He nodded toward the thirty-foot aluminum trailer idling in my driveway.
"Would you like to inspect your vehicle, sir?"
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My heart gave a heavy, rhythmic thump against my ribs.
"Yes, Marcus," I replied. "I would."
We walked down the stone pathway together, our boots crunching against the yellow oak leaves, stepping onto the hydraulic lift-gate at the rear of the trailer.
The heavy aluminum ramp lowered with a smooth, pneumatic hiss.
Inside the insulated, climate-controlled cargo bay, illuminated by recessed white LED strip lights, was my father's motorcycle.
A 1947 Indian Chief.
It was painted in that deep, historic military olive-drab lacquer, worn down to the bare, oxidized gray steel along the tank seams where my father’s knees had gripped the chassis through eighty miles of European mud.
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The leather saddle was an original dark brown horsehide, cracked and weathered like the face of an old lumberjack, but nourished by thirty-six years of mink oil that I had rubbed into the grain every Sunday afternoon. On the left side of the front fender, still legible beneath seventy years of wax, was the white stencil of the 101st Airborne Division — 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment.
