"Four hundred and eleven dollars," he said.
Josie decided the safest thing was not to say anything to that.
"Can you fix it," Boone said. "Here. Now."
"For now. It needs a new wire, really, and a new grommet. But for now." She was already digging through her milk crate. A roll of black electrical tape. A handful of zip ties. And the spare inner tube for her bicycle, which was not new. She held it up. "Can I cut this?"
"It's your tube."
She cut a three-inch piece from it with the knife on his keychain, slit it lengthwise, and showed him. "Tape first. Then this goes over like a sleeve, so even if it rubs, it's rubbing on rubber instead of the wire. Then zip-tie it so it can't slide."
He watched her do it. Her fingers were small enough to get in behind the grommet. She wrapped the bare place in tape, three layers, tight, the way Aitona did, overlapping each turn by half. She slid the sleeve over it and cinched the zip tie with her teeth and clipped the tail. She checked the test light again. Key on, bump the starter. The bulb went on and off, on and off, clean and bright as a lighthouse.
"There," she said, and put the points cover back on, and tightened the two little screws, not too hard because they were the kind that stripped. She put the original plug wire back on the front cylinder. She wiped her hands on her cutoffs.
Boone Haskett swung a leg over the Harley. He turned the key. He looked at her one more time, and she understood that he was giving her a chance to be wrong in private, before it counted.
She nodded.
He thumbed the starter. The engine turned over twice and then caught with a bang that made the teenage boys on the bench flinch, and settled into that big, slow, uneven heartbeat, potato-potato-potato, rattling the post office windows, pouring heat.
The boys started clapping. One of them whistled through his fingers. Mrs. Delgado had come back out onto the post office steps, holding her stamps against her chest.
Boone did not clap. He sat on the idling bike and looked at Josie for a long moment, and then he reached into his vest and took out a wallet on a chain, and opened it.