"Okay," said Boone. She heard him moving already, heard a door bang. "Okay. Put your boots on. Your heavy coat. Get a flashlight. Stay by the house so I know where you are. Ten minutes."
It was eight. She was standing on the new pine step in her boots and her winter coat over her pajamas, with Aitona's big six-cell flashlight, when she heard the first motorcycle. Then another, from the other side of town. Then a third, from out toward the highway. Headlights came swinging around corners. They came down Pine Street and fanned out, one turning up toward the cemetery, one heading down toward the tracks and the grain elevator, one going out toward the rodeo grounds. Their engines boomed off the dark houses and lights came on in windows up and down the block. Somebody in a bathrobe came out onto a porch across the street and stood watching.
Boone's pickup came last. He leaned over and threw the passenger door open.
"Marla called the tree," he said, when she climbed in. "Everybody who's in town's out. Tiny's coming from the lake. Where would he go, Josie? Think. Not where you'd go. Where would he go?"
She already knew. She'd known since she was standing in the street.
"The shop," she said. "He thinks it's Saturday. He thinks he has to open."
Boone pulled the truck around so hard the tires barked.
The old shop was four miles out the Wells highway, a cinderblock building with three bay doors and a faded sign that still said ETCHEVERRY'S SMALL ENGINE & CYCLE – SINCE 1984. The bank had owned it for eleven years. The windows were boarded. Boone's headlights swept across the front of it and caught him there at the middle bay: a small figure in a canvas work jacket and pajama pants, barefoot on the frozen gravel, bent over the padlock on the door.
Josie was out of the truck before it stopped.
"Aitona!"
He turned around. His face in the headlights was gray and puzzled, and his hands were bleeding where he'd been working at the lock, and he was shaking so hard his teeth clattered.
"Josefina," he said. "I can't find my key. The Haskett boy's bike is due Saturday. I promised him."
Boone was already there. He stripped off his heavy leather coat and wrapped it around her grandfather and lifted him off the gravel like he weighed nothing at all, like he was a child, and Aitona, with his bloody hands, patted Boone's face and said, "There you are, Dale. You're late," and Boone said, "I know, Tomás. I'm sorry. I'm here now."