Chapter 25: The Memorial Run

On the first Saturday of September, forty bikers parked along the headland pullout and took their helmets off.

It was the fifth year they had done it.

The light was going orange over the water, and the wind carried a smell of kelp and cold iron up the gravel.

I stood beside Cade at the rail in his spare vest, because the evening turned cold fast.

Ginny held a thermos in both hands and did not drink from it.

"This is where he went off," Cade told me quietly, though I knew.

I had stood on this same gravel one night in a dress with my boots off the ground, and he had never once told me what the place was.

"I know," I said.

He nodded, and took my hand where nobody could see.

The gray-bearded man stepped to the rail with a bottle of whiskey.

"Rory Donohue," he said. "Thirty-one years old if he'd had the luck. The funniest man this club ever patched."

A few men laughed, softly, the way you laugh in church.

He poured a capful over the rail.

Then every rider came up in turn and did the same, one after another, with their heads down.

Cade went last.

He held the bottle a long time over the black rocks.

"You'd have hated this speech," he said to the water. "Too many words."

He poured it out.

Behind us an engine turned in off the road.

Nobody looked at first, because everyone knew a late rider would take the end of the line.

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