Chapter 30 [YS: Twin brother]

It was a Honda Rebel 250, a 1986 model finished in deep red, an absolute beauty of a bike. I could already picture myself riding it down some open stretch of road, wind cutting past me. With Helen sitting behind me. Oh, man.

I ran a hand along the frame, letting Appraisal work through the actual problem underneath. What it found was a micro-fracture buried inside the ignition coil, the kind of flaw that only separated under heat soak, meaning the bike would run fine for about fifteen minutes before cutting out entirely.

By the time any mechanic got around to actually looking at it, the engine would have cooled back down enough to start right up again, completely masking the issue. It was the kind of ghost problem that could drive a professional half crazy trying to track down, though thankfully for me, it was nothing more than a fifty dollar ignition coil away from being perfectly fixed.

I called the salesman over. He was the same guy we'd bought the Mustang from, though this time he greeted the two of us with something closer to genuine politeness. I told him I was interested in the bike and asked what he could tell me about it.

"Well, this one's been sitting here a good while now. Starts up fine, but it won't run for long, and our mechanic couldn't find the issue. You interested?" he asked. By now, he'd caught on that we made a habit out of buying used vehicles just to fix them ourselves, and whatever surprise he'd felt about that early on had settled into something closer to acceptance. He'd stopped hovering over us every time we showed up.

"Yes," I said. Since he'd been straight with us both times now instead of trying to run some kind of angle, I was starting to genuinely like the guy.

"How much, mister? We're taking it off your hands here, so give us a fair number." Georgie said, turning on his negotiation mode.

"How about six hundred?" the salesman said, and Georgie let out a short laugh.

"You're funny, mister. You can't even fix it. To you, this is just a piece of metal that doesn't run. Two hundred and fifty sounds about right for this."

"Parts alone are worth that much, kid. Five hundred's fair," the salesman shot back.

They went back and forth like that for a good while, the salesman inching down bit by bit as Georgie chipped away at him. I'd already given Georgie the number I wanted going in, so he knew exactly where our actual limit sat the whole time. In the end, we settled on four hundred dollars, which felt more than fair given the bike was already in solid shape and wouldn't need much beyond the one part I already had in mind.

We also picked up a used truck, a seventies Chevy C10, for five hundred dollars. It needed maybe a hundred and fifty dollars in parts and a decent coat of wax, along with a week or two of honest labor, and it would easily turn around and sell for somewhere between fifteen hundred and eighteen hundred. A solid profit for a week's worth of work.

"This one's for you, Georgie," I told my brother.

"What? You get the cool bike, and I get stuck with this old truck?" Georgie complained, though nobody was actually stopping him from getting a bike of his own. He'd said, in his exact words, that he wanted to test the waters with Mom first with my bike before committing to that.

"No. You're going to fix this one all by yourself, from diagnosing it to finishing it. I'm not going to hold your hand through it. I've already got my bike," I told him, since I genuinely wanted him learning the business properly rather than just riding along on my coattails. He'd already enrolled in the automotive class at school that semester, which told me he was serious enough about this to actually want the support.

"Really? What if I mess it up?" Georgie asked, hesitant in a way that wasn't really like him. I could tell he was measuring himself against me, which wasn't a fair comparison to make in the first place.

"So what if you do? It's our own money. Nobody's standing over us lecturing about it. I'll still help when you're stuck, but I want you working through most of it yourself. Even if it takes you a while to get there, don't sweat it," I said, patting him on the shoulder.

By then the salesman had come back with the paperwork sorted. We handed over a thousand dollars total for both vehicles, tow service to our house included, which struck me as a fair deal all around. We spent all 1000$ we had combined in our pockets.

I decided to hold off on telling Mom and Dad about me actually riding the bike myself, at least until I'd gone through the process of getting properly licensed for it. I already had most of the requirements mapped out in my head, things like the engine size needing to stay under two hundred fifty cc's, which this one just barely qualified for, and I'd already gone through the written driver's course material on my own. The only real gap left in my plan was the small detail that I didn't actually know how to ride a motorcycle yet.

_______

Dinner that night drifted through the usual scattered small talk, Mom mentioning something about Mr. William's wife finally leaving him, Meemaw chiming in with her own opinion on the whole situation, and Missy asking a string of questions nobody particularly wanted to answer in detail at the table.

"So I see some new vehicles sitting in the garage. What kind are they?" Dad asked, curious. He'd taken to making this kind of small talk with me more and more lately, a quiet way of staying connected since Georgie had football to bond over with him. Mom mostly just listened along without saying much, though at least these days she'd stopped complaining about it.

I walked him through everything about the truck, explaining that Georgie would be the one handling the repairs on this one from start to finish.

"We got a bike too. Honda Rebel, two hundred fifty cc's to fix. It's a nice one," I told him.

"A bike, huh? I used to ride one myself. We've still got it stashed away somewhere," Dad said.

"You have a bike? Really? What kind is it?" I asked, eyes lighting up at the idea.

"Harley Davidson Shovelhead. That bike was an absolute magnet for girls," Dad said, getting a little more excited than he probably meant to, sharing more than he'd intended.

"Cool," Georgie and I said at the exact same time, synchronized like twins.

"Georgie!" Mom said sharply.

"What? You liked it plenty back then. Remember?" Dad said, suddenly pleased with himself.

"George. Not in front of the kids," Mom said, clearly a little embarrassed as Dad shot her a wink across the table.

"Dad, we've got to take that bike out for a spin sometime," I said.

"Yeah, let's do it, Dad," Georgie added, just as eager.

"Alright, alright, boys. Not sure it'll even still run after all this time," Dad said, giving in to the two of us without much of a fight.

"Don't worry about that. Charlie'll fix it. He's basically a wizard with this stuff now," Georgie said, and I felt a small thrill at the idea of getting Dad to actually teach me how to ride it properly. Mom seemed pleased watching Dad spend this kind of time with his boys, though her expression shifted a little when she glanced over and noticed one leftout boy sitting quietly off to the side, clearly excluded from all of it.

"Shelly, what's wrong? You haven't touched your plate," Mom asked, concern creeping into her voice.

"He's been like this all evening," Missy said, not particularly bothered or worried about it herself.

"I'll feel better once NASA actually responds," Sheldon said, his face pinched with something close to real pain. I felt a pang of pity for him in that moment. It's been weeks. He still haven't let it go.

He cared far too much about a bunch of strangers who couldn't be bothered to write back promptly, and honestly, the whole situation was starting to wear on my own nerves too.

Mom gave Sheldon some medicine for his stomach and sent him off to bed early. Dad spent a while longer telling old stories from his younger days, and Mom, Georgie, and I stayed out in the living room together, comfortable and unhurried, in no real rush to call it a night just yet.

In an era without phones buzzing constantly in everyone's pockets, people actually talked to each other in moments like this, fully present in a way I sometimes worried the future had quietly traded away for something faster and emptier. I hated, thinking back on it, how something built to connect people so easily had ended up making everyone feel more isolated instead.

It was a strange thing to sit with, knowing what was coming decades down the line. Still, I let the thought pass and just enjoyed the evening. I live in present.

We sat together like that for a good while longer before eventually peeling off, one by one, to our own rooms for the night. Mom had loosened up a little on bedtime rules now that winter break had officially started, letting the evening stretch out longer than it ever would have on a school night.

That night around 12 midnight, Missy's voice cut through the house. "Mom!"

Since my room sat closest to theirs, I was up and moving before anyone else even stirred, well aware that Georgie could sleep through an actual war breaking out in the backyard without so much as rolling over.

Mom, Dad, and I got to the room together and found Sheldon curled up, both arms wrapped tight around his stomach.

"Something's wrong with Sheldon," Missy said, watching him groan from the doorway.

"I think I have an ulcer," Sheldon managed to say between breaths.

"It's probably just an upset stomach," Dad said, not entirely convinced, since exaggerating something small was thing. He has also made claims lime this in the past.

Dad gave him some painkillers to put him to sleep for the night. Promising to take him to the doctor the very first thing in the morning.

_______

The next day, Mom and Dad took sheldon to see the doctor anyway, and surprise, it turned out to be exactly what Sheldon had guessed all along. An ulcer, the doctor explained, brought on by an extreme amount of stress for someone his age, stress that had apparently been building for weeks without anybody noticing just how much of a toll it was actually taking on him.

Dad took the diagnosis harder than any of us expected, carrying around a quiet guilt for the rest of that day, like he should have listened to his son earlier.

Wanting to pull him out of that mood, I figured the best move was to get him talking about something he actually enjoyed, so I asked if he'd finally show me that old bike of his.

Dad's Harley Davidson turned out to be seriously cool once we actually got a look at it, tucked away under a dusty tarp in the back corner of Meemaw's storage shed. Mom put it there.

Getting it running again didn't take much effort at all, mostly just draining out the old, gummed-up gas that had been sitting in the tank for years and swapping in a fresh battery to replace the one that had long since died.

Georgie, me and dad spent the better part of an afternoon cleaning it up properly, scrubbing years of dust and grime off the tank and chrome until it actually started to shine again.

Sitting on it for the first time felt incredible, solid and heavy in a way that made total sense of why Mom had apparently fallen for whoever was riding it all those years ago.

"Let's take it for a spin, Dad," Georgie said, practically buzzing at the idea of getting to ride along.

"I don't know. It's been a long time," Dad said, hesitant at first, rubbing the back of his neck like he wasn't sure his body still remembered how. It didn't take much convincing after that, though, and within a few minutes he was already swinging a leg over the seat like no time had passed at all.

Dad took it slow and easy around the block with Georgie riding behind him, both of them in helmets on. Watching them go, I could see Dad's face settle into something lighter than the guilt he'd been carrying around all day.

Then it was my turn. Dad was grinning ear to ear by that point, clearly having more fun than he wanted to admit, and if I was being honest with myself, so was I.

"Dad, teach me how to ride it," I said, climbing on and gripping the handlebars. Dad was chill and said yes.

"Alright, easy does it. Let the clutch out slow, right about... there," Dad said, walking me through it step by step from his seat right behind me. I picked up the basics within a few minutes, but getting a feel for it like when to switch gears and release the clutch and how to balance it took me an hour.

Georgie asked for a second turn once I'd finished, but by then Mom had come outside and put her foot down seeing what was happening, refusing to let Georgie drive it himself. Even scolding dad a little while at it.

“Not fair” Georgie cried but no one listened.

Missy came skipping out onto the porch just then, hands on her hips, clearly unwilling to be left out of whatever excitement was happening in the driveway.

"What about me? Don't I get a turn?" she asked, batting her eyes up at Dad.

Dad just sighed and that's how we spent the afternoon of our winter break. It was fun in its own way.