I carry her photo in the inside pocket of my vest. Nobody knows except the guys at that table.
“What’s your name, buddy?”
“Tucker.”
I lifted him onto the bench next to me. He didn’t weigh anything.
“We can’t get inside your body to beat up the cancer. That’s not how it works. We’re big, but we’re not that kind of big.”
His face fell. Hope draining out like someone pulled a plug.
“But.” I held up a finger. “You see these guys? They fight monsters. That’s the whole job. And you just hired yourself an army. That seven dollars and forty cents? That’s the signing fee. You’re one of us now.”
I unclipped a patch from the inside of my vest. A little skull with wings. Sarah used to play with it. I’d kept it for eight years.
I pinned it to Tucker’s Spider-Man jacket.
“Welcome to the Iron Ghosts, prospect.”
His mom’s name was Angie. His dad left six months ago. She told us everything in the parking lot while Tucker sat on Big Ron’s knee showing him his hospital bracelet.
Stage three neuroblastoma. Three rounds of chemo. Insurance that covered two rounds but not the third. A second mortgage. Weekend shifts at Waffle House. A husband who left with a duffel bag and a note.
We paid for their breakfast. Gave her five phone numbers. Told her to call any of us, any time.
Two weeks later, we did the first ride. Four hundred bikes. Tulsa to OKC and back. Raised forty-one thousand dollars for Tucker’s treatment.
Every chemo appointment, one of us was there. We worked out a schedule. Monday through Friday, a biker in the waiting room reading a magazine upside down and scaring the nurses.
We all shaved our heads.
Big Ron brought Tucker a little leather vest with the Iron Ghosts patch on the back. Tucker wore it over his hospital gown during chemo. One of the nurses cried the first time she saw him in it.
In June, he got worse.
Cancer spread to his liver. The oncologist used words like “aggressive” and “quality of life” and Angie couldn’t stop shaking.
I found her in the hospital chapel that evening. I hadn’t been in a church since Sarah’s funeral. She was crying in the front pew. After a while she turned around and saw me.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked. “Why are you people doing this for us?”
I sat down next to her. Pulled Sarah’s picture from my vest. Told her about the Tuesday in March. The year after. The eight years of riding.
“I wasn’t there enough,” I said. “I was working. Traveling. A good provider and a bad father. Then she was gone and there wasn’t anything left to be a good father to.”
Angie looked at the photo for a long time. “What does Tucker have to do with her?”
“Nothing. And everything. When he asked me to beat up his cancer, I felt like I’d been handed a second chance to show up for a kid. I wasn’t gonna miss it.”
That night I went into Tucker’s room. Tubes in his arm. Book about trucks in his lap. He looked at my face and set the book down.
“Why are you sad, Mr. Bear?”
That was his name for me. I don’t know why.
“I’m not sad, buddy. I’m worried.”
“The doctor told my mom it got bigger. Did we not beat it up enough?”
I sat on the edge of his bed. Took his hand, the one without the tubes. Smallest hand I’ve ever held.
“Listen to me, Tucker. I had a little girl named Sarah. She had cancer too. We fought it real hard but we lost.”
His eyes got huge. “She’s in heaven?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that gonna happen to me?”
“I don’t know. But here’s 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. That’s the thing I’m sorry for every single day.”
I had to stop. Couldn’t see.
“So here’s my promise, prospect. I’m not gonna do that again. You keep fighting, I keep fighting. You get tired, I carry you. You get scared, I get mad. You don’t ever look up in this room and see me giving up. Not ever.”
He had tears running down his bald little head. “Can I see her picture?”
I showed him Sarah. He looked at her for a long time.
“She looks nice.”
“She was the nicest.”
“I’ll tell her hi if I go up there.”
“Don’t you dare go up there, Tucker. Don’t you dare.”
He squeezed my hand. Five years old and he squeezed like HE was comforting ME.
“Okay, Mr. Bear. I won’t.”
He didn’t.
Nine more months. Two more bad scans between the good ones. A week in October when he was in the ICU and I slept in the hospital parking lot because they wouldn’t let me in the room.
But the treatment worked.
In April, the oncologist said a word we hadn’t heard before.
Remission.
He’s nine now.
Full head of hair. Came in darker than before. Plays Little League. Terrible hitter, decent pitcher. Throws his fastball at thirty miles an hour like it’s a hundred.
We still do the ride every June. Fifteen hundred bikes now. Tucker rides on the back of mine at the front of the pack. Full member patch. The guys voted him in unanimously. Only nine-year-old member of the Iron Ghosts MC.
Last month, Tucker handed me something. A piece of paper folded into a small square. Same way as before.
I unfolded it slow.
A crayon drawing. Better than his first one. Same monster. Black body. Red eyes. Jagged teeth.
But this time the monster was running. And behind it, a line of motorcycles going off the edge of the page. Every rider wearing a skull-and-wings patch. At the very front, on the biggest bike, a little boy with hair.
Smiling.
“Now we’re the monster, Mr. Bear.”
I keep both drawings in the inside pocket of my vest now. Right next to Sarah’s picture.
And on every ride, when my hand shakes on the throttle because I’m getting older and some days the ghosts get loud, I reach inside that pocket and feel all three pieces of paper.
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.(Share this story to spread kindness and let’s make this world a better place)
