His knees complained.
He stopped riding in heavy rain.
But every year on the anniversary of Dutch’s death, the black FXR came out.
And every year, before starting it, Jim reached under the left side of the tank.
Click.
The hidden switch remained.
Nobody removed it.
At twenty-one, Leo finally rode beside Dutch’s motorcycle during the memorial procession.
Not in the support truck.
On his own Harley.
An old machine he had rebuilt from boxes of parts.
Jim looked at it before the ride.
“Your father would complain about that exhaust.”
Leo smiled.
“My father complained about everything.”
Jim nodded.
“True.”
Rusty stood nearby.
“You ready?”
Leo looked toward Dutch’s FXR.
He could still remember being eight.
The broom.
The laughter.
The switch.
Locker forty-two.
“Yeah.”
The engines started.
Dozens became hundreds.
The procession moved toward the coast.
Leo rode beside men who once towered above him when he stood on a milk crate.
He was taller now.
Stronger.
Older.
But memory compressed distance.
At the same overlook above the Pacific, they stopped.
Jim spoke again.
His voice was quieter than it had been years before.
Dutch had been gone a long time.
Arthur even longer.
Yet both men remained present in strange mechanical ways.
A switch.
A handwritten note.
A custom pushrod.
A scarred motorcycle.
A toolbox.
A letter.
Jim stood beside Leo.
“You know what Dutch said about your dad?”
Leo smiled.
“Which time?”
“The last time I heard him talk about Arty.”
Leo looked toward him.
“What?”
Jim watched the ocean.
“He said, ‘That stubborn bastard is the only mechanic I trust because he’s not afraid to tell me I built something stupid.’”
Leo laughed.
“That sounds like Dad.”
Jim nodded.
“Then Dutch said, ‘If anything happens to me, don’t let anybody turn that bike back to stock.’”
Leo looked toward the FXR.
Nobody had.
Its weird hybrid engine remained.
The wrong timing marks remained.
The hidden switch remained.
The handmade geometry remained.
The machine still carried the decisions of two dead men.
Some elegant.
Some ridiculous.
All theirs.
Years later, when Rusty finally decided to retire, nobody was surprised by who took over Apex Iron Works.
The sign stayed.
Leo refused to change it.
He modernized the equipment.
Added better lifts.
Installed new diagnostic systems.
Expanded electrical work.
But he kept one wall exactly as it had been.
The red tool chest.
Arthur’s photograph.
The old wooden case.
And above them, mounted carefully behind glass, Arthur’s handwritten note:
DUTCH FXR — FINAL SET.
12° OFFSET.
DO NOT USE FACTORY MARK.
Below it hung the broom.
The same oversized wooden broom Leo had been holding the afternoon a garage full of experienced mechanics turned toward an eight-year-old child and laughed.