I finally did, one Friday afternoon when his mother was late picking him up. His face lit up like Christmas morning as he straddled the seat, gripping the handlebars with reverent hands.
Tommy grew up, graduated, joined the Marines. Came back from his third tour in Afghanistan with haunted eyes and trembling hands. I ran into him at the grocery store one day, barely recognized the hollow-cheeked man as the boy who’d admired my bike.
“You still ride, Mr. Ray?” he’d asked, no stutter now, but something worse—a flatness, like he was speaking from underwater.
“Every Sunday,” I told him. “Weather permitting.”
That Sunday, he was waiting in my driveway at dawn, an old Sportster beneath him. We rode for hours, up into the mountains, not speaking, just riding. When we stopped for coffee, I noticed his hands weren’t shaking anymore.
