Charles Whitaker pulled out a chair at his own table, the best one, beside the window, and he held it for me. I sat. I could feel every eye in the dining room on the back of my neck, and I could feel the folded bill of sale against my heart like a second pulse. The brother of Patricia, whose name is Gordon Harlow, was still standing with his napkin on the carpet. “Charles,” he said, with a stiff smile, “I think there must be some confusion. This is my brother in law, Otis. He fixes trucks.” Charles said, “Gordon, he fixes more trucks than any man in West Virginia. I am the one who bought his company.”
The room was quiet enough that I heard the ice settle in a glass nearby. “Nine million nine hundred thousand dollars,” said Charles, mildly, as one might mention the weather. “Five shops. The Ferrell name. Forty eight years of customers. I have never in my career paid so much for so honest a ledger.” He picked up his water. “I came tonight hoping to meet the man. I find him in the parking lot, in his truck, waiting.” He did not raise his voice. He did not need to. Patricia put down her fork. My son looked at the tablecloth as if it held an answer.
I took the paper out of my pocket and unfolded it on the white linen, next to the bread. “Patricia,” I said, “I did not tell you about the sale because I wanted to know who you married. Now I know.” She started to speak. I raised a hand, gently. “I am not angry with you. You have been a good wife for forty years. But I am angry about this.” I smoothed the bill of sale flat. “One thousand nine hundred fifty eight Harley Davidson Panhead. Seller, Otis Ferrell Junior. Buyer, Mountain State Classic Motorcycles. Twenty two thousand dollars. It was in the glove box of my truck.”
A bill of sale found in the glove box of a truck brought a club president out to a parking lot and gave one diesel mechanic the night to bring his son back to the garage.
The face of Junior had gone the color of old putty. He is thirty nine years old, a big, soft man with the eyes of his mother, and he looked at me across the table with his mouth working. “Dad,” he said, “I was going to buy it back.” I said, “With what, son?” He had no answer. “That motorcycle was the only thing my father left me. He rode it to the mine every morning for eleven years. He taught me to ride on it in the church parking lot, the Sunday after my twelfth birthday.” My voice cracked, and I let it. “You told me you were keeping it safe in your garage.”
Gordon Harlow said, loudly, “Otis, it was a motorcycle. We can buy you another.” The old reflex, I thought. Money fixes everything, in the world of Gordon. I looked at him, a heavy, red faced man in a blazer, and I said, “Gordon, you told my wife for forty years that I smelled like diesel. You were right. I did. It paid for the kitchen of your sister and the school of your nephew. It paid for this dinner, in a way.” I stood up. “I will not be spoken to like a mechanic in my own family. I am a mechanic. I am also a man who owns this table.”
That was not exactly true, but it felt true, and Charles Whitaker, bless him, laughed out loud. Then Patricia stood. She is small, my wife, five foot two in her good heels, and I had not seen her cry in public since her mother died. “Otis,” she said, “come outside with me.” I followed her through the lobby, past the trophy case, out the front door into the cool night air, and she turned and looked at me with eyes full of grief. “I am so ashamed,” she said. “I let them talk about you that way, for years, and I said nothing. I thought it was easier.”
I said, “It was easier. For you.” She flinched. I did not take it back. “Patty, I have wanted for forty years to hear you say, once, in front of your family, that I was a good man. Not for the money. For me.” She took my hands. “You are the best man I have ever known,” she said. “I am going back in there, and I will say so, in front of my brother, in front of the whole club.” And she did. She walked in, tapped a glass, and said it, in a clear, shaking voice. Gordon stared at his plate until dessert.
The next morning, Junior and I drove to Charleston. We found the dealers records, and the Ohio collector, a retired high school principal with a collection of nineteen bikes, who was a good deal more reasonable than I expected. I explained the matter. He listened with his head cocked.
“Mr. Ferrell,” he said, “I paid thirty one thousand for the Panhead. But I have no use for a stolen motorcycle.” I paid him thirty five. Junior held the check in his shaking hand and I wrote it from the new account. “You will pay me back,” I said. “Every dollar.” He nodded. He wept in the passenger seat all the way home.
We trailered the Panhead back to Huntington on a gray Sunday in November. Junior and I rolled it into the garage, side by side, and I stood looking at the fender, at the faded gold pinstripe my father had painted in 1958. “Dad,” said Junior, “can you teach me to ride it?” I looked at my son, forty years old, with a bad back and a mortgage, and I thought of a church parking lot, a Sunday afternoon, an old man walking beside a boy and holding the seat. “Put on your helmet,” I said. “Slow, first. Always slow.”
