The Graveyard at the Edge of Barstow
The desert wind did not carry the scent of rain.
It carried the metallic tang of rust, gasoline, hot rubber, and something else Leo Rossi had never been able to name.
Something that felt like trouble.
Barstow, California, was the kind of town that seemed to exist as a monument to things people had left behind.
Old gas stations leaned toward the highway. Abandoned motels stood with faded signs and boarded windows. Rusting trailers sat behind chain-link fences. Along Route 66, the desert swallowed whatever people stopped caring about.
In July, the heat was merciless.
The asphalt shimmered beneath the afternoon sun. The mountains in the distance appeared to float above the horizon. Every breath seemed to taste like dust.
At the eastern edge of town stood O'Malley's Scrap and Salvage.
To most people, it was an ugly place.
To fourteen-year-old Leo Rossi, it was home.
The yard covered nearly six acres of land and contained almost everything that had ever been made of steel and subsequently abandoned.
Cars without doors.
Trucks without engines.
Motorcycles with missing wheels.
Crushed appliances.
Broken machinery.
Old farm equipment.
There were mountains of metal everywhere.
Frank O'Malley, the owner, called it inventory.
Leo called it history.
The boy could spend an hour looking at an old carburetor and imagining the machine it had once belonged to.
He could identify engines by sound.
He could tell when a bearing was failing.
He knew the difference between a bad starter and a weak battery.
And he could strip down a motorcycle engine faster than some grown men Frank had employed over the years.
Leo had learned because he had needed to.
His father had disappeared when Leo was six.
There had been no dramatic goodbye.
No explanation.
One morning, his father simply did not come home.
Sarah Rossi never talked about it.
She worked double shifts at a diner on the other side of town and spent much of her paycheck on medication for her asthma.
Leo had stopped asking questions years ago.
He had stopped expecting adults to solve problems.
At fourteen, he already understood something most children did not.
If something needed to be fixed, you fixed it yourself.
That was why he had started working at O'Malley's.
Frank paid him five dollars an hour in cash.
It wasn't legal.
Neither of them cared.
Leo needed the money, and Frank needed someone willing to crawl underneath wrecked cars in a hundred-degree heat.
On a Tuesday afternoon in the middle of July, Frank pointed toward the far end of the property.
"Section G."
Leo looked where he was pointing.
The area was almost invisible beneath weeds, tumbleweeds, broken sheet metal, and years of accumulated junk.
"What about it?"
"Clean it."
Leo stared at him.
"All of it?"
"That's what clean means."
"There are probably snakes."
"There are definitely snakes."
Leo sighed.
Frank lit a cigarette.
"Five dollars an hour."
"You always say that."
"Because it always works."
Leo grabbed a pair of gloves and a long metal hook.
He headed toward Section G.
He worked for nearly three hours.
He dragged away a broken washing machine.
Then a section of corrugated roofing.
Then a crushed Ford Bronco.
Underneath the Bronco was a nest.
Leo froze.
A rattlesnake slid out from beneath the frame and disappeared into the weeds.
"Great," he muttered.
He waited several minutes before continuing.
Then his hook caught something.
Metal.
He pulled.
Nothing moved.
He dug with both hands.
Dust filled his mouth.
He cleared another layer of debris.
And then sunlight flashed across something beneath the dirt.
Chrome.
Leo stopped.
He dug faster.
An hour later, he could see a front wheel.
Another thirty minutes revealed a bent handlebar.
Then a fuel tank.
Leo stood up slowly.
His heart was pounding.
It was a motorcycle.
Or what had once been one.
The front forks were bent inward.
The tank was dented and blackened from fire.
The leather seat had been shredded by rodents and coyotes.
The rear tire was half buried.
The engine was covered in a thick shell of hardened oil and desert dust.
But Leo knew what he was looking at.
He had seen pictures.
He had studied old Harley-Davidson catalogs.
It was a 1998 Harley-Davidson Dyna Super Glide.
Leo crouched beside it.
He wiped dust from the engine casing.
His fingers stopped.
There was something about the machine.
Something he couldn't explain.
It didn't look dead.
It looked asleep.
"You found a ghost, kid."
Leo turned.
Frank stood behind him, cigarette hanging from his lips.
Leo pointed at the motorcycle.
"What happened to it?"
Frank's expression changed.
He stared at the Harley for a long moment.
Then he removed the cigarette from his mouth.
"State troopers brought it in twelve years ago."
"Why?"
"Wreck on Route 66."
"Bad one?"
Frank nodded.
"Rider didn't make it."
Leo looked at the motorcycle again.
"Who was he?"
Frank hesitated.