4:38 PM.
"I told you the truth, Margaret," I said softly, my voice carrying that unyielding mountain cadence that had never once bent to her tantrums. "My dad did buy it after the war. In nineteen-forty-six, under the Surplus Military Salvage Act, the Department of the Army decommissioned three hundred service vehicles at the Holabird Ordnance Depot in Maryland. But because that specific motorcycle carried the dispatch marks from Bastogne, the Chief of Military History placed a restrictive covenant on the title. My father was allowed to purchase it for one dollar under the condition that it remain in the direct custody of the Whitfield bloodline in perpetuity."
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I looked across the room at Beverly, who was sitting rigid on the edge of our corduroy sofa, clutching her designer handbag against her stomach as if it were a bulletproof vest.
"Every Sunday for thirty-six years, Margaret," I continued, "you stood on the back porch and laughed while your sister told you that a woman who lets her husband keep an old machine in the yard is a woman who has lost control of her house. You called it a pile of rust. You called it an eyesore. You told Trevor that as soon as I took a trip, you would find a scrapper to haul it away."
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