Then I find Mick.
His shop is called Mick's Cycles and it's on the other side of town, tucked into a strip mall between a pawn shop and a laundromat, the kind of neighborhood where people don't ask too many questions. I almost don't go in because it looks run-down and half-abandoned, the paint peeling and the sign faded, but I'm running out of options and I figure it can't hurt to ask. I push open the door and the smell hits me first—oil and metal and gasoline, the smell of machines waiting to be fixed. It smells like Carl's garage. It smells like the only place I've ever felt competent, like I had value.
Mick is behind the counter, a barrel-chested guy in his fifties with a gray beard and arms covered in faded tattoos. He looks up when I comein, gives me a once-over that feels like it sees right through me, sees all the desperation and fear I'm trying to hide, and grunts.
"Help you?" he asks gruffly.
"I'm looking for work," I say, trying to sound confident, trying not to sound as desperate as I feel. "I've got experience with engines. Cars mostly, but I learn fast. I'm good with my hands."
He stares at me for a long moment, and I can tell he's sizing me up—the worn-out clothes that don't quite fit, the dark circles under my eyes from too many sleepless nights, the hunger that I can't quite hide no matter how hard I try to stand up straight and look capable. I expect him to say no.
"You got references?" he asks.
"One. Guy named Carl Hutchins, runs a garage across town on Maple Street. He's selling the place, that's why I'm looking for something new."
Mick nods slowly, like this information means something to him. "I know Carl. Good mechanic. Honest. Taught you, did he?"
"Yes sir. Everything I know about engines, I learned from him."
"Motorcycles are different than cars," Mick says, watching my face.
"I know. But the principles are the same. Combustion, compression, electrical systems. And like I said, I learn fast. Give me a chance and I'll prove it."
He stares at me some more. I stand there and let him look, because I've got nothing to hide and nothing to lose. Finally, he grunts again and jerks his head toward the back of the shop.
"Got a Harley Sportster back there, won't start. Fuel system's clogged, probably. You got one hour to figure it out. Tools are on the wall. Don't break nothing or you're out on your ass."
It takes me forty-five minutes. The fuel line was kinked and the carburetor was completely gunked up with old gas that had turned to varnish, and once I clean everything out meticulously and put it back together, checking every connection twice, the engine turns over on the first try.
I wheel the bike out to the front of the shop and Mick listens to it run, his face unreadable, and then he nods once.
"Ten bucks an hour to start. Cash, end of each week. You show up on time, you don't steal nothing, you don't give me any trouble, we'll get along fine. We'll see how it goes."
It's not much. It's barely anything, barely enough to survive on. But it's a job, and a job means money, and money means I can stop sleeping behind dumpsters and start sleeping somewhere with walls and a door that locks, somewhere I can keep my few possessions without worrying about them being stolen.
I find the Vista Inn two weeks later. It's a motel on the edge of town, the kind of place that rents by the week to people who can't afford first and last month's rent on an apartment, who can't pass a credit check, who live on the margins of society.
People like me.
The room is small—just a bed with a sagging mattress, a dresser with drawers that stick, a bathroom with a door that doesn't close right and a shower that only has hot water half the time, a mini-fridge I buy at a pawn shop for thirty dollars. The walls are thin enough that I can hear my neighbors fighting and fucking and watching TV at all hours of the night. The ceiling has a water stain shaped like a dog's head, and I spend hours staring at it, finding patterns in the discoloration.
It's not home. I don't know what home means anymore. I'm not sure I ever knew. But it's mine, it's a roof over my head, and that's something. That's more than I had. I'm grateful for it.
I fall into a routine. Wake up, go to work, come back to my room, try to sleep, repeat. Mick doesn't talk much, which suits me fine because I don't have much to say either. He teaches me things when I ask, shows me techniques I never learned from Carl, lets me work on increasingly complicated projects as he starts to trust my skills. I'm good at this—taking broken things and making them run again, making something whole out of pieces.
It's the only thing I'm good at. The only thing I have.
The drinking gets worse. It happens so gradually I don't notice it at first, the way you don't notice yourself getting older until you look in the mirror one day and don't recognize the person staring back. A beer after work to take the edge off, to quiet the thoughts. Then two beers. Then abottle of whiskey that I keep in my dresser drawer and pull out when I can't sleep, when the silence gets too loud and the walls start closing in.
There's a liquor store on the corner run by a guy who doesn't ask for ID as long as you pay cash and don't cause trouble. He knows me by name after a few months, greets me when I come in. I tell myself it's fine, that I'm not like the guys I see passed out in alleys and panhandling on corners, that I'm functional, that I show up to work every day and do my job. I'm not an alcoholic. I'm just surviving.
But at night, when the alcohol wears off and the walls of my tiny room start closing in and the dog-head stain on the ceiling seems to mock me, the thoughts come flooding back. Ivan. Where is he? Is he okay? Is he still looking for me, or has he given up? Has he decided I abandoned him, that I broke my promise? Has something happened to him? Is he dead in a ditch somewhere, or locked in another basement being beaten by another Henderson while I sit here useless and alone and drunk?
The nightmares get worse around the time I turn twenty. I dream about Ivan screaming while Henderson hits him and I can't move, can't help, can't do anything but watch as the belt comes down again and again.
I dream about finding him dead, finding him hurt beyond repair, finding him and having him look at me like he doesn't know who I am, like I'm just another stranger who failed him.
I wake up gasping, sweating, my heart pounding so hard I think it might break through my ribs, and I reach for the bottle because it's the only thing that makes the images stop.
