The closer Saturday came, the less I liked hearing the word.<\/p>\n
Before Brix arrived, Saturday had been a date on the calendar.<\/p>\n
It meant the memorial ride.<\/p>\n
It meant having the Shovelhead ready.<\/p>\n
It meant finishing what we had started and making sure the motorcycle could do what it was supposed to do.<\/p>\n
After Brix spoke, the date carried another meaning.<\/p>\n
It was the deadline mentioned in an argument we had never heard ourselves.<\/p>\n
Something was supposed to be found before then.<\/p>\n
We didn't know what.<\/p>\n
We didn't know by whom.<\/p>\n
And we didn't know why the diner man seemed so interested in our shop.<\/p>\n
Forty-nine hours had sounded like enough time when the only thing we needed to worry about was the motorcycle.<\/p>\n
Now the number felt smaller.<\/p>\n
I tried to concentrate on what was in front of me.<\/p>\n
The workbench.<\/p>\n
The tools.<\/p>\n
The engine.<\/p>\n
Ordinary things usually helped me think.<\/p>\n
That morning, they only reminded me of how little we knew.<\/p>\n
Odom moved around the shop, checking things without really settling on a task.<\/p>\n
He would pick something up, examine it, and put it back.<\/p>\n
Then he would glance toward Brix.<\/p>\n
Reed was quieter.<\/p>\n
He stood near the Shovelhead and seemed to be reviewing every detail of the work we had done.<\/p>\n
I couldn't tell whether he was looking for a mechanical problem or something else.<\/p>\n
Maybe he couldn't tell either.<\/p>\n
Brix remained nearby with his canvas bag.<\/p>\n
He had given us the information he could remember.<\/p>\n
There was no reason to make him repeat it just to fill the silence.<\/p>\n
Still, I found myself wanting to ask another question.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know what he had seen on the motorcycle.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know whether he had noticed anything strange.<\/p>\n
But he had already told us the diner man asked what he had seen.<\/p>\n
That didn't mean there was anything to see.<\/p>\n
It only meant the man had wanted an answer.<\/p>\n
I held back.<\/p>\n
If we started asking Brix questions that assumed there was a hidden discovery, we might push him toward a conclusion he couldn't support.<\/p>\n
We had to be careful.<\/p>\n
Not just because we could be wrong.<\/p>\n
Because once you decide what a person must have meant, it becomes difficult to hear what they actually said.<\/p>\n
I knew that from experience.<\/p>\n
I had done it before, in smaller matters.<\/p>\n
I had taken a few words and built a whole explanation around them.<\/p>\n
Later, when the facts became clear, I had been embarrassed by how certain I had sounded.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to repeat that mistake here.<\/p>\n
Odom eventually turned toward Reed.<\/p>\n
"Do you remember anybody asking about the bike before today?"<\/p>\n
Reed considered the question.<\/p>\n
"I remember people asking about plenty of things."<\/p>\n
"Anybody who seemed unusually interested?"<\/p>\n
Reed shook his head.<\/p>\n
"Not that I can say for sure."<\/p>\n
Odom looked at the motorcycle.<\/p>\n
"That's what bothers me."<\/p>\n
I understood.<\/p>\n
If someone had openly threatened us, we would at least know where we stood.<\/p>\n
If somebody had tried to damage the motorcycle, we would have a specific problem to address.<\/p>\n
But the diner man had asked questions.<\/p>\n
Questions could be harmless.<\/p>\n
They could also be a way to learn something without revealing what you wanted to know.<\/p>\n
We had no way to distinguish between those possibilities.<\/p>\n
Reed leaned against the workbench.<\/p>\n
"What exactly did he ask about the shop?"<\/p>\n
Brix answered carefully.<\/p>\n
"He wanted to know if I'd been inside."<\/p>\n
"Anything else?"<\/p>\n
"He asked if you had talked to me."<\/p>\n
Reed nodded.<\/p>\n
"And the bike?"<\/p>\n
"He asked what I'd seen on it."<\/p>\n
Reed looked down.<\/p>\n
The answer had not changed.<\/p>\n
Neither had the discomfort it caused.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether Reed was trying to remember a conversation he had forgotten.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the diner man had heard something from somebody else.<\/p>\n
Perhaps he believed Brix knew more than he actually did.<\/p>\n
Or perhaps there was a reason for the questions that none of us had considered.<\/p>\n
I couldn't choose among those explanations.<\/p>\n
The honest answer was that I didn't know.<\/p>\n
I hated that answer.<\/p>\n
Not because it was embarrassing, but because it left us with nothing we could act on confidently.<\/p>\n
We could keep working on the motorcycle.<\/p>\n
We could be cautious about what Brix had told us.<\/p>\n
We could pay attention to anything else that seemed unusual.<\/p>\n
But we couldn't confront somebody over a conversation we hadn't heard and a motive we couldn't identify.<\/p>\n
At least, we couldn't do that responsibly.<\/p>\n
The shop fell quiet again.<\/p>\n
I listened to the engine and thought about how much effort we had spent getting it to run.<\/p>\n
Every small improvement had given us a reason to feel better.<\/p>\n
A problem solved.<\/p>\n
A step forward.<\/p>\n
A little more confidence that we would be ready.<\/p>\n
Now the sound seemed almost out of place.<\/p>\n
We had achieved the thing we wanted, yet none of us was celebrating.<\/p>\n
Brix shifted his bag to his other hand.<\/p>\n
I noticed the movement and looked at him.<\/p>\n
He caught me looking.<\/p>\n
For a moment, neither of us spoke.<\/p>\n
Then he said, "I didn't think it would turn into all this."<\/p>\n
I wanted to tell him that none of us had expected it.<\/p>\n
Instead, I asked what he meant.<\/p>\n
He glanced at Reed.<\/p>\n
"I thought the man was just angry with me."<\/p>\n
He paused.<\/p>\n
"Then he started asking about this place."<\/p>\n
There was no drama in his voice.<\/p>\n
That made the words harder to dismiss.<\/p>\n
He wasn't trying to frighten us.<\/p>\n
He was explaining how the situation had changed in his own mind.<\/p>\n
First, he had believed the diner man was angry about where he had been sleeping.<\/p>\n
Then the questions began.<\/p>\n
The shop.<\/p>\n
Reed.<\/p>\n
The motorcycle.<\/p>\n
And finally, the argument about something being found before Saturday.<\/p>\n
Brix had connected those moments because they had happened to him.<\/p>\n
We were connecting them because we had heard his account.<\/p>\n
The connection was incomplete, but it was there.<\/p>\n
Odom nodded once.<\/p>\n
"You did the right thing telling us."<\/p>\n
Brix looked at him.<\/p>\n
I couldn't tell whether he believed that.<\/p>\n
Reed straightened up.<\/p>\n
"We'll figure out what we can."<\/p>\n
He said it quietly.<\/p>\n
It wasn't a promise that he could solve everything.<\/p>\n
It was a decision to stop pretending the warning didn't matter.<\/p>\n
That was enough for the moment.<\/p>\n
I felt some of the tension leave my shoulders.<\/p>\n
Not all of it.<\/p>\n
Just enough to let me think more clearly.<\/p>\n
We had spent the morning trying to finish a job.<\/p>\n
Now we had to acknowledge that the job existed inside a situation we didn't understand.<\/p>\n
The motorcycle still needed our attention.<\/p>\n
So did the approaching memorial ride.<\/p>\n
And the questions Brix had brought with him weren't going away simply because we wished they would.<\/p>\n
I looked toward the front windows.<\/p>\n
The road remained ordinary.<\/p>\n
No one stood outside watching us.<\/p>\n
No unfamiliar face appeared at the door.<\/p>\n
There was nothing visible that explained what had happened behind the diner.<\/p>\n
I almost wished there were.<\/p>\n
A visible problem would have given us something to examine.<\/p>\n
Instead, we had to live with the possibility that the most important part of the situation was the part we hadn't seen.<\/p>\n
That was what bothered me most.<\/p>\n
We had a running motorcycle.<\/p>\n
We had a date approaching.<\/p>\n
We had a man who had asked questions about both the shop and the people inside it.<\/p>\n
And we had no idea what he believed might be discovered.<\/p>\n
The facts were small.<\/p>\n
The consequences were unknown.<\/p>\n
I looked at Reed one more time.<\/p>\n
He was still standing beside the Shovelhead.<\/p>\n
He had stopped looking at it as a finished repair.<\/p>\n
Now he seemed to be treating it as a question.<\/p>\n
I understood why.<\/p>\n
The motorcycle had become the center of something we had not chosen to enter.<\/p>\n
And whatever that something was, it had a deadline.<\/p>\n
Saturday.<\/p>\n
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 … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40041,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40044"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40064,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40044\/revisions\/40064"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}