But then he thought about his stomach, and about the sandwich a dollar could buy, and about his mother, a mile down the road, coughing behind a thin wall. He thought about the way the rider had walked into the diner without looking back, as if the bike could look after itself, and about the way the chrome would shine if someone took the dust off it, gently, carefully, the way Leo knew how to do. He thought about the rag in his back pocket, reasonably clean, folded twice, the scrap of cloth usually used to wipe the sweat from his mother's forehead. It was not a sponge. It was not soap. It was not the right tool, not really. But it was clean, and it was his, and his hands knew what to do with it.
The rag itself had a history, and Leo knew every thread of it. It had started life as a dish towel in the trailer, white once, then grey, then soft from a hundred washings in a basin of warm water. His mother used it to wipe her forehead when the fever made her sweat, and Leo used it the same way, folding it into a cool square and laying it gently where it would help most.
Leo looked again at the motorcycle, and this time he looked the way a boy looks at a puzzle he is about to solve. He noticed the way the dust sat thickest in the curves and thinnest on the edges where the wind had scoured it away. He noticed the spokes, each one catching a thin line of light, and the engine's cooling fins, dusty in their narrow gaps, and the small chrome caps that would shine like buttons if they were wiped. He imagined, for a moment, the whole bike clean, black and chrome together, standing in the sun like a thing that had just come off a showroom floor, and the image was so clear that his fingers tightened on the rag before he had quite decided to move.
Leo stood up slowly, his legs stiff from crouching. He stepped out from behind the rusted dumpster, into the sun, and he walked toward the motorcycle. His sneakers scuffed on the gravel, loud in his own ears, though no one else seemed to hear. His heart hammered, but his hands were steady, because his hands had a job now. He reached into his back pocket and took out the rag. He unfolded it once, shook the dust from it, and folded it again into a neat square. He stood beside the front fender, in the full heat, and he looked at the dust, and at the chrome beneath it, and at the diner's glass doors, where the giant man was eating his lunch, unaware.
He took a breath. He lifted the rag. And he began.
Leo cleaned the motorcycle the way he cleaned everything that mattered: slowly at first, then with a careful rhythm, as if the work itself could teach him how to do it right. He started with the chrome exhaust, because the exhaust was where the dust was thickest and where the shine would show most clearly when it was done. He laid the rag flat against the pipe, gently, terrified of leaving a scratch, and he moved it in tight rapid circles, the way his mother had shown him to polish a spoon when he was small, small circles, again and again, until the metal began to warm under his hand.
The dust came off in a pale cloud, fine as flour, and it settled on his fingers and on the front of his T-shirt. Leo blew it away from the pipe, softly, and went back to his circles. Underneath the dust, the chrome emerged, bright and clean, catching the sun and throwing it back in a hard white line that made him blink. He moved down the pipe, inch by inch, never rushing, never pressing too hard, because chrome, he understood, was like a person's good name: easy to dull, hard to bring back if you scratched it. His small hands, which had been shaking when he stepped out from behind the dumpster, grew steadier as he worked. Work did that for Leo. Work gave his hands something to do besides shake.
When the exhaust shone, he moved to the front fender. The fender was curved and dusty, and the dust there was gritty, mixed with tiny bits of road. Leo worked it with the flat of the rag first, lifting the grit away, and then with circles, again, patiently, until the black paint beneath began to gleam. He could see his own reflection in it, small and wavering, a boy in a faded T-shirt with dust on his cheek, and he smiled a little, despite himself, because the reflection looked like a boy who knew what he was doing.
He wiped down the leather seat next, carefully, because leather was different from chrome. Leather did not want circles. Leather wanted long, gentle strokes, the way you would stroke a horse's neck if you were trying not to startle it. Leo ran the rag along the seat, from front to back, lifting the dust, feeling the worn smoothness under his palm. The seat was warm from the sun, and it smelled faintly of leather and road and rain from days ago. He wiped the edges, where dust collected in the seams, and he was careful not to snag the rag on the stitching.