“Should I wait?”
Jim did not answer immediately.
He looked at Rusty.
Rusty shrugged.
“This is parenting territory. I fix motorcycles.”
Jim looked back at Leo.
“What do you think your father would tell you?”
Leo’s expression tightened as he tried to remember Arthur’s voice.
Finally:
“He’d say if you have to ask whether you’re old enough, you probably aren’t.”
Jim smiled.
“That sounds like Arty.”
Leo picked up the box.
He did not open it.
He tucked it under his arm.
“Mom decides.”
No one argued.
That simple decision impressed Jim more than any mechanical answer Leo had given.
Because brilliance was easy to admire.
Restraint was harder.
They carried everything upstairs.
For the next four hours, Apex Iron Works stopped behaving like a normal business.
Customers came in and were told their repairs would be delayed.
One man complained about a tire change until he recognized Dutch’s FXR on the lift.
Then he stopped complaining and pulled up a chair.
By five o’clock there were nine people standing around the shop.
By six, fourteen.
Rusty finally locked the front door.
“This is not a public show.”
The people inside remained.
Leo stood on the milk crate beside Dave.
The custom pushrods fit.
Not almost.
Exactly.
Arthur had labeled each one by cylinder and position.
Dave installed them carefully.
Rusty reset the modified geometry according to the notebook.
Another mechanic checked lash.
Then checked again.
The hidden security circuit was repaired rather than removed.
The old relay beneath the seat turned out to be partially shorted, exactly as Leo vaguely remembered his father warning.
Rusty replaced the failing relay while preserving Arthur’s bypass design.
The timing was reset twelve degrees off the stock reference.
By seven-thirty the engine was back together enough for a controlled starting attempt.
Maria had arrived fifteen minutes earlier.
She had not been happy to find Leo still there.
But then she saw the wooden box.
Her expression changed.
“You didn't open it?”
Leo shook his head.
“Why?”
“You decide.”
Maria looked toward Rusty.
“He found it in Arthur’s locker?”
“Yes.”
She touched the tape.
Arthur’s handwriting.
For a moment, the motorcycle disappeared from the room.
The bikers disappeared.
The shop disappeared.
Maria saw only a message from her husband two years after death.
She put the box against her chest.
Then handed it back to Leo.
“We open it at home.”
Leo nodded.
Rusty called from the lift.
“Everybody clear.”
The shop became silent.
Jim stood three feet from the FXR.
His hands were clenched.
Leo noticed.
For all Jim’s size and reputation, he suddenly looked frightened.
Not of the motorcycle.
Of hearing it fail again.
Dutch had died without warning.
An aneurysm in his sleep.
He had ridden the FXR the afternoon before.
Parked it in his garage.
Called Jim that evening and argued about where they should ride the following weekend.
Then he never woke up.
The FXR had become the last machine carrying Dutch’s fingerprints exactly where he had left them.
Jim had wanted it running for the memorial because he believed sound could bring a person back for one morning.
Now the starter button waited beneath Rusty’s thumb.
Rusty looked at Leo.
“Switch?”
Leo walked to the left side.
He reached beneath the tank.