08/09/2025
This wheelchair-bound boy kept rolling around bikers, desperately trying to get someone's attention. But everyone kept walking away.
I'd stopped for gas outside Riverside when I saw him. Maybe ten years old, oxygen tubes in his nose, skinny arms struggling with the wheels of his chair. He'd roll up to a biker, say something, then watch them leave, his small shoulders slumping a little more each time. Three bikers had already driven off.
The kid looked like he hadn't slept in days. Dark circles under his eyes. A faded yellow hospital bracelet still on his wrist. His wheelchair had duct tape holding one armrest together, and every push seemed to drain what little energy he had left. When he rolled toward my Harley, tears streaking through the grime on his face, I almost did the same thing the others had done. Gas was expensive. Time was short. I had places to be. But something in his eyes—a desperate, ancient grief that no child should ever have—made me kill the engine.
"Please," he whispered, his voice barely audible over the highway traffic. "My grandpa's dying. Tonight, they said. He told me to find someone with a motorcycle. Someone who'd understand."
He held up a crumpled piece of paper with an address scrawled in shaky handwriting. But it wasn't the address that made my blood run cold. It was the four words written below it, and the name signed at the bottom.
The note read: Bring the thunder home.
Signed: Wild Bill.
I knew that name. Every biker in three states who’d been riding for more than a decade knew that name. Wild Bill Morse had been a legend—a fearless rider, a master mechanic, a brother to all. Until five years ago, when he vanished without a trace. No funeral, no farewell party. Just gone.
But looking at this kid in a wheelchair, at those useless legs, at the guilt swimming in his eyes, I suddenly understood exactly what had happened to Wild Bill, and why this boy was so desperate to find someone who spoke our language.
"There was an accident, wasn't there, kid?" I asked gently.
He flinched, and a fresh wave of tears spilled over. "It was my fault," he choked out. "I was on the back of his bike. I got scared by a truck... I wiggled. He lost control trying to save me. He was okay... but I wasn't. He gave up everything to take care of me. He sold his bike, his shop... everything. He never rode again.""
Because I'm...... (continue reading in the C0MMENT