"Midnight to four."
A pause. "So, you slept for thirty minutes."
"Twenty. I couldn't settle." I move to the next section of the tank and don't turn around. "The Dyna's had someone going at the tank with the wrong polish. Left residue in all the seams. Whoever did it should be told."
"It was Bri."
"Someone should tell Bri."
"Someone will." Brick comes around and picks up a clean cloth from the bench and crouches down by the rear wheel, and he starts wiping down the spokes without being asked. That’s not something I expected. We work in silence for a while. The strip light flickers twice and settles.
"You know the rules," Brick says eventually, not looking up from the spokes.
"Yeah."
"Tell me them anyway."
I keep my voice level. "No phone in Church. No talking back to patched members. Last to eat, first to work. Gate duty when asked, no questions. Run errands without being chased. Keep my personal business outside the gate."
"And?"
"Don't embarrass the man who vouched for me."
Brick stops wiping the spokes. He straightens up and he looks at me properly for the first time since he came in. I've known that face my whole life, the jaw that doesn't give anything away, the eyes that are sharper than people expect. He's my mother's brother and he was at my fifth birthday and my high school graduation and every Christmas in between, and right now none of that’s in his face. Right now he's just a patched member of the Black Saints MC looking at a prospect.
"You're behind on the Fat Boy," he says.
"I know. I'll have it sorted before noon."
"You'll have it sorted before nine. Razor wants it out this morning." He drops the cloth on the bench. "And Austin?"
I look at him.
"You want the patch, stop thinking about her. She's gone. You're here. Act like it."
He says it the way he says everything that matters flat, without drama, as if it's simply a fact of the situation that I need to account for and move on from. He doesn't wait for a response. He pulls the side door open, letting the cold morning air comein for a second before he's gone. The door swings shut and I'm alone again in the workshop with the flicker of the strip light, the three bikes and the cold.
I pick up a fresh cloth, and I go to work on the Fat Boy.
She's gone. I'm here. Act like it.
He's right. That's the annoying thing about Brick. He's almost always right, and he doesn't soften it enough to make being right feel like kindness. Which means there's no cushion to resent and no argument to make. Just the fact of the thing, laid out plain. No room to argue. No room to sulk. Just the work and the cold and the strip light flickering overhead.
I crouch down by the Fat Boy's primary case and run my thumb along the seam where someone has been sloppy with their cleanup. There's buffing compound dried in a ridge around the lower edge and it'll take me twenty minutes with a detail brush to get it out properly. I grab the brush from the shelf above the workbench and get into it.
The thing about bikes is that they don't care how you're feeling. You could be in pieces on the inside and the engine doesn't know it. A stuck float is a stuck float whether you're heartbroken or happy. Figuring out why it’s stuck requires the same thing either way: your hands on the problem, your brain on the problem, everything else set aside. I learned that from Brick when I was fourteen and I spent a summer in his garage learning to strip and rebuild a Sportster. I've never forgotten that lesson. The work is honest. The work doesn't have an opinion about your choices or your grief or the quality of your reasons.
I work through until six thirty, when the compound starts waking up around me. I hear Pops crossing the yard first,because Pops is always up early, and always moves the same unhurried way regardless of the hour. A few minutes later I hear two of the younger patched members I don't know well yet, their voices carrying across the yard before the door opens. Then the smell of coffee from the main building drifts over to me, which means Cam is in.
I clean my hands and carry the Fat Boy's service sheet to the whiteboard at the front of the shop and mark it done. All three bikes were serviced and cleaned. Two hours forty minutes of work, most of it in the cold and dark, and no one is going to notice except to take it for granted, which is exactly how it's supposed to go.
That's the hardest thing about being a prospect. Not the hours or the grunt work or the being last in line for everything. It's learning to find satisfaction in invisible effort. Learning to do the job right because it's right, not because anyone's going to see you do it.
I'm still learning that part.
But I'm learning it.
Four dayslater I'm on my first run.
