I didn't sleep well that night.<\/p>\n
Not because I knew something terrible was coming.<\/p>\n
Because I didn't know anything at all.<\/p>\n
That was the part I couldn't get past.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The questions sounded simple when repeated separately.<\/p>\n
Had he been inside?<\/p>\n
Had Reed spoken to him?<\/p>\n
What had he seen on the motorcycle?<\/p>\n
But together, they felt different.<\/p>\n
They sounded like somebody trying to find out whether a particular person knew something.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what that something might be.<\/p>\n
I only knew that the questions had bothered Brix enough for him to bring them to us.<\/p>\n
And I knew what he had told us about the argument behind the diner.<\/p>\n
Something was supposed to be found before Saturday.<\/p>\n
That sentence kept returning to me.<\/p>\n
I would think about something else for a few minutes, then remember it again.<\/p>\n
Found by whom?<\/p>\n
Found where?<\/p>\n
And why had the diner man cared so much about what Brix might have seen?<\/p>\n
I had no answers.<\/p>\n
The next time I saw the Shovelhead, I tried to look at it without thinking about the conversation.<\/p>\n
I checked the familiar lines of the machine.<\/p>\n
I looked at the parts we had worked on.<\/p>\n
I reminded myself that a motorcycle could attract attention for ordinary reasons.<\/p>\n
None of that helped for long.<\/p>\n
The questions remained.<\/p>\n
When I returned to the shop, Reed was already there.<\/p>\n
He was standing beside the motorcycle, looking at it without touching anything.<\/p>\n
Odom had arrived too.<\/p>\n
His phone was on the workbench, close to the tools.<\/p>\n
Neither man seemed particularly interested in talking.<\/p>\n
I understood.<\/p>\n
We had all reached the point where another round of speculation would accomplish nothing.<\/p>\n
Still, I wanted to hear what they were thinking.<\/p>\n
"Any new ideas?" I asked.<\/p>\n
Reed glanced at me.<\/p>\n
"Not anything I can prove."<\/p>\n
Odom shook his head.<\/p>\n
"Same here."<\/p>\n
That was honest.<\/p>\n
It was also frustrating.<\/p>\n
We had a warning, but no clear direction.<\/p>\n
Reed looked at the motorcycle again.<\/p>\n
"I keep coming back to what Brix said about the questions."<\/p>\n
"So do I," I admitted.<\/p>\n
"He wasn't asked about motorcycles in general," Reed said. "He was asked about this one."<\/p>\n
I considered that.<\/p>\n
Brix hadn't described a long conversation about engines, repairs, or the kind of work we did.<\/p>\n
He had described repeated questions about our shop, Reed, and the machine sitting between us.<\/p>\n
That distinction mattered.<\/p>\n
But it still didn't tell us why the diner man cared.<\/p>\n
"Maybe he thought Brix had seen something," Odom said.<\/p>\n
"Something on the bike?" I asked.<\/p>\n
"That's what I'm wondering."<\/p>\n
Reed rubbed a hand over his face.<\/p>\n
"Then we have to be careful not to assume Brix actually saw anything."<\/p>\n
He was right.<\/p>\n
The diner man might have believed Brix knew something.<\/p>\n
That belief wouldn't make it true.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
There might be.<\/p>\n
There might not be.<\/p>\n
We couldn't know from the questions alone.<\/p>\n
I looked at the machine.<\/p>\n
For the first time, I felt almost embarrassed by how much I wanted it to provide an answer.<\/p>\n
It was an object.<\/p>\n
It couldn't explain a conversation that had taken place somewhere else.<\/p>\n
We could inspect it, but we couldn't make it tell us what the diner man had been thinking.<\/p>\n
Odom picked up his phone and checked the time.<\/p>\n
"Saturday isn't getting any farther away."<\/p>\n
Nobody laughed.<\/p>\n
The memorial ride had been our reason for pushing the repair forward.<\/p>\n
We still wanted the motorcycle ready.<\/p>\n
That goal hadn't disappeared.<\/p>\n
But it was difficult to think about the ride without remembering the argument Brix had overheard.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether we should tell him to stay away from the diner man.<\/p>\n
Then I realized that I was assuming we knew where the man would be.<\/p>\n
We didn't.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether we should ask Brix to explain everything again.<\/p>\n
Then I remembered that he had already done so.<\/p>\n
Repeating the questions would not give him a better memory.<\/p>\n
It would only make him feel as though we didn't believe him.<\/p>\n
I didn't want that.<\/p>\n
Reed moved toward the workbench.<\/p>\n
He picked up a tool, turned it over in his hand, and put it down.<\/p>\n
The little movement caught my attention.<\/p>\n
He was usually precise about what he did with his hands.<\/p>\n
When he put a tool down, he knew why he had picked it up.<\/p>\n
This time, he seemed to be doing something simply to keep himself occupied.<\/p>\n
"Do you think the man knew Brix would come here?" I asked.<\/p>\n
Reed took a moment.<\/p>\n
"I don't know."<\/p>\n
"Do you think he knew about the memorial ride?"<\/p>\n
"I don't know that either."<\/p>\n
The answers were plain.<\/p>\n
I appreciated that.<\/p>\n
A confident guess might have made us feel better for a few seconds, but it wouldn't have made us any safer or wiser.<\/p>\n
Odom leaned against the bench.<\/p>\n
"The only thing we know is that he asked about the shop and the bike."<\/p>\n
"And that he was arguing with somebody about Saturday," I said.<\/p>\n
Odom nodded.<\/p>\n
"Right."<\/p>\n
We stood there looking at one another.<\/p>\n
There wasn't much else to add.<\/p>\n
I began to understand that the hardest part of this situation wasn't fear itself.<\/p>\n
It was the effort required to keep fear from turning into certainty.<\/p>\n
Every unanswered question invited an explanation.<\/p>\n
Every explanation invited another.<\/p>\n
Soon, a person could convince himself he had discovered something that nobody had actually shown him.<\/p>\n
I didn't want us to do that.<\/p>\n
We had enough trouble without inventing more.<\/p>\n
Still, I couldn't dismiss the way Brix had looked toward the front windows while he spoke.<\/p>\n
He had seemed worried that someone might have followed him.<\/p>\n
Maybe he was simply afraid of the man who had hurt him.<\/p>\n
That would have been understandable.<\/p>\n
But when I remembered his expression, I found myself wondering whether he had been worried about more than another confrontation.<\/p>\n
I couldn't answer that question either.<\/p>\n
I hated how many times I had to admit that.<\/p>\n
Later, Reed returned his attention to the motorcycle.<\/p>\n
He checked what needed checking and made sure the work we had already done remained sound.<\/p>\n
I stayed nearby.<\/p>\n
Odom watched for a while before finally picking up his phone again.<\/p>\n
The shop gradually returned to its familiar routine.<\/p>\n
Tools moved.<\/p>\n
Metal touched metal.<\/p>\n
People spoke when they needed to.<\/p>\n
For a few minutes, I managed to concentrate on the work.<\/p>\n
Then I heard the word Saturday in my own head.<\/p>\n
I looked at the clock.<\/p>\n
The deadline was still approaching.<\/p>\n
We could not afford to let the questions consume every minute we had.<\/p>\n
But we also couldn't pretend they had never been asked.<\/p>\n
That was the balance we needed to find.<\/p>\n
I watched Reed finish his check.<\/p>\n
The Shovelhead stood ready for the next step.<\/p>\n
It looked like the same machine we had been working on before Brix arrived.<\/p>\n
Yet I no longer saw it as an isolated repair.<\/p>\n
Somebody had asked about it.<\/p>\n
Somebody had wanted to know what Brix had seen.<\/p>\n
And somebody had argued that something needed to be found before the memorial ride.<\/p>\n
We had no proof that those facts meant danger.<\/p>\n
We had no proof that they meant nothing.<\/p>\n
For now, that was where we stood.<\/p>\n
I wished I could say the uncertainty became easier with time.<\/p>\n
It didn't.<\/p>\n
It simply became something we had to carry while we worked.<\/p>\n
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 … <\/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-40046","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\/40046","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=40046"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40066,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40046\/revisions\/40066"}],"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=40046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}