The bike had been in the shop for 11 weeks, three mechanics, $16,000 in parts, and it still would not start. That was the situation at Halverson Custom Cycles in Cody, Wyoming on a Thursday morning in September when a 15-year-old boy who had been sleeping behind the dumpster of the diner two doors down walked into the shop by mistake looking for a bathroom and asked the man swearing at the bike whether it was the ground strap. The man swearing at the bike was named Reed Halvorson. He was 59 years old. He owned the shop.
He was, that morning, exactly 49 hours away from a memorial ride that 83 members of the Wind River Riders Motorcycle Club had been planning for 11 months. And the bike that was supposed to lead that ride was the bike that would not start. The bike was a rebuilt 1974 Shovelhead. It had belonged to a founder of the Wind River Riders named Cormac Halvorson, Reed's older brother, who had died in June of a heart attack on the road home from Yellowstone. Cormac had been 64.
He had ridden the same bike for 41 years. He had been buried in Cody with his own cut in the casket and his hands folded over a photograph of his three grandchildren. The memorial ride was supposed to be his goodbye. 83 bikes, 200 miles, ending at the granite bench his family had installed for him at a trailhead outside Meeteetse. The lead position on that ride, by tradition and by every unspoken rule of the Wind River Riders, was going to be filled by Cormac Halvorson's own bike, riderless, engine running, chained lightly to a lead truck for balance.
That was how they had done it for the founder before Cormac. That was how they were going to do it for Cormac. The bike was not going to start. Reed Halvorsen had rebuilt it from the frame up over the summer. New cases, new crank, rebuilt heads, rebuilt carbs, $16,000 in parts.
Most of it paid for out of the chapter's memorial fund, and the rest out of Reed's own pocket. Three specialist mechanics had come through the shop. Two from Casper, one from Salt Lake City. All three of them had shrugged after 2 days. The bike would spin over.
The bike would fire sometimes one or two cylinders. The bike would never catch. Reed had been trying for 4 hours that morning. He had swapped the ignition module twice. He had checked continuity on every ground he could find.
He had pulled the plugs and read them and put them back and read them again. He had, at 11:02, thrown a wrench across the shop and hit the front glass and cracked it. At 11:04, the front door of the shop opened and a very thin 15-year-old boy in a hoodie two sizes too big for him walked in. His name was Brix Deodato. He was 5 ft 4.
He had a bruise the color of a plum along his jaw. His hair was long and greasy. He had a canvas bag with everything he owned in it, which was a photograph of his mother, a Ford factory shop manual, half a peanut butter sandwich, and a coil of copper wire he had scavenged from a construction dumpster 2 nights earlier. He said, "Sir, I am sorry to ask. Is there a bathroom I could use?" Reed Halvorsen turned around.