Owen stumbled, caught himself, straightened what was left of his collar. A biker kicked Owen's toolbox across the asphalt, tools clattering everywhere.
"Tick-tock, garbage boy. Clock's running."
Owen walked to the toolbox, picked it up, reorganized the tools without rushing, set it back beside the bike. The laughter had thinned.
People were exchanging uneasy glances. A woman near the fence whispered to her husband,
"How did he know that bulletin number?"
A teenager lowered his phone for the first time. Not to stop recording, but to actually watch with his own eyes.
An old man near the back shook his head and muttered,
"Lord have mercy."
Eleanor Graves stood perfectly still. She had written bulletin HD-78-041 in her office on Juno Avenue in Milwaukee 30 years ago.
Page 14 of the 1978 Shovelhead Supplemental Diagnostic Guide. She remembered the typewriter she'd used.
This 18-year-old had just quoted it from memory. Her hand was trembling against her hip.
2 minutes and 10 seconds remained. Owen moved to the third problem, the invisible one, the one that would have stumped even Eleanor if she hadn't been watching from the start.
He lay flat and slid under the frame, warm asphalt against his back, gravel pressing into his shoulder blades. The crowd pushed closer above, phones tilted down like searchlights.
Livestream viewers passed 4,000. Comments had nearly stopped.
Even the internet was holding its breath. Vince stepped back from the bike.
Not respect. He didn't want to be on camera when this kid proved him wrong.
Owen's flashlight found the ground wire junction, a single bolt connecting the engine's ground strap to the frame rail. On paper, the simplest connection on the motorcycle.
A bolt, a wire, two metal surfaces. In practice, the most overlooked failure point on any vintage machine ever built.
The bolt was tight. The wire intact.
Everything looked perfect. Owen scraped his thumbnail across the contact surface.
Green oxidation. Copper carbonate formed by months of moisture and road salt creeping under the strap.
Just enough electrical resistance to weaken the spark from the ignition points. Not enough to show on a voltage meter reading from the battery, but more than enough to make the engine crank endlessly without firing.
This was Curtis Wade's blind spot. His laptop probes touched the wire, not the junction surface beneath the bolt head.
The resistance lived at the contact point itself. A quarter inch circle of corroded metal that no diagnostic software on earth was designed to catch on a 54-year-old motorcycle with no computer and no sensors.
Owen pulled a strip of emery cloth from his back pocket. Folded twice, edges worn soft.
He always carried one because his father always carried one. Thomas Fletcher kept a strip in his left back pocket every day for 23 years.
Short, firm strokes. Green to brown to bright copper gleaming against clean steel.
He repositioned the ground strap flat against the frame. Tightened the bolt by feel.
Firm, then a quarter turn more. Slid out from under the bike.
Stood up. Brushed the gravel from his back and shoulders.
"Bad ground. Corroded junction at the frame bolt."
"She's been losing spark for months, probably since last winter, getting weaker every ride until she finally quit."
He picked up each tool and placed it back in the toolbox. Wrench next to socket set.
Screwdriver beside flashlight. Everything in its exact position.
The way Thomas Fletcher kept them. The way Thomas Fletcher taught him.
Closed the lid.
"That's three."