three
The bike has arrived, Delaney typed as the caption.She got to Triple M Classics on Three Rebels Street in one piece. Then she clicked Post and the photo of Dad’s 1933 Indian Four filled out his Facebook wall.
In the picture, the motorcycle dominated the freshly painted concrete floor of Delaney’s new shop, the sun glinting off the polished black fuel tank and the wordIndianscrolled in gold. It’d cost a pretty penny to ship, but there was nothing to be done about that. Despite the many offers Dad had gotten over the years, and the handful Delaney received from all his biker buddies when Dad passed, the motorcycle would literally only be sold over Delaney’s dead body. In the family for as long as he could remember, the bike was the only material object Dad had ever given a crap about. He cared for it like a child, which meant he gave the motorcycle the same diligence he had raising Delaney: a light-pressured patience, keeping her and the bike both in running shape in deliberate, necessary increments. Total neglect was a crime but too much attention or interference spoiled the authenticity of the piece.
You gotta let it be what it’s supposed to be, Dad liked to say, whether he was talking about bikes or his daughter. It was the same phrase he used when people tried to get him to modernize the Indian or when nosy neighborhood mothers told him that Delaney needed more instruction in the ways of being female, and that raising her like a boy, around all those motorcycles and grease and big guys in leather, wasn’t good for her.
Delaney wondered what those do-gooder soccer moms would think of her now. A thirty-seven-year-old, single Marine Corps veteran who’d just spent her life savings on a motorcycle shop and who posted regularly to her dead father’s Facebook wall.
That’s so sad. The exact words of Tammy Rollison’s mother the day she poked her head into Delaney’s bedroom and saw that the only amusements were books, motorcycle magazines, a baseball and catcher’s mitt, and two battered board games—Sorry! and Monopoly, both missing lots of pieces. Tammy Rollison had all the Barbie videos, a huge dollhouse her father had made by hand and stocked with miniature people and furniture, and about a dozen different brushes, bands and implements with which to style her hair.
The joke was on them. Delaney liked helping her father repair and build motorcycles more than anything, second only to playing catch. She couldn’t stand the Barbie videos and though she secretly loved the dollhouse—all that tiny stuff fascinated her—Delaney would never give up her pixie cut.
Delaney scrolled through the handful of posts she’d put on Dad’s wall since he’d died, which included photos of her retirement ceremony and a happy birthday message he’d never seen, and considered deleting them, even though nobody would ever see them. Dad had never wanted a Facebook page and only joined so that he could follow Delaney’s posts and some of the online motorcycle groups. When he’d died and Delaney went to delete the page, she’d discovered that Dad had only one other friend besides herself—a person named Lauren Bacall, using the old film star’s photo, and zero posts—but over five hundred friend requests queued up that went back a decade. Well, wasn’t that just like Dad. Everybody considered themselves Dad’s best friend but Dad claimed no one but his daughter. And, apparently, Lauren Bacall.
Delaney couldn’t bring herself to delete anything. She closed up her laptop and checked her phone. A text from Boom, owner of the bike shop Dad had worked at all his life, Delaney’s second home, and one of Delaney’s many “uncles.”
How you doing, Pip?
Delaney couldn’t remember a single instance of Boom using her real name. He’d called her Pipsqueak all her life, because that’s exactly what she’d been around all those big guys in the bike shop. Half a dozen bikers who either worked Boom’s shop or frequented it, all of whom rode together, all of whom acted like Delaney was one of their own. Even as she grew and eventually made it to five feet eight inches, the guys called her Pip. Or Squeak. Or Pippie. Or Pipsqueak.
All good, Boom-Boom.
Delaney was pretty sure his real name was Lamar but nobody ever called him that. Boom came in like a smack of thunder, both in size and sound. A friendly smack of thunder, unless you got on his bad side, but a storm in and of himself.
You get the truck home ok?
I’m here. Truck’s out front. Bike got here today. All good.
She’d flown back to Omaha after she closed on the sale of the shop so that she could drive the Ford back here. Boom had offered to buy that, too, even though he knew Delaney wouldn’t part with it.
Take good care of it. And my girl.
Will do.
Delaney didn’t have a father anymore, but Boom had certainly tried to step in. “Come back to Omaha, Squeaky,” Boom had said at Dad’s memorial service, which was held at Boom’s bike shop, the only church any of them had ever known, “Free Bird” playing out the speakers in the corners and everyone drunk on Maker’s Mark. “We’ll take care of you.”
“I can’t,” she’d said. She’d looked around the shop at Boom, Zip, Donnie and Sal, and she’d only felt lonelier because she couldn’t really see the group of men that had helped raise her. She could only see that Dad was missing from that group. “I can’t stay here.”
Boom had looked at her a long time, his bloodshot eyes warm and the corners of his downturned mouth buried beneath his salt-’n’-pepper beard. “Okay, Pippie. But you know you got a place to be if you ever need us.”
Delaney clicked off her phone and went for a shower. She was greasy from unloading the bike today, even though the delivery guys had looked over her head and all around the shop to see who was really there to receive such a prize.
“That’s a sweet ride,” the smaller of the two guys had said. He was wiry and had greasy hair and eyed Delaney as much as he did the motorcycle when he spoke.
“It is.” Why argue? “Leave her right there. She needs a little work.”
“She?”
Delaney shrugged. “My dad and I used to argue about it. We eventually decided the bike is both genders and agreed to call them ’33. But I still call hershea lot.”
“Would you sell her?”
“Nope. Never.”
The look the guy gave her was typical—almost offended, like a woman didn’t deserve such a bike. Delaney ignored it, officially done with that nonsense, as much as she was officially done with this day. She hopped under the warm, wet spray and closed her eyes. Despite not having many things to her name, closing on the shop and moving in had been a months-long process that left her exhausted. She hadn’t even had time to make it back to Semper Fit. As she rubbed soap over the side that had sported a large bruise after her last visit she was reminded of the guy who’d knocked her over with his clumsy handstand walk.
She laughed, despite herself. Typical male ego. Intolerable, really, and not even worth her time. Except for the way he’d looked at her when he apologized. And when he’d offered to help carry her box.Dude, she’d wanted to say.I’m a motor transport mechanic. I lift all the heavy things. But something had stopped her. She still couldn’t pinpoint what, but call it instinct. Delaney trusted her intuition. It was the only thing she could rely on to help navigate her atypical life. She grew up in the boys club, which had the benefit of making her think she was just one of the guys. By that same token, thinking she was just one of the guys, when she really wasn’t, could be dangerous. The boys club didn’t always have a welcome sign, even if she could outrun most of them. Especially because she could outrun most of them.