Gene didn't let go of the tire iron.
The big man saw that and nodded, like it was the reasonable thing to do. He held out his hand.
"Hector Villarreal," he said. "They call me Moose. United States Marine Corps, 1984 to 2008. We're the Copper State Riders, out of Phoenix. Veterans' riding club. We're headed to a memorial ride in Yuma."
Gene looked at the hand for a long moment. Then he shifted the tire iron to his left and shook it.
"Gene Reese," he said. "Army. 1st Cav. Two tours in Vietnam. Retired first sergeant."
"Yes, sir," Moose said. "I saw your bumper." He looked at the open hood. "What's the trouble?"
"Serpentine belt," Gene said. "Shredded. 2004 LeSabre with the 3800. I need a new belt and about fifteen minutes."
Moose blinked. He looked at the ninety-year-old man in the pressed shirt, and then he grinned.
"Well, First Sergeant," he said. "Then that's what we'll get you."
The thunder on the interstate turned into eleven more motorcycles. Then four more after those. Moose had called the rest of the club, who'd been half an hour behind, and told them a 1st Cav first sergeant was broken down at the rest area and to get there.
Within twenty minutes, there were twenty-three motorcycles parked around Gene's Buick.
One of them, a lean young rider named Tasha who'd been an Army mechanic, read the part number off the old belt fragments and took off east toward Gila Bend with the throttle wide open. The parts store there was forty miles back.
The rest of them did what veterans do when they're waiting.
They set up folding chairs in the shade of the ramada. They put a cooler of water and Gatorade beside Gene's chair and didn't let it get empty.
They asked about Vietnam, the way men who've been there ask, which is not very much and not very directly. Mostly they asked about the 1st Cav's helicopters, and Gene told them a few things about the Ia Drang Valley in 1965 that he hadn't told his own family.
When he mentioned why he was driving to San Diego, the whole ramada went quiet.
"Your great-grandson's graduating from MCRD?" Moose said. "Tomorrow morning?"
"Nine o'clock," Gene said. "Noah. He's nineteen."
Moose looked around at the other riders. Something passed between them that Gene recognized. He'd seen it in a lot of men's faces, a long time ago.
"First Sergeant," Moose said, "the Copper State Riders have just changed their plans."
Tasha came back at 3:10 with a new belt in a cardboard sleeve.
There was a diagram under the hood of the Buick that showed how the belt was supposed to run around all the pulleys. It had been there when the car was new. Twenty-two Arizona summers had baked it down to a pale yellow square you could barely see.
Tasha looked at it and frowned. "I can't read this."
"Don't need to," Gene said.
He leaned over the fender and pointed, one pulley at a time, the whole way around, without stopping once. He'd done this belt twice on this car already, and a few hundred belts on a few hundred trucks before that, and he knew it in his hands the way he knew the Lord's Prayer.
Tasha routed it exactly where he pointed. She put the wrench on the tensioner and slipped the belt over the last pulley, and Gene told her to start it.
The Buick turned over and ran smooth and quiet. The battery light went out.
Moose clapped Gene on the shoulder, gently, the way you'd clap a man who was ninety.
"Fifteen minutes," Moose said. "Just like you said."
"Seventeen," said Gene. "She was a little slow on the tensioner."
Tasha laughed so hard she had to sit down.
They rode with him to San Diego.
Twenty-three motorcycles, two by two, in a long formation around one old gray Buick doing sixty-two miles an hour in the right lane. Up over the mountains past Yuma and through the long desert grades, through the Imperial Valley, and up into the Laguna Mountains as the sun went down.
Truckers blew their horns at them. A little boy in a minivan pressed his face against the window and waved the whole time they passed.
Gene drove with both hands on the wheel and the radio off. For two hundred and thirty miles, he could hear the engines all around him like a heartbeat.
They got him to his hotel by nine. Moose walked him to the lobby door.
"What time do you want us tomorrow, First Sergeant?" he said.
"You've got your ride in Yuma."
"Yuma's been there a long time," Moose said. "It'll still be there Saturday."
At the graduation on Friday morning, the families sat in the bleachers along the parade deck in the bright cold sun. The band played. The new Marines marched out in long perfect lines, and the families stood up and cheered.
Gene stood in the front row with his granddaughter, holding on to the rail.
At the very top of the bleachers, in a long row of their own, sat twenty-three men and women in black leather vests. When the national anthem played, every one of them stood up and took off their hats.
Afterward, on the parade deck, Gene found Noah. The boy was taller than Gene remembered and his head was shaved, and he hugged his great-grandfather so hard they both nearly went over.
Over Gene's shoulder, Noah saw the line of motorcycle riders standing at the edge of the deck.
"Grandpa Gene," he said, "who are they?"
Gene looked at them. Moose raised one big hand.
"Friends of mine," Gene said, and found that he meant it.