He stood up and looked at Ethan. "How'd you know they'd all fit?" he asked. "You didn't measure anything." "I know the garage," Ethan said. "You know it that well."
"I've been working in it for 6 years." He looked at the row of bikes along the left wall checking angles. "Also, the math wasn't that complicated. 23 bikes average handlebar width about 32 in. You lose some to the angles, but you gain it back on the diagonal arrangement."
He stopped himself. "Sorry, that's I just mean it worked out." The dark-haired rider looked at the man next to him, a broad-shouldered blonde in his 30s, who was listening with the expression of someone discovering something unexpected.
The blonde man looked at Vandal. Vandal was watching Ethan with an expression that had moved by now quite clearly past neutral. "What do you do with this garage?" Vandal asked. "Besides save motorcycles?"
"Repairs mostly, small engines, some cars." He gestured at the workbench where the Honda generator sat in its partially disassembled state. "I take in jobs from the neighborhood."
"You work here alone?" "Yeah, my mom's at work." Ethan's face shifted slightly on the word, a small thing barely visible, the shadow of a larger concern crossing a face that had learned to keep things to itself.
It was there, and then it wasn't. Vandal saw it. He was a man who had spent 30 years reading rooms and reading people, and he had the particular skill of someone who had survived by noticing the things that other people decided weren't worth noticing.
He didn't say anything about it. Not yet. Instead, he turned and looked at his riders, 23 men in a small garage, some sitting on bikes, some leaning against the walls, some standing in the cramped spaces between machines with the patient discomfort of large men in small spaces.
They were quiet, not the quiet of people being restrained, the quiet of people who had just moved through something fast and were now in the aftermath, still processing it. "Boys," Vandal said, and his voice carried easily in the confined space, the voice of a man who did not need to raise it to be heard.
"This young man's name is Ethan. His garage just saved your bikes from looking like someone took a ball-peen hammer to every panel." He paused and let that land. "What do you say?"
What they said surprised Ethan. Not the words, the words were simple, a chorus of thanks and variations thereof, but the quality of it, the genuine weight of it, the way it came from the whole room at once with the kind of unified spontaneity that groups don't usually produce unless the feeling is real.
He felt his face go warm and looked at his shoes for a moment and then looked back up because he was not going to be embarrassed in his own garage.
The hail outside reached a new intensity. The roof sang with it. Not damage, he didn't think the roof was solid, but a continuous roaring percussion that filled every corner of the space.
A few of the men looked up involuntarily. One of them, older, maybe 60 with a full white beard and hands like geological formations, closed his eyes briefly and then opened them again and said quietly to no one in particular, "Lord almighty."
Ethan looked at the locked bikes, the locked wheels, the small gaps between machines. He looked at the men in those gaps and thought about weight distribution and whether anyone was likely to need to get by quickly.
He adjusted his thinking about two of the bikes closest to the door, considered whether they should be repositioned for a faster exit, and decided no, the storm was too active. It would pass. Stability mattered more than speed right now.
"There's water in this back," he said, because hospitality was what you offered when people were in your space regardless of who those people were. "And if anyone needs to sit down," he gestured to the workbench stool and the two folding chairs hanging on the back wall.
"It's not much, but we're fine, kid," said one of the riders not unkindly. He was heavy-set, bald, with a red beard that reached his chest in a voice that had been roughened by something years of wind, maybe, or years of cigarettes.
We've stood in worse places. What's your carburetor problem? Asked the dark-haired rider with a tattooed arm.
He had moved toward the workbench while Ethan was speaking and was looking at the disassembled Honda with the focused interest of someone who actually wanted to know. Main jets partly blocked. Fuel was running lean. Motor was hunting under load.
Ethan moved to the workbench without thinking about it. Moved to it the way you move to something that belongs to you and picked up the carburetor body showing the man the tiny passage that ran along the bottom.
Right there. Something in the fuel contaminated it. Probably water built up over time. You can see where it's been restricting. The man leaned in and looked where Ethan was pointing.
How'd you diagnose it from outside? The way it sounded. Under load, it was missing in a specific pattern. Not random, not ignition, had a rhythm. Lean miss sounds different from rich miss, different from timing. Once I heard it, it was obvious.
You heard that from outside the machine. You can feel it, too, if you put your hand near the exhaust. He set the carburetor back down. Once you know what you're listening for, it's hard to hear anything else.
The man straightened up and looked at him with an expression that was direct and evaluating and not unfriendly. Gunnison, he said extending a hand. Rex Gunnison. Ethan shook it.
You ride a Heritage Softail. He said without looking at the bikes. Or you have. The way you looked at the carb just now, the way you were looking at the engine angle. Heritage riders hold their heads a certain way when they're thinking about bottom end.
Gunnison blinked. Then he laughed, a short, surprised sound, genuine. 1998. He said. 112,000 mi on that engine.
How's the primary chain? Getting a little loose. You can feel it in the clutch pull when it's cold. Get stiffer before it even out.