The late-afternoon sun washed Franklin Memorial Park in a copper glow, the kind of light that makes bronze whisper and flags look heavier than fabric. Wind moved through the old oaks in long breaths. Somewhere a bell from the visitor center chimed the hour, polite and small against the open sky.

Walter Chen eased his Buick into the lot, careful as a man setting down a memory. He reached for the blue handicap tag, looped it over the mirror, then paused with both hands on the wheel. A Purple Heart pin winked from his jacket—no flourish, just proof. He checked it the way a man checks a wedding band: to be sure the past is still attached to the present.

Every Thursday he came. Rain, snow, parades, elections—none of it mattered. Thursday meant the wall. Thursday meant a folded rag to wipe dust from one name in particular: Corporal Tyler James Patterson.

He shut off the engine, set his cane against the door, and looked up—and frowned.

A black sports car idled in the handicapped space nearest the memorial steps. Three young men lounged against the hood as if it were a couch, ring light blooming like an artificial sun. Their laughter bounced off the plaques.

Walter walked over slowly, heels scraping gravel. “Excuse me, boys,” he said, the words gentle, the tone practiced. “That spot is reserved for the disabled. I have the permit. Would you kindly move?”

The tallest one—Tyler Brooks, face glossy with youth and confidence—turned his phone toward the sound of Walter’s voice and smiled in a way that didn’t reach the eyes. “Oh look,” he said to the camera. “Grandpa Patrol.”

A friend circled to catch another angle. “We’re filming a social experiment,” he told Walter in mock-sweetness. “You’re famous now.”

“I just need to park,” Walter said. “That’s all.”

Tyler stepped closer, still filming, that smile stretching thin. “You should mind your business, old man. This is content.”

Walter blinked. “Content?”

It happened fast, the way most thoughtless harm does. Tyler’s hand flashed up and slapped Walter across the cheek—a sharp, open-palm crack that sent the older man stumbling sideways. The hearing aid popped free, skittered across pavement, and came to rest in the hard circle of the ring light’s reflection.

“Oops,” Tyler said, theatrical. “Can you hear me now, Grandpa?”

The camera ate the moment: Walter’s hands trembling; the small silver device lying like a lost tooth; the flags beyond, shifting in a wind that suddenly felt colder.

“Please,” Walter said, bending in stages. “Leave me be.”

Tyler nudged the hearing aid with his sneaker. “What’s wrong?” he said louder for the mic. “Scared of a young guy?” He snorted. “Bet he tells everyone he saw action, but he just stapled papers.”

The words hurt more than the slap. Walter straightened on the cane, eyes calm, voice steady. “I fought beside men who never came home so you could say such things,” he said. “Use your voice better.”

Tyler turned the phone on himself. “This gonna get mad views.”

Inside Iron Horse Café, twenty yards away behind tinted glass, forty men sat in a long back room. Leather vests hung on chair backs; helmets glinted like moons on the floor. Heavy mugs of coffee sweated rings onto scarred wood. A banner on the wall read IRON EAGLES MOTORCYCLE CLUB—letters hand-stitched by a widow who came to their charity cookouts every spring.

They were between agenda items, swapping parts and weather reports. They were fathers, uncles, mechanics, medics, a pastor with grease under his nails. A few had seen combat. All had seen loss.

From the window, they witnessed the slap. The room fell silent in a way that doesn’t invite sound back.

Their president, Tank—six-four, shoulders like a bridge, beard precise as a sermon—set his mug down carefully so the spoon wouldn’t clink. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.

“Brothers,” he said, looking toward the parking lot. “We move.”

Chairs slid back. No one rushed. Boots found rhythm the way boots do when the body remembers a different life.

As Walter reached for his hearing aid, a shadow fell across the asphalt. He looked up to see the door swing open and a column of leather and denim step out into daylight—men arranged not by height or rank, but by intention. They walked as if time had decided to be measured by the sound of their heels.

Tyler kept his grin for two more seconds. Then it slipped off his face like a sticker that had lost its glue.

“Yo,” he said, backing a half step. “Chill. It’s just a prank.”

No one answered him yet. The boots did the talking, closing the space in beats as inevitable as a metronome.

Tank reached the front, stopped a human arm’s length from Tyler, and let the silence shape itself around a single question.

“You think hitting a veteran is entertainment?”

Tyler lifted the phone a little higher, like a shield. “You old dudes don’t get how the Internet works.”

A man behind Tank, whip-lean and watchful, tapped his screen with one thumb. Snake didn’t look up while he read. “Tyler Brooks,” he said. “Three-point-two mil followers. Content includes pushing a homeless man toward traffic, smashing a kid’s cake at a park.” He lifted his eyes. “You confuse attention with approval.”

The wind lifted the corner of a flag. Somewhere a bird chose not to sing.

Walter raised a hand—shaky but firm. “Please,” he said. “No violence. He’s someone’s boy.”

Tank nodded without looking away from Tyler. “Delete it,” he said.

Tyler squared his shoulders. “Nah. You break my phone, I’ll sue. You touch me, I’ll—”

Hammer, big as a refrigerator and twice as steady, stepped forward, plucked the phone from Tyler’s grip with two fingers, turned it once as if inspecting a part, then dropped it to the pavement and rested his boot on the glass. Crunch.

“Problem solved,” Hammer said mildly.

Tyler’s breath came fast. “That was a ten-grand rig!”

“Should’ve invested in character,” Tank said.

Walter took a step, cane ticking lightly. “Young man,” he asked, not accusing, not pleading, “do you know who I came here for today?”

Tyler swallowed. “No.”

“Corporal Tyler James Patterson,” Walter said. “He died saving my life in Vietnam. Twenty-two years old. Your age. When a grenade rolled into our position, he covered it with his body.” Walter’s voice thinned and, somehow, strengthened. “His last words were, ‘Live a good life for both of us.’”

The forty men didn’t move. The air didn’t either.

“You share his first name,” Walter said. “But not his courage. He gave his life for meaning. You spend yours on views.”

Tyler looked at the asphalt. “I’m… I’m sorry.”

Walter shook his head. “You’re frightened. Not sorry.” He breathed once, slow. “But frightened can learn.”

Tank’s voice lowered. “And you will.”

The ring light flickered. The camera—what was left of it—reflected a sky that had decided to watch.

Cliffhanger: the walk of forty becomes a lesson.

They didn’t swarm. They didn’t shout. They organized themselves by instinct—the way men do when they’ve seen the edge of harm and built a railing so others won’t fall.

Tank raised a palm and the column stopped in a casual half-circle that somehow felt like a wall. Behind him: Razer with a scar like an underline across the knuckles; Doc with a patch that used to mean medic and still did; Pastor Mike whose sermons were short and his throttle was not. Near the back, Dee—one of the few women patched in—watched the cameramen with a gaze that made people confess.

Snake held up his screen. “There’s a backup,” he said. “Cloud’s got a mirror.”

“Then we’ll walk him through deleting it,” Tank said. “All of it.”

Tyler tried for bravado and landed on breathless. “You can’t make me.”

“We can teach you,” Tank said. “You choose the type of lesson.”

A cruiser turned into the far end of the lot, not fast, not loud. The Iron Eagles had friends, and one of them—Chief Alvarez—had a habit of driving by on Thursdays.

“Not yet,” Tank murmured, as if directing a choir. “First we do right; then we do law.”

Walter’s hearing aid glinted near the white paint line. Rook, youngest of the club and mindful of that fact, stepped forward without being told, knelt, and picked it up with both hands as if it were a medal. He handed it to Walter. “Sir,” he said. “Permission to fix your audio.”

Walter’s smile flickered on. “Permission granted.”

Rook wiped dust with the edge of his bandana and adjusted the battery door. He slid the piece gently behind Walter’s ear. “There we are.”

“Thank you, son.”

Rook swallowed. He’d been called worse in the last year. Son felt like a promotion.

The two cameramen backed toward the sports car, eyes wide, brains calculating exits. Dee took three quiet strides and stopped where she could reach either handle if they tried to bolt. She didn’t need to touch them. The patch on her back—an iron eagle holding a ribbon—did the job.

Tank tapped Tyler’s shoulder once with a finger the size of a tool bit. “Phone,” he said.

“You smashed it,” Tyler shot back.

“Other one.” Tank didn’t look away.

Tyler hesitated, then produced a second device from his hoodie pocket. “That’s private.”

“Privacy is what you forfeited when you made harm public,” Tank said. “Unlock it.”

Tyler chewed air, then pressed his thumb to the glass. Snake stepped close, eyes narrow, and navigated with speed that suggested a past where knowing the backstage of an app meant you got to keep your job.

“Cloud storage… Drafts… There we go.” He turned the phone toward Tyler. “You do it. Every video where you harm or humiliate. You delete. One by one.”

Tyler stared at the screen. “That’s half my library.”

“Then you’re half done already,” Razer said, not unkindly.

Behind them, a mother with a stroller had paused on the sidewalk, watching with that calculus parents make: Is this danger or safety? Walter saw her and smiled to show her the answer. She nodded back, tension leaving her shoulders.

Tyler’s thumb moved. Delete. Confirm. Delete. Confirm. Minutes stretched and thinned. The parking lot held its breath. The wind took a rest.

When his face pinched, Snake said softly, “Let it sting. Pain is where the learning sticks.”

Walter closed his eyes for a moment and saw rain—not the Ohio kind, but the thick jungle kind that falls like wet rope. He smelled soil and metal, a memory so present it tugged at the day’s sleeve.

Doc noticed. “You okay, sir?”

Walter nodded. “Just visiting another Thursday.”

Tank glanced at him, then back to Tyler. “Almost done?”

Tyler swallowed. “Three left.”

“Make them two,” Hammer said. “Leave the apology.”

Tyler’s thumb hovered, then obeyed. An old cake exploded in a park somewhere. A homeless man stopped flailing on a sidewalk. A cashier’s humiliation evaporated. A kid’s tears lost their audience. It wasn’t justice. But it was subtraction.

Snake locked the phone, pocketed it, handed it back, took it away again; the choreography a dance of habit from another life. “We’ll have the Chief confirm,” he told Tank. “But the feed’s clean.”

Walter shifted on his cane. “Young man,” he said to Tyler, “you still owe someone else.” He tilted his chin toward the wall. “The one whose name you share.”

Tyler swallowed. “What do I say?”

“The truth,” Pastor Mike offered. “You say the truth, start small, and keep it up.”

Tank nodded once. “We roll the camera. On our terms.”

They didn’t stand in front of the sports car. They stood in front of the stone. Tyler faced the lens held by Rook, the ring light turned off, the sun doing the honest work.

“My name is Tyler Brooks,” he said. “I hurt a veteran today and made it entertainment. I called it a prank. It was cruelty. I’m sorry, Mr. Chen. I’m sorry to every veteran who sees this. I will remove every video where I hurt people. I will accept the consequences.”

He breathed. Walter put a hand on his shoulder, a weight both light and heavy.

“Forgiveness,” Walter said into the quiet, “doesn’t erase consequences.”

“Amens” rippled under breath. Chief Alvarez parked without siren, without hurry, stepped out, and tipped two fingers toward Walter. “You okay, sir?”

“I will be,” Walter said. “We all will be, if we do this right.”

Chief Alvarez listened to the thirty-second version, then to the longer one, then to the shortest—the one where Walter pointed at his hearing aid and then at the wall and then at Tyler’s hands.

“Citations for assault and elder abuse,” the Chief said evenly. He turned to Tyler. “You’ve got a chance to make your apology look like something real. Start now.”

They guided Tyler to the cruiser. No push, no spectacle. The door closed with a sound like a period at the end of a sentence you should’ve stopped sooner.

Tank looked at Walter. “You need anything else, sir?”

Walter’s smile was small and accurate. “A ride on a day with less wind.”

“We can do that,” Tank said. “Brotherhood comes with perks.”

Cliffhanger: the Internet is about to learn the difference between views and witness.

By nightfall the clip was everywhere. The apology. The hand on a young shoulder. The wall behind them lined like a choir of names. Someone added captions. Someone else removed the background soundtrack because the flags already had one.

“TikToker Assaults Veteran—Apologizes at Memorial,” the headlines sang. But the song other people heard had older words: Honor, Respect, Cost.

Sponsors evaporated. Brand reps sent emails with we value community standards in the subject line. A finance company repossessed the neon-wrapped sports car; the tow truck operator folded the rig’s straps with the care of a man tying a tie for a funeral.

Tyler’s follower count fell, not like a cliff but like a long slope of decisions unmade until they made you. A week later, the account blinked out entirely—permanently banned.

Meanwhile a different number rose. A woman in Tulsa sent ten dollars. A man in Vermont sent forty. A church in Phoenix passed a hat. Someone created a fundraiser for homeless veterans in Walter’s name. The goal line moved three times in an afternoon. $213,408 by the third day. Walter called the shelter director and said, “All of it,” and the director said, “Sir, that’s—” and Walter said, “All of it,” and that was the end of that debate.

The Iron Eagles met two nights later for a vote that didn’t require voice because hands were already raised. Honorary Member: Walter “Thursday” Chen. They presented him a vest stitched by the widow with the careful hands. Front patch: Vietnam Veteran. Back patch: Protected by the Iron Eagles.

“‘Thursday’?” Walter said, finger on the new name.

Tank smiled. “Because that’s when you choose to show up.” He held out a gloved hand. “Welcome, brother.”

The first ride in the custom sidecar came on a clear Sunday. Rook had welded the frame from an old project and painted it the color of a sky that kept its promises. A small flag mounted behind the seat whispered at 35 miles an hour and applauded at 45. Walter wore goggles he hadn’t touched in decades. The road unfurled like a ribbon. Strangers on sidewalks lifted their fingers in the small salute Americans keep for things that matter.

“Smooth?” Tank called over the wind.

“Better than church,” Walter called back, and Pastor Mike laughed himself almost off his saddle.

Consequences landed the way they do when you write your address on them. Ninety days in county, two years’ probation, community service. Tyler accepted each without argument in a courtroom that smelled of paper and worn carpet and old disappointment.

Inside a cell no bigger than a one-car garage, he met a man old enough to have grandchildren and eyes that had seen jungles he’d only used as thumbnails. The man told him about heat that crushed your lungs flat, about nights when you learned the shapes of fear and how to walk around them, about a boy who didn’t come back and the hand that kept the hounds off your dreams for years after.

Tyler asked questions. For once, he waited for answers.

Outside the Internet did its seasonal shift to a new outrage. Walter kept coming on Thursdays. The Iron Eagles kept their calendar of charity rides and hospital visits, oil changes for widows, gift cards for families who didn’t ask but needed.

One evening, Tank found Walter in the café after close, polishing the vest with the gentle focus of a man paying a debt only he can count.

“Ride this weekend?” Tank asked.

“If you’ll have me.”

“Brother,” Tank said, “you’re the reason we’re a we.”

On Saturday they split the route: two groups, twenty each, staggered, the way you do when visibility is a kind of prayer. Kids on porches waved. A teacher in a Civic wiped her eyes at a stoplight for reasons she’d explain later to her sister and nobody else.

That night, a message landed in the club inbox. I’m sorry, it began. It was from Tyler. When I’m out, I want to do something that isn’t for me. If you’ll let me, I’d like to help.

Tank typed back. Start by listening. Then show up.

Cliffhanger: the boy who filmed pain decides to build something instead.

Six months later the air in Ohio had that November edge—clean, close, sharpening faces and voices. The park’s maples had gone from fireworks to embers. The bell at the visitor center chimed too brightly for the gray sky.

Walter came walking the way he always did on Thursdays: cane, measured pace, a folded cloth. He wore the vest beneath his coat, patches hidden but present. He stopped at the wall and breathed fog onto the bronze before wiping the name that taught him the meaning of Thursday.

Footsteps approached. Shoes, not boots.

“Mr. Chen?” a voice said, trying not to echo.

Walter turned. Tyler stood six feet away in a gas-station jacket with someone else’s name stitched on the chest. No camera. No entourage. Hair shorter. Eyes less sure of their welcome.

“I wanted to apologize again,” Tyler said quietly. “Not for the Internet. For me.”

Walter regarded him. People are not pictures. They are edits, re-edits, cuts that don’t show until you look for them. “Why now?” Walter asked.

“In county,” Tyler said, “my cellmate’s grandfather visited. He served in Vietnam. He told me what it was like in words that didn’t ask for likes. When he shook my hand goodbye, I felt smaller than the space between our fingers.” He pulled an envelope from his jacket. “I’ve been working three jobs since I got out. Saved what I could.” He held it out. “It’s five thousand. I’d like it to go to the homeless vets fund.”

Walter didn’t reach for the envelope at first. He looked at the boy’s face the way you look at a horizon to see if weather is coming. Then he took the envelope, but with both hands. “It’s more than money,” he said. “It’s a map.”

“A map?”

“To a life that points somewhere,” Walter said. “My friend—Corporal Patterson—would approve.”

Tyler’s gaze slid to the name in bronze. “Could you… tell me about him?”

They sat on a bench that made both backs complain. Walter talked, and the air around the words filled with other air: a jungle’s breath, hot and damp; a night so black it polished your fear; a joke about a mule from back home that somehow kept three men breathing until dawn. He told of a grenade’s metallic cough. Of a boy who moved without thinking because thinking is slow. Of a smile that made no sense except to the man who received it.

“How did you live with that?” Tyler whispered.

“You don’t live with it,” Walter said. “You live because of it.” He tapped his own sternum gently. “There’s a difference.”

The flags knocked lightly on their poles. Somewhere behind them, an engine tried not to be loud and failed.

“I’ll try to honor his name,” Tyler said.

“That’s all any of us can do,” Walter replied, and meant all.

They met the Iron Eagles the following Saturday, not for a ride but for unloading boxes: canned goods, blankets, boots in odd sizes that fit someone’s life perfectly. Tyler carried more than he needed to, as if the weight might move a different kind of scale inside him.

Doc showed him how to check tire pressure properly. Pastor Mike explained route planning and why you never block a driveway, even when you’re doing good. Dee taught him the club’s only ritual she insisted on: We ask names. We use them.

In the afternoon they visited the Riverton Veterans Shelter. Walter had been a Thursday volunteer there too, stacking towels, telling stories when asked, telling fewer when not. A man at the intake desk looked up and grinned. “Thursday,” he said. “You brought muscle.”

“Muscle brought itself,” Walter said.

They spent two hours sorting donations, another answering questions. A young woman with a new baby asked Tyler if they were hiring at the gas station. “Not yet,” he said, “but I can ask my manager. And I’ll call you either way so you don’t have to wonder.”

Walter watched the quick note Tyler made in his phone. In another timeline, that phone had been a weapon. In this one, a tool.

Before they left, Walter stood under a poster about resources and read the bullet points like scripture. On the sidewalk, he touched the sidecar’s frame and felt the hum of cooling metal.

Tank came out last, wiped his hands on a rag, and looked from Walter to Tyler. “There’s talk in the schools about bringing folks in to speak. They’re worried about phones. I told them phones are fine when the mouths attached to them do more than sell noise.”

Tyler swallowed. “You want me to talk to kids?”

Tank shrugged. “You know the language. You know the trap. Truth hits different from someone who fell in.”

Tyler nodded. Fear floated to the top of his eyes and then sank again. “I’ll do it.”

Cliffhanger: redemption is about to get a microphone—and an audience not known for patience.

They called it The Tyler Patterson Honor Initiative, because names can be bridges. The Iron Eagles designed a logo a high-schooler could stencil on a notebook: an eagle with one feather in the shape of a ribbon, head bowed toward a small star.

The program had three rules printed on a single slide:

1. Respect is action.

2. Views aren’t values.

3. Tell the truth, even if the truth is that you’re late.

The first school was a middle one with floors that never stopped being waxy. The auditorium lights buzzed. A teacher who used to love poetry but now loved attendance scanned the crowd in a way that counted hope.

Tank did the introductions in six sentences. He didn’t know how to waste words. Walter sat on the edge of the stage so he could make eye contact with the back row. Tyler stood center with a mic he held like a promise.

“I wanted attention more than I wanted anything,” he said. “I hurt people to get it. I called it pranks. It was cruelty. A man I hit forgave me. He did not spare me consequences.” He told them about the wall, the name, the lesson. He told them about deleting the archive of his worst self and about the quiet house where he slept now because sleeping isn’t about square footage, it’s about weight.

Hands raised. The first question was a boy with a haircut that argued with the rules. “Do you miss going viral?”

“Sometimes,” Tyler said, because falsehood is a bad teacher. “But it turns out peace is a better high.”

A girl in the third row asked Walter if he was scared the day of the slap. “Yes,” he said. “But not of that hand. Of what might happen to the kid behind it if no one showed him a stop sign.”

They did three schools in two weeks. A youth center. A church basement where the coffee was as bitter as the arguments it survived. The videos from those talks didn’t rack millions. They reached the right thousand.

Tyler kept working: dawn at the gas station, evenings at a diner where he cleared plates and learned to listen. On Sundays he loaded groceries. He still had a phone, but now it was full of names and times and reminders like Call Mr. Ortega (job app) and Drop boots at Shelter 4 pm and Thursday 10 a.m.—Mr. Chen wall.

On Veterans Day the sky held itself to a clear blue like it had a standard to meet. The parade formed at the corner of Pine and Third. Marching band polishing brass. Scouts fidgeting with flags. A truck with a banner for the volunteer firefighters who never minded being compared to saints.

Walter’s sidecar idled at the front of the motorcycle column. The Iron Eagles ranged behind like a moving oath. Tyler walked the curb with a box of small paper flags that made children reach without being told to.

A little boy tugged his father’s sleeve. “Who’s the man in the sidecar?”

The father—calloused hands, eyes that saw what days did to other men—looked at Walter. “A hero,” he said. “Also a teacher.”

At the reviewing stand, the mayor nodded and a councilman tried to look like someone who deserved the view. Chief Alvarez stood with his cap under his arm. Pastor Mike’s church handed out cocoa that burned tongues and healed something anyway.

After, they walked to the wall. The crowd thinned to families with the right kind of silence. Tank and Dee flanked Walter without making it look like they were flanking him. Tyler carried a single white rose, because you don’t argue with what works.

They stopped at Corporal Tyler J. Patterson. The name was a groove now in Walter’s week, a groove that held the needle in the right song.

“Thank you,” Tyler said to Walter as he set the rose down. “For the brutal gift of a second chance.”

Walter rested a hand on his shoulder. “My friend gave his life so mine wouldn’t end there. Seems only fair I spend the change wisely.”

They stood a while more. People passed. Some nodded. Some didn’t know why they slowed. But they did.

“Sir,” Rook said at last, voice careful. “You ready to roll?”

Walter looked at the sidecar, at the hill that eased into road, at the sky that was probably thicker with meaning than science claimed. “Let’s make some noise for the quiet ones,” he said.

Engines swallowed the notion of whisper. The pack moved as one, the sound a body you could stand inside without falling.

Back at the café the table was set—the Wednesday ladies had baked, and Thursday was flexible when cake arrived. Someone brought a manila folder—a check from a union that decided to name its scholarship for men who didn’t make it home after a veteran whose story they’d watched in a clip with no music. Someone else brought a photo of a kid whose cake had once been smashed; the caption read Happy 8th, Liam, and the smile looked like a door opening.

At closing time Walter stayed behind a minute, fingertips on the stitched letters of his patch. Tank turned chairs on tables beside him.

“You ever regret not being angrier?” Tank asked.

Walter considered. “Anger’s a fire,” he said. “Useful for heat. Hard on houses.”

Tank nodded. “We’ll keep the heat. We’ll build the house.”

Tyler locked the back, brought the key to the bar, and set it down like a ritual. “Pastor Mike told me something today,” he said. “He said repentance isn’t a sentiment. It’s a schedule.”

Walter laughed—soft, surprised, delighted the way a good phrase can make an old man young for one second. “Then I suppose I’ll see you next Thursday.”

“You will,” Tyler said. “And Tuesday. And the Saturday after that.”

They walked out together, three shadows stretched long on asphalt that remembered boots.

At home, Walter sat on the edge of his bed and unpinned the Purple Heart, placed it in the dish by the lamp, next to the ring light of a different life: a circle of brass from his friend’s funeral, worn smooth by years of being thumbed while waiting for storms to pass. He touched the medal, then the circle, then the space between.

“Lived a good life for both of us today,” he said into the dim.

Outside, a motorcycle passed on the far road, the sound a single line of ink across the quiet.

Because some stories end where the camera shuts off. But others keep moving in the small acts that never trend: a call returned; a box carried; a name learned and said right. The Iron Eagles would tell you they didn’t change a boy. The boy changed. They just showed up on time so he wouldn’t have to do it alone.

And still—because repetition is how humans remember and how honor stays polished—one truth remains, not softer for being said gently:

Respect isn’t content.
Honor isn’t clickbait.
And heroes deserve reverence, not ridicule.

On the calendar above Walter’s sink, Thursdays were circled not in ink but in habit. Tomorrow would carry what it carried. The wall would wait. The sidecar would gleam. The club would gather. The town would yawn itself awake and find coffee. Somewhere a kid would open a video and think before sharing it. Somewhere a man would decide to show up.

Forty brothers—give or take who could make it that day—would check their mirrors, adjust their formation, and ride.

And a purple heart would catch the sun one more time, making a small room brighter than it had any right to be.