The mention of Saturday stayed with me longer than anything else Brix had said.
It was the one detail that gave the conversation a deadline.
The memorial ride was on Saturday.
The men behind the diner had argued about something being found before Saturday.
I could not ignore the overlap.
But I could not explain it either.
I stood near the workbench and tried to think about those two facts without forcing them together.
The first belonged to us.
The second belonged to the conversation Brix had overheard.
Whether they were connected in a meaningful way was something we did not know.
I wanted to believe that a clear connection would eventually become obvious.
I had no guarantee that it would.
Sometimes information arrived in pieces that did not make sense until later.
Sometimes it never made sense at all.
I didn't know which kind of situation we were in.
That was the part I found hardest to accept.
I could wait for more information.
I could not make it arrive on a schedule.
Reed remained focused on the Shovelhead.
Odom stayed close to the workbench.
Brix held his canvas bag, having already told us everything he remembered.
There was no new development to respond to.
No new detail had appeared.
The situation was the same one we had been trying to understand since Brix began talking.
I looked at Reed.
"Saturday still feels a long way off," I said.
He glanced up.
"It isn't."
That was all he said.
He didn't need to add anything.
The time was moving whether we were ready or not.
I thought about how I had first heard the warning.
At that moment, I had wanted somebody to connect the questions, the motorcycle, and the argument into one explanation.
I had wanted to know what the diner man was looking for.
I had wanted to know why he had asked about Reed.
Most of all, I had wanted to know what Brix had supposedly seen.
I still wanted those answers.
But I was beginning to understand that wanting them did not give us the right to invent them.
I could not turn the word found into a description of an object.
I could not decide that the motorcycle contained something simply because the diner man had asked about it.
I could not decide that Reed knew more than he had said.
And I could not assume that Brix had missed an important detail merely because he had not understood the conversation.
Each of those conclusions would take us beyond the facts.
I wanted to avoid that.
The danger of guessing was not only that we might be wrong.
It was that we might begin responding to our own guesses instead of to what had actually happened.
Once that started, it would be difficult to tell the difference.
I looked at the phone on the workbench.
Odom had left it there.
I looked at Brix's canvas bag.
He was still holding it.
I looked at the Shovelhead.
Reed was still working beside it.
The details had become familiar through repetition.
They also reminded me of what we actually had in front of us.
A phone.
A bag.
A motorcycle.
A few remembered sentences.
A memorial ride approaching on Saturday.
That was not enough to solve the problem.
It was enough to keep us from pretending we had solved it.
I shifted my attention toward Brix.
"Are you sure that's everything you remember?" I asked.
I immediately wondered whether I was making the same mistake again.
Brix looked at me.
"That's everything I remember about what they said."
I nodded.
He had answered clearly.
I wasn't going to ask him to produce something more.
"Thank you for telling us," I said.
He looked down at his bag, then back at me.
"Didn't know if it would help."
"It helped us understand what you heard."
That was true.
It had not given us an explanation, but it had given us information we had not possessed before.
There was value in that, even if the information left us with more questions.
Brix gave a small nod.
I didn't press him further.
Odom had heard the exchange.
He didn't add anything.
Reed kept working.
I felt the urge to say something about the memorial ride, but I couldn't think of anything that would improve the situation.
We all knew Saturday was approaching.
We all knew the motorcycle mattered to the ride.
We all knew the diner man's questions had made the work feel different.
Repeating those facts would not make them easier to manage.
So I remained quiet.
I had once believed that being prepared meant having a plan for every possible problem.
Now I wasn't sure that was possible.
We didn't know what problem we were facing.
We didn't know whether the diner man intended to do anything else.
We didn't know what he believed Brix had seen.
A plan based on invented answers would not be preparation.
It would only be another way of pretending we had control.
The work in front of us was real.
The uncertainty was real too.
I could give attention to both.
Reed could continue working toward Saturday.
Odom could keep the information in mind.
Brix had done what he could by telling us what he remembered.
I could stop demanding that the morning produce a complete explanation before it was over.
That was the decision I made, though I knew I might have to make it again.
The word Saturday still troubled me.
I would remember it.
I would not pretend to know what it meant.
Click here to continue reading: PART 20: We Had the Motorcycle Running, Brix Had Told Us What He Heard, and the Rest Was Still Waiting for an Answer
I Thought Getting One Old Motorcycle Running Would Solve Everything, Until a Hurt Boy Told Us What He Heard
Part 19 of 20
