The decision to keep working sounded simple.<\/p>\n
In practice, it wasn't.<\/p>\n
I could concentrate for a while, sometimes long enough to forget about the diner and the argument behind it.<\/p>\n
Then something would bring the questions back.<\/p>\n
Usually, it was the motorcycle.<\/p>\n
The Shovelhead had been the reason we were spending so much time in the shop.<\/p>\n
We wanted it ready for the memorial ride, and we had worked hard to get it running.<\/p>\n
That part hadn't changed.<\/p>\n
What changed was the way I thought about the machine.<\/p>\n
Before Brix arrived, I had looked at it and seen a job that needed finishing.<\/p>\n
Afterward, I saw the same motorcycle and remembered a man asking what someone had noticed about it.<\/p>\n
I didn't like the difference.<\/p>\n
It made me feel as if I had missed something important, even though I couldn't say what that something might be.<\/p>\n
Reed seemed determined not to let the uncertainty interfere with the work.<\/p>\n
He moved around the motorcycle with the same attention he had shown before.<\/p>\n
He checked what needed checking.<\/p>\n
He considered the work we had already done.<\/p>\n
He didn't invent mechanical problems simply because the situation had become uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
I admired that about him.<\/p>\n
I was trying to learn from it.<\/p>\n
Odom was doing his best, too.<\/p>\n
He kept track of the time and stayed close enough to hear what Reed needed.<\/p>\n
Every now and then, he looked at the front windows.<\/p>\n
I noticed because I was doing the same thing.<\/p>\n
Neither of us mentioned it.<\/p>\n
There was nothing outside that gave us a reason to be concerned.<\/p>\n
At least, nothing we could identify.<\/p>\n
That distinction mattered.<\/p>\n
I had begun to understand how easily uneasiness could turn an ordinary day into something that felt threatening.<\/p>\n
A passing vehicle became something to notice.<\/p>\n
A noise from outside interrupted a thought.<\/p>\n
A moment of silence made me wonder whether somebody else was thinking about the same questions.<\/p>\n
None of those things proved anything.<\/p>\n
They only showed how much space the conversation had taken up in my mind.<\/p>\n
I was tired of giving it that space.<\/p>\n
But I couldn't simply decide to forget what Brix had told us.<\/p>\n
He had heard an argument.<\/p>\n
The diner man had asked him specific questions.<\/p>\n
And Saturday had been mentioned as a deadline.<\/p>\n
Those facts were still there.<\/p>\n
We had to live with them without pretending they meant more than we knew.<\/p>\n
Reed stopped beside the workbench.<\/p>\n
"How much time do we have left?"<\/p>\n
Odom checked the time.<\/p>\n
"Enough to finish what we need to finish, if we stay focused."<\/p>\n
Reed nodded.<\/p>\n
"Then let's do that."<\/p>\n
I felt relieved.<\/p>\n
Not because the warning had become less serious.<\/p>\n
Because somebody had finally given us something useful to do.<\/p>\n
We returned to the motorcycle.<\/p>\n
The familiar work helped.<\/p>\n
I paid attention to what was in front of me instead of trying to imagine a conversation I had never heard.<\/p>\n
For a while, it worked.<\/p>\n
Then I remembered Brix's expression when he told us the diner man had wanted to know whether Reed had spoken to him.<\/p>\n
That detail bothered me.<\/p>\n
The man had not only asked whether Brix had been inside the shop.<\/p>\n
He had wanted to know whether Reed had talked to him.<\/p>\n
Why would that matter?<\/p>\n
If the man was merely curious about the motorcycle, he might have asked about the work.<\/p>\n
He might have asked who owned it.<\/p>\n
He might have wanted to know whether it was ready for the memorial ride.<\/p>\n
But according to Brix, the questions had included whether Reed and Brix had spoken.<\/p>\n
That made the conversation feel more personal.<\/p>\n
I stopped myself from going further.<\/p>\n
We didn't know what the diner man believed.<\/p>\n
We didn't know whether he thought Brix had seen something.<\/p>\n
We didn't even know whether the man had a particular reason for asking about Reed.<\/p>\n
I could recognize that the questions were unusual without claiming to understand them.<\/p>\n
It was harder than I expected.<\/p>\n
Odom seemed to be thinking about the same problem.<\/p>\n
He looked toward Reed.<\/p>\n
"That question about whether you'd talked to Brix still bothers me."<\/p>\n
Reed didn't stop working immediately.<\/p>\n
When he did, he turned toward Odom.<\/p>\n
"It bothers me too."<\/p>\n
"Why ask that unless he thought there was something to know?"<\/p>\n
Reed considered the question.<\/p>\n
"Maybe he did think that."<\/p>\n
Odom waited.<\/p>\n
"That doesn't mean there was anything."<\/p>\n
I looked at Reed.<\/p>\n
He was right.<\/p>\n
The diner man could have believed Brix knew something without Brix actually knowing it.<\/p>\n
The man's suspicion, if that was what it was, might have had no basis.<\/p>\n
We couldn't confuse his questions with proof.<\/p>\n
I had already done too much of that in my own mind.<\/p>\n
Odom nodded slowly.<\/p>\n
"Fair enough."<\/p>\n
He didn't seem satisfied.<\/p>\n
Neither was I.<\/p>\n
But the answer was honest.<\/p>\n
We had no reason to treat the man's assumptions as facts.<\/p>\n
We also had no reason to dismiss the questions completely.<\/p>\n
That was where the difficulty remained.<\/p>\n
I looked at the motorcycle again.<\/p>\n
The metal was familiar.<\/p>\n
The work we had done was familiar.<\/p>\n
Nothing about the machine explained why the diner man had asked about it.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether Reed felt the same frustration.<\/p>\n
He had spent so much time getting the Shovelhead running.<\/p>\n
Now he had to look at it while considering a problem that had nothing to do with the engine itself.<\/p>\n
He didn't complain.<\/p>\n
He simply continued.<\/p>\n
That afternoon, I found myself thinking about Saturday again.<\/p>\n
Forty-nine hours had been the amount of time we had when Brix first told us what he had heard.<\/p>\n
The hours had continued passing while we talked, worked, and tried to make sense of the situation.<\/p>\n
The memorial ride was getting closer.<\/p>\n
We still needed to be ready.<\/p>\n
And whatever the diner man had been concerned about, we had not learned anything new that explained it.<\/p>\n
I wanted more information.<\/p>\n
I wanted something definite enough to separate a real concern from a mistaken impression.<\/p>\n
But there was no new detail to work with.<\/p>\n
We had Brix's account.<\/p>\n
We had the questions.<\/p>\n
We had the argument he had overheard.<\/p>\n
Nothing more.<\/p>\n
I had to accept that for the moment.<\/p>\n
Reed completed another check and stepped away from the motorcycle.<\/p>\n
He looked at it with the quiet satisfaction of someone who could at least say the work was progressing.<\/p>\n
I wanted to share that feeling.<\/p>\n
I did, a little.<\/p>\n
The machine was getting closer to where we needed it to be.<\/p>\n
That was real progress.<\/p>\n
The other problem remained unresolved, but it didn't erase what we had accomplished.<\/p>\n
I realized I had been treating the uncertainty as if it made every good thing meaningless.<\/p>\n
It didn't.<\/p>\n
We could be concerned about the diner man and still be glad the motorcycle was running.<\/p>\n
We could take Brix seriously without deciding that something terrible was certain to happen.<\/p>\n
We could prepare for Saturday without pretending we understood what the men had discussed.<\/p>\n
Those things could all be true at once.<\/p>\n
It was a small realization.<\/p>\n
It helped.<\/p>\n
Odom returned to the workbench and picked up his phone.<\/p>\n
Reed went back to the motorcycle.<\/p>\n
I stayed nearby, listening to their quiet conversation and watching the work continue.<\/p>\n
For a little while, I allowed myself to think about the memorial ride again.<\/p>\n
Not about the diner.<\/p>\n
Not about the argument.<\/p>\n
Just the ride and the machine we had worked so hard to prepare.<\/p>\n
It felt good to remember why we had started.<\/p>\n
I knew the questions would return.<\/p>\n
They always did.<\/p>\n
But I no longer needed to answer them every time they entered my mind.<\/p>\n
For now, the motorcycle needed our attention.<\/p>\n
So we gave it that.<\/p>\n
The decision to keep working sounded simple. In practice, it wasn't. I could concentrate for a while, sometimes long enough to forget about the diner and the argument behind it. … <\/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-40050","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\/40050","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=40050"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40070,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40050\/revisions\/40070"}],"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=40050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}