"Forty years?" Tommy repeated, laughing. "Yeah, that tracks. Looks like it's been dead about that long, too."
The crowd was growing now. A man in a flannel shirt leaned against the hardware store's brick wall, smirking. Two teenage girls giggled behind their hands. An older woman shook her head with a particular disgust reserved for things she decided were beneath her notice. Arthur simply crouched down beside the bike, running two fingers through the oil, checking for metal shavings, doing the quiet ritual of a man who had fixed this same machine a hundred times before.
His face didn't change when Tommy called out again, nor when someone muttered the word vagrant.
"That thing," Arthur said quietly, almost to himself, "has more history than this whole street."
"What was that, old man?" Tommy stepped closer, emboldened by his audience. "Speak up, or is that hearing aid busted, too?"
Arthur looked up at him. And for just a moment, something passed behind his eyes. It wasn't anger; it was something colder and steadier. It was the look of a man who had been underestimated many times by people far more dangerous than a seventeen-year-old with an audience.
"Nothing," Arthur said, brushing his hands on his jeans. "Nothing worth explaining to you."
That should have ended it, but it didn't. The sheriff's cruiser rolled up eight minutes later, lights on but no siren, easing to a stop at an angle that blocked whatever was left of the street. Sheriff Dale Whitfield stepped out slow, adjusting his belt, surveying the scene with the weary expression of a man who’d rather be anywhere else.
"All right, all right. What do we got?" he asked the crowd.
"Guy won't move his dead bike," someone called out.
"I'm not refusing to move it," Arthur said evenly. "It's dead. Dead things don't move themselves. I need it towed."
Whitfield walked a slow circle around the Harley. He didn't ask Arthur if he was hurt. He didn't ask if he needed help. He pulled out a little notepad and started writing. "You can't just leave a broken-down motorcycle blocking traffic."
"I'm aware. I called for a tow. It's coming."
"How long's that going to take?" Whitfield sighed, as if the inconvenience was a personal insult. "This is Main Street. People got places to be."