Chapter II: The Language of Steel and Wrenches
The water soaked through Toby's thin shirt in three paces, pasting the fabric to his ribs. His shoes squelched as he sprinted across Cedar Hill Road, dodging puddles of oily runoff.
Jax had already dropped to one knee in the filth beside his machine, his massive hands trying to wrestle the wet, jagged ends of the 530-pitch chain back over the rear wheel sprocket. The chain was heavy, crusted with road grime, and impossible to join without backing off the rear axle nuts to give it slack. With every slip, the sharp edges of the links bit into his knuckles, smearing fresh crimson across the black grease.
"Damn piece of junk," Jax growled under his breath, reaching blindly for an adjustable wrench on the pavement.
"I can fix it," a clear, high voice rang out over the drumming rain.
Jax whipped his head around, his eyes narrowing into cold slits. His jaw flexed. Standing less than three feet from his rear tire was a skinny kid in soaked clothes, water dripping from his chin onto his collarbones.
"Kid, get lost!" Jax barked, his voice vibrating with the raw rasp of gravel and tobacco. "This bike isn't a toy. Go play inside before you get hurt or get in my way."
Most children in town would have bolted at the sound of that roar. Grown men in roadside taverns routinely stepped aside when Jax cleared his throat. But Toby didn't take a single step backward. He looked past the biker's tattoos, past the menacing leather cut, and crouched directly into the wet gravel beside the rear swingarm.
Toby pointed with a thin, grime-caked finger at the lower run of the chain.
"I know," Toby said steadily, his breath making small clouds against the cold. "The drive chain needs a master link. You snapped the retaining clip and the side plate sheared off when you hit the pothole up the hill. But the inner rollers are still good."
Jax stopped. His hand stayed frozen on the wrench. He blinked the rain out of his eyes and stared at the boy as if a stray dog had suddenly spoken fluent Latin.
"What did you say?" Jax asked, the anger in his voice momentarily blunted by disbelief.
"Your axle is jammed too far back in the dropouts," Toby continued, picking up an open-ended 3/4-inch wrench from Jax's canvas roll without asking. "If you don't loosen the axle nut first, you’ll never pull enough slack to press the pins through the link, even if you find the clip. You'll just strip the teeth on your rear sprocket."
Jax remained on his knee, motionless, the rain running in rivers down his leather vest. "Where the hell did you learn what a master link is, kid?"