In Butte, You Get Back Up

Leah Sottile: When the kid backed up to the end of the street, a thousand pairs of eyes looked his way. Straddling his bike — a red, white and blue machine covered in stars and stripes and his name, Levi Renz — he kick-started the engine, let the machine cough to life and hunched forward as he rode its chainsaw buzz toward the ramp.

When Renz hit it for the first time, he flew up and up and up, higher than the light posts, higher than the flat roof of the auto shop, higher than he had ever flown in his whole life. And every face in the crowd — folks with cans of cheap beer and cigarettes in hand, bikers in leather vests, girls in bikini tops, moms with strollers — turned to watch the kid fly…