I didn't sleep well that night.
Not because I knew something terrible was coming.
Because I didn't know anything at all.
That was the part I couldn't get past.
I kept remembering Brix standing beside the workbench, his fingers wrapped around the canvas bag, trying to explain why a man from a diner had been asking about our shop.
The questions sounded simple when repeated separately.
Had he been inside?
Had Reed spoken to him?
What had he seen on the motorcycle?
But together, they felt different.
They sounded like somebody trying to find out whether a particular person knew something.
I didn't know what that something might be.
I only knew that the questions had bothered Brix enough for him to bring them to us.
And I knew what he had told us about the argument behind the diner.
Something was supposed to be found before Saturday.
That sentence kept returning to me.
I would think about something else for a few minutes, then remember it again.
Found by whom?
Found where?
And why had the diner man cared so much about what Brix might have seen?
I had no answers.
The next time I saw the Shovelhead, I tried to look at it without thinking about the conversation.
I checked the familiar lines of the machine.
I looked at the parts we had worked on.
I reminded myself that a motorcycle could attract attention for ordinary reasons.
None of that helped for long.
The questions remained.
When I returned to the shop, Reed was already there.
He was standing beside the motorcycle, looking at it without touching anything.
Odom had arrived too.
His phone was on the workbench, close to the tools.
Neither man seemed particularly interested in talking.
I understood.
We had all reached the point where another round of speculation would accomplish nothing.
Still, I wanted to hear what they were thinking.
"Any new ideas?" I asked.
Reed glanced at me.
"Not anything I can prove."
Odom shook his head.
"Same here."
That was honest.
It was also frustrating.
We had a warning, but no clear direction.
Reed looked at the motorcycle again.
"I keep coming back to what Brix said about the questions."
"So do I," I admitted.
"He wasn't asked about motorcycles in general," Reed said. "He was asked about this one."
I considered that.
Brix hadn't described a long conversation about engines, repairs, or the kind of work we did.
He had described repeated questions about our shop, Reed, and the machine sitting between us.
That distinction mattered.
But it still didn't tell us why the diner man cared.
"Maybe he thought Brix had seen something," Odom said.
"Something on the bike?" I asked.
"That's what I'm wondering."
Reed rubbed a hand over his face.
"Then we have to be careful not to assume Brix actually saw anything."
He was right.
The diner man might have believed Brix knew something.
That belief wouldn't make it true.
I had been making the same mistake in my own head, treating the man's questions as proof that there was something hidden on the motorcycle.
There might be.
There might not be.
We couldn't know from the questions alone.
I looked at the machine.
For the first time, I felt almost embarrassed by how much I wanted it to provide an answer.
It was an object.
It couldn't explain a conversation that had taken place somewhere else.
We could inspect it, but we couldn't make it tell us what the diner man had been thinking.
Odom picked up his phone and checked the time.
"Saturday isn't getting any farther away."
Nobody laughed.
The memorial ride had been our reason for pushing the repair forward.
We still wanted the motorcycle ready.
That goal hadn't disappeared.
But it was difficult to think about the ride without remembering the argument Brix had overheard.
I wondered whether we should tell him to stay away from the diner man.
Then I realized that I was assuming we knew where the man would be.
We didn't.
I wondered whether we should ask Brix to explain everything again.
Then I remembered that he had already done so.
Repeating the questions would not give him a better memory.
It would only make him feel as though we didn't believe him.
I didn't want that.
Reed moved toward the workbench.
He picked up a tool, turned it over in his hand, and put it down.
The little movement caught my attention.
He was usually precise about what he did with his hands.
When he put a tool down, he knew why he had picked it up.
This time, he seemed to be doing something simply to keep himself occupied.
"Do you think the man knew Brix would come here?" I asked.
Reed took a moment.
"I don't know."
"Do you think he knew about the memorial ride?"
"I don't know that either."
The answers were plain.
I appreciated that.
A confident guess might have made us feel better for a few seconds, but it wouldn't have made us any safer or wiser.
Odom leaned against the bench.
"The only thing we know is that he asked about the shop and the bike."
"And that he was arguing with somebody about Saturday," I said.
Odom nodded.
"Right."
We stood there looking at one another.
There wasn't much else to add.
I began to understand that the hardest part of this situation wasn't fear itself.
It was the effort required to keep fear from turning into certainty.
Every unanswered question invited an explanation.
Every explanation invited another.
Soon, a person could convince himself he had discovered something that nobody had actually shown him.
I didn't want us to do that.
We had enough trouble without inventing more.
Still, I couldn't dismiss the way Brix had looked toward the front windows while he spoke.
He had seemed worried that someone might have followed him.
Maybe he was simply afraid of the man who had hurt him.
That would have been understandable.
But when I remembered his expression, I found myself wondering whether he had been worried about more than another confrontation.
I couldn't answer that question either.
I hated how many times I had to admit that.
Later, Reed returned his attention to the motorcycle.
He checked what needed checking and made sure the work we had already done remained sound.
I stayed nearby.
Odom watched for a while before finally picking up his phone again.
The shop gradually returned to its familiar routine.
Tools moved.
Metal touched metal.
People spoke when they needed to.
For a few minutes, I managed to concentrate on the work.
Then I heard the word Saturday in my own head.
I looked at the clock.
The deadline was still approaching.
We could not afford to let the questions consume every minute we had.
But we also couldn't pretend they had never been asked.
That was the balance we needed to find.
I watched Reed finish his check.
The Shovelhead stood ready for the next step.
It looked like the same machine we had been working on before Brix arrived.
Yet I no longer saw it as an isolated repair.
Somebody had asked about it.
Somebody had wanted to know what Brix had seen.
And somebody had argued that something needed to be found before the memorial ride.
We had no proof that those facts meant danger.
We had no proof that they meant nothing.
For now, that was where we stood.
I wished I could say the uncertainty became easier with time.
It didn't.
It simply became something we had to carry while we worked.
Click here to continue reading: PART 6: Reed Kept Looking at the Motorcycle as Though It Might Explain the Diner Man’s Questions, but the Machine Offered No Answers
I Thought Getting One Old Motorcycle Running Would Solve Everything, Until a Hurt Boy Told Us What He Heard
Part 5 of 20
