“Because he considers traffic signs suggestions.”
The biker looked insulted.
“I stop at red lights.”
“Eventually.”
A driving instructor handled the first lessons.
The biker got later privileges.
At seventeen, the boy finally asked about the motorcycle again.
Not his father’s.
Motorcycles generally.
“Do you think Dad would be disappointed I don’t want one?”
The biker looked genuinely confused.
“No.”
“Really?”
“He would be relieved your mother couldn’t blame him for teaching you.”
The boy laughed.
Then:
“Why did he love them?”
The biker thought.
“Freedom.”
“Is that real?”
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”
“People use machines to pretend they’re free when they’re actually running from things.”
The teenager stared.
“That sounded deep.”
“Forget it.”
“No.”
“I’m writing it down.”
The biker threatened to leave.
The teenager laughed.
The boy became a young man.
There were setbacks.
Medical scans.
Follow-up appointments.
Every routine blood test brought fear back into the mother’s body.
At first she hid it.
Then stopped.
Her son would see her hands shaking in the parking lot.
“Scared?”
“Yes.”
“Me too.”
They went inside together.
No performance.
No pretending.
The gray-bearded biker aged too.
His beard became almost white.
His knees began failing.
One shoulder barely lifted above his head.
He rode less.
Nobody teased him much.
Only people he trusted.
When the young man turned eighteen, the biker gave him an envelope.
“What’s this?”
“Your father’s original letter.”
The young man stared.
“You had it all this time?”
“Yes.”
“Mom read it?”
“No.”
His mother looked surprised.
“I never asked.”
The biker nodded.
“It was addressed to me.”
“Then why give it to him?”
The biker looked toward the young man.
“Because I’m done carrying instructions from dead people.”
The young man smiled.
He opened the letter.
Read slowly.
The same words.
Do not make my boy into one of us because you miss me.
Do not tell him the road is in his blood.
If he ever gets scared enough and asks for the sound, surround him.
The young man stopped.
Looked toward the biker.
“You really got two hundred people from this?”
The biker shrugged.
“Your dad was popular.”
The young man continued reading.
Then reached the last lines.
If he asks whether I was afraid of dying, tell him yes.
Do not lie because he’s a kid.
Tell him I was terrified.
Tell him I loved him anyway.
The young man folded the letter.
His mother sat nearby.
He looked toward her.
“Want to read?”
She hesitated.
Then nodded.
He handed it over.
She read.
Cried quietly.
At the end, she laughed.
“What?”
the young man asked.