CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Alex
Now
They were up to something.
I knew it the moment they left Saturday morning. Riley had come by early, earlier than usual, and Arthur had been ready and waiting at the door the way he was ready when he already knew where he was going and had known for some time.
They were sharing a secret.
I’d looked at Riley over Arthur’s head. He’d looked back at me with an expression of complete innocence that told me everything.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Out,” Riley said.
“Out,” I repeated.
“Back by noon,” he said.
Arthur was already at the truck.
I stood in the doorway and watched them go.
Martina joined me on the front porch at ten.
She brought two cups of coffee and sat in the chair beside mine and looked at the empty street.
“They’re up to something,” I said.
“Obviously,” she said.
“Do you know what?”
She sipped her coffee. “No.”
I looked at her.
“I don’t,” she said. “Riley called the house phone yesterday while you were in the shower. He spoke to me for approximately forty-five seconds.”
“About what?”
“About nothing that concerns you,” she said.
“Martina.”
She nodded toward my cup. “Drink your coffee.”
I drank my coffee.
The street was quiet. The desert morning was doing what it always did. Bright and immediate. A roadrunner crossed the end of the driveway and disappeared on the other side without acknowledging us.
“He’s good for Arthur,” Martina said.
“I know.”
“Better than good,” she said. “That boy has opened up since we got here. Have you noticed?”
“I’ve noticed.”
“He laughs differently,” she said. “It comes from somewhere deeper now.” She looked at her cup. “Before, his laugh was polite. It was something he did because the situation called for it.” She paused. “Now it’s real.”
I looked at the street.
“Riley did that,” she said.
“I know,” I said.
“You did it too,” she said. “By bringing him here. By having the courage to come back.” She glanced at me. “Give yourself some credit.”
I said nothing.
“Alex.”
“I’m trying,” I said.
She accepted that.
We sat on the porch and drank our coffee and listened to the desert morning and waited.
I heard the truck before I saw it.
The complaint of Riley’s engine. The squeak from the rear suspension that he refused to have looked at. The exhaust note I’d been able to identify from a half mile away for months now.
I set my cup down.
The truck came around the corner at the end of the street. Something in the bed. Long and upright and wrapped in cardboard, strapped down with yellow tie-downs.
I stood up.
Martina stood beside me.
The truck came down the street slowly. The box in the bed was large. Larger than I’d initially registered. Long and rectangular and printed on the side in bold black letters.
Yamaha.
I knew what was in it before the truck stopped.
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” Martina said.
“He’s eleven,” I said.
“Yes. Eleven,” she said. “And Riley is going to teach him.” She put her hand on my arm. “If he’s going to learn, now is the time. And Riley is the one to do it.”
I looked at her.
“Alex,” she said. “Let him.”
The truck pulled into the driveway. Arthur was out before it stopped moving. He came around to my side of the porch with the barely contained energy of a boy who had been sitting on something wonderful for several hours and could no longer manage it.
“Before you say anything,” he said.
“Arthur—”
“It’s small,” he said. “It’s a beginner bike. Riley said I have to learn on something small first.” He held up both hands. “It’s very responsible.”
I looked at Riley, who was getting out of the truck with the composure of a man who had prepared for the conversation.
“It’s got a speed limiter,” Riley said to no one in particular. “I’ll set it low. He learns the controls first. Balance. Clutch. Brake.” He met my gaze. “He won’t go faster than you can run.”
“I’m not a fast runner,” I said.
“Then he’ll go slow.”
I looked at Arthur.
He looked back at me with the directness that never asked permission. Waiting for the outcome of a decision that had already been made and just needed me to catch up to it.
I pressed my lips together.
“Fine,” I said.
Arthur was already helping Riley with the tie-downs.
They assembled it in the driveway.
Riley explained each step. Arthur listened and assisted and asked questions at appropriate intervals and listened to the answers before asking the next one.
Martina and I sat on the porch and observed.
Riley fitted the helmet on Arthur’s head. Adjusted the strap. Checked it twice. He got on the bike himself first, walked Arthur through the controls in real time. Clutch in the left hand. Throttle in the right. Front brake. Rear brake. He started it, let it idle, let Arthur listen to it.
“Rule one,” Riley said, over the idle. “You respect it. It’s not a toy and it’s not a bicycle. It’ll do exactly what you tell it to, which means if you tell it the wrong thing, it’ll do it.”
“Okay,” Arthur said.
“Rule two. You go exactly as fast as I say you go, exactly as long as I say. That’s not a suggestion.”
“Okay.”
“Rule three.” Riley looked at him for a long moment. “You have fun. Because this is supposed to be fun. If it stops being fun we stop. That’s the whole point of doing it right.”
Arthur nodded slowly, taking each rule with the same gravity he gave everything Riley told him, filing it away in the particular mental drawer he kept for things that mattered.
Then he got off and stood back.
Arthur got on.
He sat there for a moment. Both feet on the ground. His hands on the bars. He looked down at the controls and then up at Riley and Riley said something I couldn’t hear from the porch, and Arthur’s shoulders squared.
He put it in gear.
He went down the driveway.
Not fast. Not slow. Smooth and controlled and upright and already committed to it the way he committed to things once he decided to do them.
He went through the back gate and into the flat scrubby ground behind the house.
I stood up from my chair.
He went through a wide arc. Then another. Then he opened the throttle slightly and the engine note changed and he went further out and came back around and I could see from here that he was smiling.
Not the polite smile. The real one.
Martina put her hand on my shoulder.
I sat back down.
Riley was watching Arthur from the driveway. His arms were crossed. He was doing what he did when he watched things that mattered. Still. Focused. Absorbing.
Arthur came back through the gate and rolled to a stop in front of us.
He killed the engine.
He took off his helmet.
He looked at Riley. “Well?”
Riley uncrossed his arms. He looked at the boy on the bike. He looked at his posture. His hands on the bars. The way he’d sat through the whole of it like someone who’d been doing it for years.
“Natural,” Riley said. He started to say something else.
Then he stopped.
He looked at Arthur for a moment longer.
His jaw worked slightly.
Then he looked away at the mountains.
He didn’t finish what he started to say.
I watched him not finish it.
I thought about what the rest of that sentence might have been.
I thought I knew.
Della called that evening, ostensibly about Sunday’s menu, and worked her way around to it with the patience of a woman who had learned long ago that the direct route wasn’t always the fastest one.
“How’d the bike go,” she said.
“He’s a natural,” I said. “Riley said so himself.”
A pause on the line, longer than the sentence required. “I imagine he did,” she said.
“Della.”
“I’m making chicken Sunday,” she said. “Unless you’d rather have the pot roast again.”
“Della.”
“Chicken, it is,” she said, and hung up before I could ask her what she’d actually meant, which I understood, even as I set the phone down, was entirely the point.