"Come on," he said to it, low, almost gentle. "Come on, you miserable old cow."
Two teenage boys sitting on the bench outside the hardware store had stopped pretending not to watch. A pickup slowed to look and then thought better of it. Boone climbed off the bike, stood with his hands on his hips, and stared at the engine the way a man stares at a dog that has bitten him.
Josie rolled her bicycle closer. She did not decide to. Her feet did it.
The engine was a Shovelhead, which she knew from the shape of the rocker covers, the two big chrome humps on each cylinder that looked like the backs of upside-down shovels. Aitona had taught her that when she was six, sitting on an upturned bucket in the shop while the radio played the ballgame from Salt Lake. Knucklehead, Panhead, Shovelhead, he'd said, tapping each picture in the dog-eared service manual. Like the rocks, Josefina. Each one sits on top of the one before.
She stopped her bicycle about ten feet from the Harley. She could feel heat coming off it like an open oven.
Boone looked at her. His eyes were pale blue and bloodshot at the corners, and they went over her the way you'd look at a tumbleweed, briefly, without interest. A skinny girl in cutoffs and a Reno Aces T-shirt three sizes too big, sunburned nose, brown hair in a braid that had come half undone. Then he looked back at his engine.
"Sir," Josie said. Her voice came out smaller than she meant. She cleared her throat. "Sir, I think I can fix your motorcycle."
The boys on the bench laughed.
Boone didn't. He turned his head slowly and looked at her again, and this time he actually looked. It went on long enough that Josie felt the sweat run down the middle of her back. She thought about the pharmacy bag, and about how she should be home by two-thirty because Aitona had been alone since noon, and she thought, You stupid, stupid girl.
"That right," Boone said.
"I think so. Maybe."
"Maybe." He pulled a red shop rag from his back pocket and wiped his face with it. "Fella at the shop in Elko had her for nine days. Rebuilt the carburetor. Charged me four hundred and eleven dollars. She ran good for a week and now she's doing this again, and you think maybe."
"It's not the carburetor," Josie said.
The words were out before she could check them. One of the boys on the bench said, "Oh, snap," and the other one shoved him.