"So this is her," said the silver-haired woman, looking Josie up and down. "The one who fixed the Shovel with a bicycle tube."
"Everybody knows about that?"
"Honey, the Delgado sisters run this town's newspaper out of the post office, and it's a daily." She stuck out her hand. "Marla Quintero. Thirty-one years in the ER at Northeastern Nevada Regional. Now I just ride and complain."
Josie shook her hand. It was hard and dry. Marla held on a half second longer than she needed to, and Josie saw her eyes go to the big steel watch on her wrist and then, for no reason, to the bruise on Josie's forearm, a yellowing one from the week before when Aitona had grabbed her arm in a bad moment and not let go.
"Fell off my bike," Josie said, though nobody had asked.
"Mm," said Marla. "That'll happen."
They stayed till noon. Gus showed Josie how to bleed a brake line with a length of clear tube and a jar so you could watch the air bubbles come out. Tiny told a long story about a bull named Senator that had nothing to do with anything. Deacon didn't say much, but when he left he took a canvas roll out of his saddlebag and set it on the bench beside her. Inside were a set of quarter-inch drive sockets and a little ratchet, all of them old Snap-on, all of them clean.
"I had them in Kandahar," he said. "Don't need 'em. Hands like yours oughta have their own."
She didn't know what to say, so she said thank you three times, and he nodded and went out to his bike, and Boone, watching him go, said quietly, "That's more words than he's said to anybody since Easter."
When her watch beeped at noon, Marla was standing right there.
"Medicine," Josie said, packing the socket roll into her milk crate.
"For your granddad," Marla said. It wasn't a question.
Josie looked at Boone. Boone looked at the floor.