For a while, nobody said anything about the diner.<\/p>\n
I listened to the motorcycle and watched Reed continue working.<\/p>\n
The room felt quieter, even with the engine running.<\/p>\n
It wasn't because the situation had improved.<\/p>\n
We had simply stopped asking it to explain itself.<\/p>\n
Odom's phone remained on the workbench.<\/p>\n
Brix still held his canvas bag.<\/p>\n
The front windows showed the same ordinary view they had shown earlier.<\/p>\n
Nothing in the shop had changed enough to give us a new answer.<\/p>\n
I found that easier to accept than I had before.<\/p>\n
The morning had begun with a motorcycle that needed work.<\/p>\n
Then Brix had brought us information that made the motorcycle seem connected to something we did not understand.<\/p>\n
We had listened to him.<\/p>\n
We had asked what he remembered.<\/p>\n
He had told us what he knew.<\/p>\n
That was where the conversation had brought us.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to pretend it had taken us farther.<\/p>\n
I also didn't want to dismiss what he had said simply because we couldn't make sense of it yet.<\/p>\n
Both mistakes would have been easy.<\/p>\n
One would have let us ignore the warning.<\/p>\n
The other would have encouraged us to invent a danger we could not describe.<\/p>\n
Neither would have helped.<\/p>\n
I looked toward Brix.<\/p>\n
"Are you all right?" I asked.<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
"Yeah."<\/p>\n
I didn't ask him to explain the answer.<\/p>\n
He had been through enough questions for one morning.<\/p>\n
I had no reason to make him account for every expression or pause.<\/p>\n
He had come to us with something troubling.<\/p>\n
We had heard him.<\/p>\n
That was what mattered.<\/p>\n
Odom glanced toward Reed.<\/p>\n
"How are we doing?"<\/p>\n
Reed answered without looking away from the work.<\/p>\n
"Still working."<\/p>\n
It was such an ordinary response that I almost smiled.<\/p>\n
There was nothing false in it.<\/p>\n
We were still working.<\/p>\n
The motorcycle was running.<\/p>\n
The memorial ride was approaching.<\/p>\n
The questions remained unanswered.<\/p>\n
Those things could all be true at the same time.<\/p>\n
I had spent too much of the morning treating uncertainty as a problem that had to be removed before we could continue.<\/p>\n
Now I understood that we could keep moving while admitting what we didn't know.<\/p>\n
It did not make the questions less important.<\/p>\n
It simply kept them from becoming the only things we could think about.<\/p>\n
I looked at the Shovelhead.<\/p>\n
The machine had been the reason for our work before Brix spoke.<\/p>\n
It remained the reason afterward.<\/p>\n
The diner man's interest had changed how I felt about it, but it had not changed the facts we knew about the motorcycle.<\/p>\n
I had to remember that distinction.<\/p>\n
If we eventually learned why the man had asked about it, we could reconsider what his questions meant.<\/p>\n
Until then, the motorcycle was still the machine in front of us.<\/p>\n
Reed was still the person working on it.<\/p>\n
Odom was still beside the workbench.<\/p>\n
Brix was still the person who had told us what he heard.<\/p>\n
And I was still trying to understand how much weight to give a warning that came without an explanation.<\/p>\n
I didn't have a perfect answer.<\/p>\n
I doubted any of us did.<\/p>\n
But I no longer felt that I had to hide that uncertainty behind a confident guess.<\/p>\n
"At least we know what he said," Odom remarked.<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
"Yes."<\/p>\n
It was a small piece of certainty.<\/p>\n
The diner man had asked Brix about the shop, Reed, and the motorcycle.<\/p>\n
He had wanted to know whether Brix had been inside before, whether Reed had spoken to him, and what Brix had seen on the motorcycle.<\/p>\n
Brix had heard the man arguing with another person behind the kitchen.<\/p>\n
They had mentioned something being found before Saturday.<\/p>\n
Those were the details we had.<\/p>\n
I could repeat them without changing them.<\/p>\n
I could remember them without adding an explanation.<\/p>\n
That was more useful than I had understood earlier.<\/p>\n
The story in my head had been growing beyond the story Brix had actually told us.<\/p>\n
Every time I imagined a possible connection, I found another question that seemed to support it.<\/p>\n
But the questions did not prove the answers.<\/p>\n
I had been building possibilities on top of possibilities until I could no longer tell which details came from Brix and which came from me.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to keep doing that.<\/p>\n
The simplest approach was to return to his actual words.<\/p>\n
Not because they solved anything.<\/p>\n
Because they were the only account we had.<\/p>\n
I glanced toward the front windows, remembering how Brix had looked in that direction before telling us about the argument.<\/p>\n
I had wondered what he was checking for.<\/p>\n
I still didn't know.<\/p>\n
I had no reason to turn that glance into evidence of anything else.<\/p>\n
He had looked toward the windows.<\/p>\n
Then he had told us what he remembered.<\/p>\n
I could leave it there.<\/p>\n
The phone on the workbench caught my eye again.<\/p>\n
Odom had not needed it to explain the situation.<\/p>\n
I had been waiting for some action to make the uncertainty feel smaller, but no action had presented itself clearly.<\/p>\n
There was no obvious call to make.<\/p>\n
There was no known person who could explain what the diner man wanted.<\/p>\n
There was no confirmed answer to the question of what had been found.<\/p>\n
We had no reason to pretend otherwise.<\/p>\n
The memorial ride was still ahead of us.<\/p>\n
Saturday remained the day the men had mentioned.<\/p>\n
That fact would stay with me.<\/p>\n
I would not forget it merely because I could not explain it.<\/p>\n
I would also not let it convince me that I knew what was coming.<\/p>\n
Those were the limits I had to respect.<\/p>\n
Reed continued his work.<\/p>\n
Odom remained nearby.<\/p>\n
Brix stayed with us, his canvas bag in hand.<\/p>\n
I watched them and understood that we had reached the end of what we could honestly say about the conversation.<\/p>\n
We had heard the warning.<\/p>\n
We had taken it seriously.<\/p>\n
We had refused to invent the missing pieces.<\/p>\n
The motorcycle was running, but the problem behind the diner man's questions had not been resolved.<\/p>\n
I couldn't call that a victory.<\/p>\n
I couldn't call it a failure, either.<\/p>\n
It was simply where we stood.<\/p>\n
I returned my attention to the workbench and let the room settle around me.<\/p>\n
The questions were still there.<\/p>\n
The answers were not.<\/p>\n
For now, I had to be willing to leave that difference alone.<\/p>\n