember anybody asking about the bike before today?"
Reed considered the question.
"I remember people asking about plenty of things."
"Anybody who seemed unusually interested?"
Reed shook his head.
"Not that I can say for sure."
Odom looked at the motorcycle.
"That's what bothers me."
I understood.
If someone had openly threatened us, we would at least know where we stood.
If somebody had tried to damage the motorcycle, we would have a specific problem to address.
But the diner man had asked questions.
Questions could be harmless.
They could also be a way to learn something without revealing what you wanted to know.
We had no way to distinguish between those possibilities.
Reed leaned against the workbench.
"What exactly did he ask about the shop?"
Brix answered carefully.
"He wanted to know if I'd been inside."
"Anything else?"
"He asked if you had talked to me."
Reed nodded.
"And the bike?"
"He asked what I'd seen on it."
Reed looked down.
The answer had not changed.
Neither had the discomfort it caused.
I wondered whether Reed was trying to remember a conversation he had forgotten.
Perhaps the diner man had heard something from somebody else.
Perhaps he believed Brix knew more than he actually did.
Or perhaps there was a reason for the questions that none of us had considered.
I couldn't choose among those explanations.
The honest answer was that I didn't know.
I hated that answer.
Not because it was embarrassing, but because it left us with nothing we could act on confidently.
We could keep working on the motorcycle.
We could be cautious about what Brix had told us.
We could pay attention to anything else that seemed unusual.
But we couldn't confront somebody over a conversation we hadn't heard and a motive we couldn't identify.
At least, we couldn't do that responsibly.
The shop fell quiet again.
I listened to the engine and thought about how much effort we had spent getting it to run.
Every small improvement had given us a reason to feel better.
A problem solved.
A step forward.
A little more confidence that we would be ready.
Now the sound seemed almost out of place.
We had achieved the thing we wanted, yet none of us was celebrating.
Brix shifted his bag to his other hand.
I noticed the movement and looked at him.
He caught me looking.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then he said, "I didn't think it would turn into all this."
I wanted to tell him that none of us had expected it.
Instead, I asked what he meant.
He glanced at Reed.
"I thought the man was just angry with me."
He paused.
"Then he started asking about this place."
There was no drama in his voice.
That made the words harder to dismiss.
He wasn't trying to frighten us.
He was explaining how the situation had changed in his own mind.
First, he had believed the diner man was angry about where he had been sleeping.
Then the questions began.
The shop.
Reed.
The motorcycle.
And finally, the argument about something being found before Saturday.
Brix had connected those moments because they had happened to him.
We were connecting them because we had heard his account.
The connection was incomplete, but it was there.
Odom nodded once.
"You did the right thing telling us."
Brix looked at him.
I couldn't tell whether he believed that.
Reed straightened up.
"We'll figure out what we can."
He said it quietly.
It wasn't a promise that he could solve everything.
It was a decision to stop pretending the warning didn't matter.
That was enough for the moment.
I felt some of the tension leave my shoulders.
Not all of it.
Just enough to let me think more clearly.
We had spent the morning trying to finish a job.
Now we had to acknowledge that the job existed inside a situation we didn't understand.
The motorcycle still needed our attention.
So did the approaching memorial ride.
And the questions Brix had brought with him weren't going away simply because we wished they would.
I looked toward the front windows.
The road remained ordinary.
No one stood outside watching us.
No unfamiliar face appeared at the door.
There was nothing visible that explained what had happened behind the diner.
I almost wished there were.
A visible problem would have given us something to examine.
Instead, we had to live with the possibility that the most important part of the situation was the part we hadn't seen.
That was what bothered me most.
We had a running motorcycle.
We had a date approaching.
We had a man who had asked questions about both the shop and the people inside it.
And we had no idea what he believed might be discovered.
The facts were small.
The consequences were unknown.
I looked at Reed one more time.
He was still standing beside the Shovelhead.
He had stopped looking at it as a finished repair.
Now he seemed to be treating it as a question.
I understood why.
The motorcycle had become the center of something we had not chosen to enter.
And whatever that something was, it had a deadline.
Saturday.
Click here to continue reading: PART 4: When the Engine Finally Ran, I Thought We Had Won, but Brix’s Story Forced Us to Question What We Had Been Fixing
I Thought Getting One Old Motorcycle Running Would Solve Everything, Until a Hurt Boy Told Us What He Heard
Part 3 of 20
