The biker in me wanted to laugh when the bald little kid walked up with a wad of crumpled bills.<\/p>\n
We were sitting outside a Denny\u2019s in Tulsa. Five of us, just rolled in off a twelve-hour ride. Tattoos, patches, leather, scars. We look exactly like what we are.<\/p>\n
People usually cross the parking lot to avoid us.<\/p>\n
This kid didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
He walked straight to our table like he owned the place and stopped right in front of me. Couldn\u2019t have been more than five. Jeans two sizes too big. Plastic hospital bracelet on his wrist.<\/p>\n
No hair. Not even eyebrows.<\/p>\n
He held up the money. \u201cHow much to beat somebody up?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
The whole table went quiet. Denny choked on his coffee. I leaned down, elbows on my knees, and tried to keep a straight face.<\/p>\n
\u201cDepends on who it is, partner.\u201d<\/p>\n
The kid nodded like that was a fair business answer. Then he dug in his pocket and pulled out more. A five. Two ones. A fistful of quarters. He set it all on the table in front of me like he was hiring a contractor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got seven dollars and forty cents. Is that enough to beat up my cancer?\u201d<\/p>\n
Nobody moved.<\/p>\n
I looked over at his mother across the lot. She was standing by a blue Civic, hand over her mouth, tears just running down her face. She didn\u2019t call him back. She just stood there and let it happen.<\/p>\n
I crouched down to eye level with the boy. My knees hated me for it. I felt about ninety years old.<\/p>\n
\u201cTell me what cancer looks like to you, buddy.\u201d<\/p>\n
He thought about it for a second. Then he reached into the neck of his shirt and pulled out a piece of paper folded into a tiny square. He unfolded it real slow and held it up to my face and it was a crayon drawing of a monster.<\/p>\n
A black scribble of a body. Long skinny arms. Red eyes. Jagged teeth. No mouth. Just teeth, stacked on top of each other like a trap.<\/p>\n
Next to the monster he\u2019d drawn a smaller stick figure. A boy with no hair, a round head, a straight line for a mouth. The boy was inside the monster\u2019s stomach.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s me,\u201d he said, pointing at the stick figure. \u201cAnd that\u2019s cancer. It\u2019s inside my body. My mommy says it\u2019s eating me.\u201d<\/p>\n
You could have heard traffic on the interstate two miles away.<\/p>\n
I could feel the guys at the table behind me. Not a sound from any of them. Denny. Rooster. Wheels. Big Ron. Five grown men who ride with a club called the Iron Ghosts. Men who\u2019ve done time. Men who have buried more brothers than any of us can count.<\/p>\n
And not one of us could speak.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d been a father once.<\/p>\n
I had a daughter named Sarah. She was seven years old and she had leukemia and she died on a Tuesday in March eight years ago. I quit my job the next week. My wife left me the year after. I\u2019ve been on this bike ever since, riding from diner to diner because sitting still kills me.<\/p>\n
I carry a photo of Sarah in the inside pocket of my vest. Nobody knows about it except the guys at that table.<\/p>\n
I reached up and wiped my face with the back of my hand and hoped nobody saw.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s your name, buddy?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTucker.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTucker, can I see that picture again?\u201d<\/p>\n
He handed me the crayon drawing. I held it like it was made of glass. I looked at the red-eyed monster eating a little boy with no hair and I felt something break open inside me that I\u2019d been holding shut since 2017.<\/p>\n
\u201cTucker, come sit up here with me, okay?\u201d<\/p>\n
I lifted him onto the bench next to me. He didn\u2019t weigh anything. His legs swung off the edge and his sneakers didn\u2019t come anywhere close to the ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need you to listen real careful, alright?\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t get inside your body to beat up the cancer. That\u2019s not how it works. We\u2019re big, but we\u2019re not that kind of big.\u201d<\/p>\n
His face fell. I watched it happen in real time. The hope draining out of him like someone had pulled a plug.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut.\u201d<\/p>\n
I held up a finger.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I want you to look around this table. Look at all my brothers.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked. Denny. Rooster. Wheels. Big Ron. All of them staring back at him with faces I had never seen them make before.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see these guys? They\u2019re real mean when they need to be. And do you know what we do for a living?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe fight monsters. That\u2019s the whole job. Somebody\u2019s got a monster they can\u2019t beat on their own, they come to us. And we show up and we help them fight it.\u201d<\/p>\n
His eyes got real big.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, we can\u2019t go inside your body. But here\u2019s the deal, alright? You can\u2019t beat the cancer without an army. And you just hired yourself one. You got that seven dollars and forty cents? That\u2019s the signing fee. You\u2019re one of us now.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked down at the money on the table like he couldn\u2019t believe it worked.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd once you\u2019re one of us, we don\u2019t ever quit on you. We go to every doctor appointment. We go to every hospital visit. We\u2019re your brothers now. And when you\u2019re scared, you call us. We come. Every single time. You understand?\u201d<\/p>\n
Tucker looked over at his mom. She was crying too hard to do anything but nod.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs that true?\u201d he asked her.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, baby,\u201d she said. \u201cI think that\u2019s true.\u201d<\/p>\n
I unclipped one of the patches off the inside of my vest. A little round one, just a skull with wings. Sarah used to play with it. I\u2019d kept it in my inside pocket for eight years.<\/p>\n
I pinned it to Tucker\u2019s Spider-Man jacket.<\/p>\n
\u201cWelcome to the Iron Ghosts, prospect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her name was Angie. His dad left six months ago.<\/p>\n
She told us everything in the parking lot while Tucker sat on Big Ron\u2019s knee showing him his hospital bracelet. The diagnosis in September. Stage three neuroblastoma. The first round of chemo in October. The second in January. The third now. The insurance that covered two rounds and not the third. The second mortgage. The weekend shifts at Waffle House.<\/p>\n
The husband who said he couldn\u2019t do it anymore and left on a Tuesday morning in April with a duffel bag and a note.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know why I\u2019m telling you all this,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t know you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re telling us because you need to tell somebody,\u201d Denny said. \u201cAnd we\u2019re the first people in a long time who didn\u2019t have anywhere they had to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
She cried in Big Ron\u2019s arms for probably ten minutes. Big Ron used to run drugs through Texas in the eighties. He\u2019s six foot five and he\u2019s got a teardrop tattoo under his left eye. He held that woman like she was his own sister and didn\u2019t say a word.<\/p>\n
We paid for their breakfast.<\/p>\n
I gave her a card with my number on it. Rooster\u2019s number. Wheels\u2019s number. Denny\u2019s number. Big Ron\u2019s number.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou call any of us. Any time. If Tucker\u2019s scared. If the car won\u2019t start. If the bill collectors are calling. If you need somebody to sit in the hospital waiting room. We show up. We meant it.\u201d<\/p>\n
She folded the card and put it in her purse like it was cash.<\/p>\n
Two weeks later we did the first ride.<\/p>\n
Four hundred bikes. I\u2019m not exaggerating. We put the word out on the network and four hundred bikes came in from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, Missouri, New Mexico. We did the Tulsa-to-OKC run and back and we raised forty-one thousand dollars for Tucker\u2019s treatment.<\/p>\n
A reporter showed up at the end. She wanted a photo. She wanted to know the name of the charity. I told her there was no charity. There was just a kid.<\/p>\n
She looked at me like I\u2019d said something crazy.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou raised forty thousand dollars for one kid?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe raised forty thousand dollars for our brother. He\u2019s five. He\u2019s got neuroblastoma. His name is Tucker. Put that in your paper.\u201d<\/p>\n
Every time Tucker went in for chemo, one of us was there.<\/p>\n
We worked out a schedule. Denny took Mondays. Rooster took Tuesdays. Wheels took Wednesdays. Big Ron took Thursdays. I took Fridays. That way no matter what day his appointment was, he had a biker in the waiting room reading a magazine upside down and scaring the nurses.<\/p>\n
We all shaved our heads.<\/p>\n
Big Ron kept his beard and shaved his head and he looked like a Viking. Tucker thought this was the funniest thing he\u2019d ever seen.<\/p>\n
We brought him things. Stupid little things. A plastic sheriff\u2019s badge. A rubber snake. A Matchbox motorcycle. Big Ron brought him a little leather vest with the Iron Ghosts patch sewn on the back and a prospect patch on the front. Tucker wore it over his hospital gown during chemo.<\/p>\n
The nurses took pictures.<\/p>\n
One of them cried the first time she saw him in it.<\/p>\n
In June he got worse.<\/p>\n
A bad scan. The cancer had spread to his liver. The oncologist used the word \u201caggressive\u201d and the word \u201cconsider\u201d and the phrase \u201cquality of life\u201d and Angie couldn\u2019t stop shaking.<\/p>\n
I found her in the hospital chapel that evening. I don\u2019t go to chapels. I hadn\u2019t been in a church since Sarah\u2019s funeral. I sat down in the back pew and I watched her cry into her hands in the front row and I didn\u2019t know what to say.<\/p>\n
After a while she turned around and saw me.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy are you doing this?\u201d she asked. \u201cWhy are you people doing this for us?\u201d<\/p>\n
I thought about lying.<\/p>\n
I walked up to the front and I sat down next to her and I pulled Sarah\u2019s picture out of the inside pocket of my vest. I showed it to her. I told her about the Tuesday in March. I told her about the year after. I told her about the eight years of riding from diner to diner.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t there enough,\u201d I said. \u201cI was working. I was traveling. I was a good provider and a bad father. And then she was gone and there wasn\u2019t anything left to be a good father to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Angie held the photo and looked at it for a long time.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s pretty.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat does Tucker have to do with her?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing,\u201d I said. \u201cAnd everything. Tucker is his own kid. But when he asked me to beat up his cancer, I felt like I\u2019d been handed a second chance to show up for a kid. And I wasn\u2019t gonna miss it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I went into Tucker\u2019s room after that.<\/p>\n
He was awake. He had tubes in his arm and a book about trucks in his lap. He looked up at me and saw my face and set the book down.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy are you sad, Mr. Bear?\u201d<\/p>\n
That was his name for me. I don\u2019t know why. I\u2019m not that big.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not sad, buddy. I\u2019m worried.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout me?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe doctor told my mom it got bigger.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid we not beat it up enough?\u201d<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s when I had to hold onto the bed rail because I thought my legs were going to quit on me.<\/p>\n
I sat down on the edge of his bed. I took his hand, the one without the tubes. It was the smallest hand I\u2019ve ever held. Smaller than Sarah\u2019s had been.<\/p>\n
\u201cListen to me, Tucker. I\u2019m gonna tell you something I never told anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
He waited.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a little girl. Her name was Sarah. And she had cancer too. And we fought it real hard but we lost.\u201d<\/p>\n
His eyes got huge.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s in heaven?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIs that gonna happen to me?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know, buddy. Nobody knows. But I want to tell you what happened with Sarah. I got tired. I got scared. And I stopped fighting before she did. I gave up on her before she gave up on herself. And that\u2019s the thing I\u2019m sorry for every day of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
I had to stop. I couldn\u2019t see.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo here\u2019s my promise to you, prospect. I am not gonna do that again. You hear me? You keep fighting, and I keep fighting. You get tired, I carry you. You get scared, I get mad. You don\u2019t ever look up in this room and see me giving up. Not ever. You got that?\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded. He had tears running down his bald little head.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan I see her picture?\u201d<\/p>\n
I showed him Sarah. He looked at her for a long time.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe looks nice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was the nicest.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll tell her hi if I go up there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t you dare go up there, Tucker. Don\u2019t you dare.\u201d<\/p>\n
He squeezed my hand. Five years old and he squeezed my hand like HE was comforting ME.<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay, Mr. Bear. I won\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
The new treatment worked. It took nine more months. There were two more bad scans between the good ones. There was a week in October when he was in the ICU and I slept in the hospital parking lot in my truck because they wouldn\u2019t let me in the room.<\/p>\n
But the treatment worked.<\/p>\n
In April, a year after Tucker hired us, the oncologist used a word we hadn\u2019t heard before.<\/p>\n
Remission.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s nine now.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s got a full head of hair. It came in darker than it was before. His mom says that happens sometimes. He plays Little League. He\u2019s a terrible hitter and a decent pitcher. His fastball tops out at thirty miles an hour and he throws it like it\u2019s a hundred.<\/p>\n
We still do the ride every June. Four hundred bikes turned into fifteen hundred. We raise money for the neuroblastoma research fund at the children\u2019s hospital now.<\/p>\n
Tucker rides on the back of my bike at the front of the pack. He\u2019s got his own little leather vest. The prospect patch came off his first year. Now he\u2019s got a full member patch. The guys voted him in unanimously. He\u2019s the only nine-year-old member of the Iron Ghosts MC.<\/p>\n
His dad never came back.<\/p>\n
Angie\u2019s been dating a good man for two years. An accountant. Smart guy. Quiet. He asked me for my blessing before he proposed. I asked him if he was sure he was ready to be a biker\u2019s stepfather. He said yes.<\/p>\n
Last month, Tucker handed me something.<\/p>\n
A piece of paper, folded into a small square. Same way as before.<\/p>\n
I unfolded it slow.<\/p>\n
It was a drawing. Crayon. Better than his first one. He\u2019s better at drawing now.<\/p>\n
It was a monster. Black scribble body. Long skinny arms. Red eyes. Jagged teeth.<\/p>\n
But this time the monster was running. And behind the monster was a line of motorcycles. A long line, going off the edge of the page. On every motorcycle there was a rider with a skull-and-wings patch.<\/p>\n
And at the very front of the line, on the biggest bike, was a little boy with hair.<\/p>\n
He was smiling.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we\u2019re the monster, Mr. Bear.\u201d<\/p>\n
I keep both drawings in the inside pocket of my vest now. Right next to the picture of Sarah.<\/p>\n
The old one and the new one. The before and the after.<\/p>\n
And on every ride, when I feel my hand shake on the throttle because I\u2019m getting older and the rides are getting longer and some days the ghosts get loud, I reach inside that pocket and I feel all three pieces of paper.<\/p>\n
And I remember that sometimes a five-year-old with seven dollars walks up to a man who stopped believing in anything, and hires him for a job, and pays in full.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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