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.
Gunnison looked at him for a moment longer, then looked at Vandal. "This kid," he said. It was not a complete sentence. It didn't need to be.
Outside the hail was doing damage. Through the walls they could hear it, the sound that was moving past noise into something geological. Something that was reshaping surfaces, leaving marks that would still be there in the morning.
The road outside Ethan knew would look like a battlefield. Concrete pocked and scattered puddles forming fast in the divots. The kind of scene that took minutes to create and weeks to forget.
He thought about the bikes that had been outside when the first stones fell. The lead rider's machine, the ones that hadn't made it into shelter quickly enough. He thought about what he hadn't been able to prevent.
"You okay?" Vandal was watching him. "I'm thinking about the bikes that were outside for the first 15 seconds," Ethan said. "Before they got in. Did they take any?"
"Wicker's fender took a dent," Vandal said, nodding toward a lean red-haired rider in the far corner who was examining something on his right foreleg panel with the resigned expression of someone assessing damage he can live with.
"Front fairing on Ruiz's got a crack across the corner." He paused. "It's not nothing, but it's not what would have happened if we'd stayed out there for 5 more minutes."
He looked at Ethan steadily. "You know that." "Yeah." Ethan looked at his hands. "I know."
"Then stop apologizing for what you saved and start being okay with the fact that you saved it." Something in the directness of this, the absence of complication, the simple clear line between cause and effect that Vandal had just drawn, settled something in Ethan that he hadn't known was unsettled.
He looked at the man for a moment and then nodded once the way you nod when you're receiving information that you know is accurate. "Okay," he said.
The hail outside hit a peak and held it. The roof was talking in a continuous low roar. Several of the men had produced phones and were checking weather apps with the focused attention of people who understand that information is comfort in uncertain situations.
One of them, young, couldn't have been more than 22, with the slightly unfocused look of someone still calibrating to unexpected circumstances, said, "Radar shows another band behind this one. We're going to be here a while."