Will took it. Marcus pulled him in the same way he had on Route 9. The same grip, the same arm, the same completely unself-conscious physicality. And this time, Will held on for a second longer because he knew this time what it cost to let go of it. And he wanted to feel it clearly so he could carry it clearly.
Marcus let him go and stepped back. Call me, Marcus said. Not just for emergencies. I will, Will said. I mean it, Will.
I know you mean it," Will said. "I will." Marcus looked at him one more time, and the almost smile was there in the corners of his eyes, and Will had seen it for 40 years, and hoped to see it for whatever years were left, and knew with the certainty of something that had been tested and held that he would. Marcus swung on to the Roadking. The engine turned over.
One by one, the others started, and the sound built the way it had built on Route 9 from a vibration into something that filled the air and kept filling it. And Will stood in the motel parking lot and let himself feel it fully. The sound of 31 engines in the cold morning air. The sound of people who had come because he called and were leaving because the thing was done and would come again if he called again. The road king led them out of the lot.
One by one they followed. Will watched them go, the long line of them turning onto the highway heading east. And he stood there until the sound faded from a roar to a vibration to a frequency below hearing. And then Silver Creek was quiet again with a particular quiet of itself. He stood in the lot for a moment longer.
Then he got in his truck and drove back to the shop. The week after that was ordinary in the way that weeks become ordinary when the extraordinary thing has passed. It was ordinary in a way that felt earned rather than default. The specific ordinariness of people who have been through something together and come out the other side and rediscovered that the regular fabric of their days was something worth having. Tommy Reese did not close his blinds.
He called Will on Wednesday to say the DA's office had been in touch and he was giving a formal statement Thursday morning and he was, he said, looking forward to it in a way he hadn't expected to look forward to anything for 6 weeks. Lou Baitman's wife made Will a casserole and left it on the shop's front step with a note that said only thank you which Will found when he opened up Thursday morning and which he ate for three meals because it was genuinely excellent. Carl Briggs came in Friday afternoon to collect the Triumph Bonavville. He was a small compact man in his 70s with the slightly windburned face of someone who had spent decades moving through air on two wheels. And when Will rolled the bike out of the shop and Carl heard the engine, he stood with his hands in his jacket pockets and didn't say anything for a moment, just listened.
"There she is," Carl said finally. "British twins sound different than anything else," Will said. "Nothing sounds like that," Carla said. He walked around at once the slow circuit of a man reacquainting himself with something he loved. "What was it in the end?
Carburetor was gked. Float level was off. Throttle slide was worn. Will paused. And someone had put the wrong jets in at some point.
Not recently. Years ago. Carl shook his head. That had explained the lean running. It would, Will said.
She'll run clean now. Carl stood beside this triumph and looked at Will with the directness of someone who didn't waste time on indirect approaches. I heard what happened in town last week. He said, "Word travels 40 miles out. Turns out."
Apparently, Will said, "You doing all right?" "I'm doing fine, Carl." Will said, "Good." Carl looked at the bike. "Good man took care of my bike," he said.
"That's all I need to know about a person, really." He paid what Will asked, which was what the work was worth, and he rode the Triumph out of the driveway with the ease of a man who had never stopped knowing how to move on two wheels, and Will watched the sound of the British twin fade down Main Street with the quiet satisfaction of a thing completed. And returned to the person it belonged to. The following Wednesday, Emily came for lunch. Not the diner, his kitchen.
She brought sandwiches from Patties and Maggie brought her coloring book and three new horses were colored in the time it took the adults to have a conversation red and orange and one that Maggie described as a sunset horse because it was both colors at once. Will told Emily more. Not everything not in one Wednesday, but more. He told her about Marcus when Marcus was young. The way Marcus laughed before 40, before the weight of leading something compacted the laugh into the almost smile it became.
He told her about the chapters of the club that had the most loyalty in them and the chapters that had the most trouble in them and the way those two things weren't always separated cleanly. He told her about the work fixing bikes for brothers who couldn't afford shop prices doing mechanical work in parking lots and on roadsides and once on a ferry crossing from Washington to Vancouver because the machine needed it and you didn't leave a brother with a broken machine. He told her about Jimmy Puit. Not everything but the shape of him. The generosity, the laugh, the man who gave the shirt off his back to a stranger in January.
The way Jimmy had believed in people beyond the available evidence and had been right often enough that you had to take the belief seriously. Emily listened the way she listened to everything with her full attention and without interruption. And when he finished, she sat with it for a moment in the way of someone who understands that the right response to something important is not always words. He sounds like someone I would have liked, she said finally. Everyone liked Jimmy, Will said.
That was both his gift and his vulnerability. "And Dana," Emily said, his daughter. "I'm calling her this week," Will said, "I told you spring, but I've been thinking about it, and spring is too long." Emily looked at him. "Yeah, I made a promise," he said.
"And I don't have a good reason to keep putting it off, except that putting it off has been a habit for 22 years, and habits aren't reasons." "No," Emily said. "They're not." Maggie looked up from her sunset horse. "What's a habit?"