Chapter 11: Fixing Old Engines
The morning light broke over the ridge in sharp, brilliant slashes of gold that cut through the thick pine canopy and warmed the frosty windowpanes of the cabin. When I woke up, the air inside was still holding the residual heat from the woodstove, though the embers in the iron belly had dwindled down to a soft, glowing bed of gray ash. Jax was already up. I could hear the rhythmic scraping of metal against metal out on the small wooden porch, a steady, soothing sound that had quickly become the baseline of our new life in the mountains.
I threw off the heavy wool blanket, shivered as the crisp mountain air hit my old jacket, and pushed open the creaking screen door. Jax was sitting on an overturned wooden crate next to the pump, completely absorbed in pulling apart the carburetor of an old two-stroke chainsaw he’d found rusting behind the woodshed. His dark hair was tied back in a loose leather thong, and his heavy leather vest hung over the back of another chair, exposing the broad, scarred expanse of his arms in a faded flannel shirt. He looked different up here away from the roar of highway exhausts and club politics—less like a man constantly bracing for a fight, and more like someone who had finally remembered how to breathe.
"Morning, kid," Jax said without looking up, his fingers expertly twisting a brass jet out of its housing with a worn screwdriver. "Sleep okay?"
"Yeah," I said, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and walking over to stand beside him. The smell of old gasoline, pine sap, and gun oil hung heavy in the crisp morning air. "Did you fix it yet?"
Jax grunted, holding up the tiny brass piece to the morning light to inspect the pinhole opening for blockages. "Not yet. This thing’s been sitting out in the weather since before you were born, Leo. Gasket’s rotted right through, and the float bowl is full of green varnish. Reminds me of some of the old iron we used to haul down out of the county yards back in the day. Everything's fixable if you've got the patience for it. Most people just throw things away the second they stop running smooth. That's where they make their mistake."
He reached out and handed me a small, clean rag, motioning toward a tin can filled with parts. "Wipe those linkages down, will you? Make sure there's no grit left in the teeth. If you leave dirt in the gears, it'll chew itself to pieces the second you put a load on it."
I took the rag and sat down on the edge of the porch, carefully picking up a small gear assembly. For the next hour, we didn't talk much. The silence between us wasn't the heavy, awkward quiet of strangers anymore; it was the easy, working silence of two people who understood that words weren't always necessary to fill the space. Every now and then, Jax would hand me a tool or point out a trick for getting a stubborn screw to turn without stripping the thread, his calloused fingers brushing against mine with a casual familiarity that still made my chest tighten with a strange, quiet pride.
Working alongside him like that, surrounded by the towering trees and the endless blue sky of the valley below, I felt a strange sense of permanence settling into my bones. For years, my world had been confined to the peeling wallpaper of our small rental house, the sound of my mother's quiet, painful coughs from down the hall, and the constant, gnawing fear that tomorrow we wouldn't have enough money for groceries or heating oil. Up here, despite the lingering threat of Vance and the Iron Reapers somewhere down on the highway, the world felt simpler. It was just wood to chop, engines to tune, and a father who wasn't walking away.
"You know," Jax said quietly, breaking the rhythm of our work as he wiped his greasy hands on a separate rag, "your mom used to tell me I had no patience for the small stuff. Always wanted to jump straight to the big rebuilds, the custom frames, the loud pipes. Never wanted to spend the time cleaning the parts that actually made the machine move."
I looked up from the gear I was holding, my heart skipping a beat. It was rare for him to mention Sarah without me prompting it first. "Did you build bikes together?"
Jax shook his head, a faint, melancholic smile touching the corners of his mouth beneath his dark beard. "Not bikes. Not back then. We met at a diner down in Oak Creek, similar to Miller's. She was working the counter, and I was just another loudmouthed kid on a stolen Saturday afternoon ride, trying to look tougher than I actually was. She saw right through the leather and the ink inside five minutes. Told me my boots were scuffed and my tie was crooked—even though I wasn't wearing one."
He let out a low chuckle, his gaze drifting off toward the tree line where the mist was slowly burning off in the morning sun. "She had this way of looking at you that made you want to be better than you were, Leo. That's why I left when I found out she was pregnant. I was knee-deep in bad business, owing money to people who didn't write things down on paper. I figured if I stayed, the life I was running in would swallow her and the kid whole. I thought I was doing her a favor by walking away clean. Took me fifteen years to realize the only thing I did was leave her to carry the whole damn weight by herself."
"She never hated you," I whispered, my voice barely carrying over the sound of a bluejay chattering in the pines above us. "She just... she missed you. Especially at the end."
May you like
Jax's jaw tightened. He turned his head slowly and looked straight into my eyes, his big hazel gaze—the exact same shade as mine—holding a depth of raw, unshielded emotion that made my breath catch. "I know she didn't, kid. And that's why I'm not running anymore. No matter who comes up this mountain, and no matter what Vance and those boys think they own down at the clubhouse, we're done running."
He reached over and cuffed my shoulder gently, the heavy hand warm and steady. "Now, help me get this intake manifold seated right, and let's see if we can get this old saw roaring. We've got a pile of firewood that isn't going to split itself."
