The Last Time I Heard My Son’s Voice, He Said Bikers Like Me Deserve to Die…..
The call came during a thunderstorm so violent my phone barely had reception. I was waiting it out at a truck stop in Montana, sixty-seven years old with rain dripping from my gray beard, when I saw my son’s name light up my screen for the first time in twelve years. My hands shook so badly I nearly dropped the damn thing.
The moment I pressed answer, his voice cut through like a knife, cold and unfamiliar: “Dad, I just wanted you to know that I saw another biker die on the highway today. Split right open on the guardrail. I didn’t stop. Why would I? Bikers like you are selfish, organ-donating trash who deserve what you get.” Then silence.
Just the dial tone buzzing in my ear while truckers moved around me, oblivious to the fact that my world had just collapsed. I sat there for hours, my coffee going cold, wondering what had happened to the little boy who once begged to ride on my handlebars, who wore a Halloween costume of me three years straight. What turns a son against his father so completely? What makes a man call just to twist the knife?
I thought back to the last time I’d seen him – his high school graduation, when his mother intercepted me in the parking lot and told me he didn’t want me there. “No one wants to see that leather vest today, Jack,” she’d said. “This is his moment. Don’t ruin it with your… lifestyle.” I’d handed her his gift – a savings bond, not the vintage Honda I’d restored for him – and walked away without a fight.
Twelve years of silence followed. Until that call. Until those words that kept echoing in my head: “Bikers like you deserve to die.”
But I decided I was going to see him one last time. The doctors had given me three months. Stage four lung cancer. Not from smoking, ironically, but from Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam.
I’d decided to make one final cross-country ride, to try one last time to make him understand why I chose the life I did after coming home from a war that nearly destroyed me. But his words left me wondering if I should just turn around, ride into the mountains, and let the cancer take me surrounded by the freedom of open roads instead of hospital walls.
I never meant to become a biker. Before Vietnam, I was pre-law at Michigan State. Played tennis. Wore sweater vests. Had my life all mapped out. Then the draft notice came, and eighteen months later, I returned with pieces of me missing that no one could see. The nightmares. The panic attacks in crowded places. The rage that would explode out of nowhere.
They didn’t have names for PTSD back then. You were just “shell shocked” or “not right.” My fiancée tried to stick it out for six months before leaving. My parents walked on eggshells around me. Friends stopped calling.
Then one Sunday, I heard a motorcycle rumbling down my parents’ street. It belonged to another Vietnam vet named Mitch who lived three houses down. Something about that sound called to me. The next day, I bought my first bike – a beat-up Harley Sportster that barely ran.
That motorcycle saved my life. On the road, the wind scrubbed away the memories, if only temporarily. The focus required to handle the machine quieted my mind. And eventually, I found others like me – damaged men who’d found peace in the brotherhood of the road.
By the time I met Rebecca at a diner off Route 66, I’d been riding with the Veterans Motorcycle Association for four years. I was still damaged, but functional. She was a nurse, beautiful and patient. She understood trauma, said it drew her to me. When our son, David, was born, I thought I’d finally found my way home.
For ten years, it worked. I ran a motorcycle repair shop. Rebecca worked at the local hospital. On weekends, I’d take David for rides on my bike, him perched in front of me on the tank, squealing with delight. Those were the happiest years of my life.
Then came the accident. Not mine – I’d never laid a bike down. It was one of my club brothers, Marcus. Hit by a drunk driver while delivering Christmas toys to a children’s hospital. He died in Rebecca’s ER. She couldn’t save him.
After that, everything changed. The motorcycle, once a symbol of my healing, became in her eyes an instrument of death. My brothers, once welcome in our home, became harbingers of tragedy. She began to see the life I’d built as selfish and dangerous.
“You have a son,” she’d say during our arguments. “How can you risk leaving him fatherless?”
The irony was that riding kept the demons at bay. Without it, I began to unravel again. The nightmares returned. The anger. The man I’d fought so hard to become began to slip away.
When David was twelve, Rebecca filed for divorce. The judge, a golf buddy of her brother’s, granted her full custody. My visitation rights came with conditions: no motorcycles, no “biker friends,” nothing that reminded David of that “lifestyle.”
I tried to comply. For my son, I would have done anything. But showing up in a borrowed car, wearing clothes that felt like a costume, sitting in fast food restaurants making awkward conversation – it wasn’t me. And David knew it. He could see the shell I’d become, trying to be the father his mother wanted instead of the one I was.
By the time he was fourteen, he was canceling our visits. By sixteen, he stopped returning my calls. His graduation was the last time I’d attempted contact – until I received my diagnosis three weeks ago.
The call at the truck stop had left me gutted. I considered turning around, heading back to Michigan to die among what few brothers I had left. But something kept me pointing west toward Oregon, where David now lived. Maybe it was stubbornness. Maybe it was the need to set things right before the end. Or maybe it was simply that, after forty years, the road was the only home I truly knew.
I spent that night in a cheap motel, the kind that still takes cash and doesn’t ask questions. Rain hammered against the windows as I lay awake, my body aching from the day’s ride and the disease consuming me from within. I pulled out the photo I always carried – David at nine, sitting on my parked Harley, wearing my too-big helmet and the biggest smile I’d ever seen.
What happened to that boy? What had his mother told him over the years that transformed his love into such hatred? Or was it me? Had my refusal to give up the only life that made sense to me been the ultimate selfishness?
Morning came with no answers, just the grim determination to continue. I swallowed my pain medication dry, strapped my duffel to the bike, and headed west.
Three days later, I crossed into Oregon. The pain was getting worse, making it harder to control the bike. I knew I should stop, rest, maybe even find a hospital. But the need to see my son, to make him understand before it was too late, drove me forward.
I found his address through an old army buddy who’d become a private investigator. It was a nice suburban neighborhood in Portland – neat houses with manicured lawns, the kind of place I’d never belonged. I parked my Harley a block away, not wanting to announce my arrival with the rumble that had defined my life.
Walking up his driveway, I felt like an intruder. My boots seemed too heavy on the pristine concrete. My leather vest, adorned with VMA patches and service ribbons, looked alien against the backdrop of American normalcy.
I’d rehearsed what I would say a thousand times on the road, but standing there, all words deserted me. What right did I have to disrupt his life? To force him to confront a father he clearly despised?
Before I could retreat, the garage door opened. A car backed out – a sensible sedan – and there he was. My son. Older now, thirty-two, with my jawline but his mother’s eyes. He was wearing a button-down shirt and tie, likely heading to work. He didn’t see me at first, focused on backing out.
When he finally noticed me standing there, the shock on his face quickly hardened into something cold and unrecognizable.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded, not bothering to get out of the car.
I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. All the speeches I’d prepared evaporated.
“I’m already late for work,” he said, his voice clipped. “And I have nothing to say to you.”
“I’m dying, David,” I said finally, the words hanging in the morning air between us.
He stared at me for a long moment, his expression unchanged. “We’re all dying,” he replied coldly. “Some of us just choose to hurry it along by living recklessly.”
The words hit harder than any physical blow. I stepped back, nodding slowly. “I see.”
“No, you don’t see,” he snapped, suddenly angry. “You never saw anything beyond your precious motorcycles and your biker brothers. Not Mom. Not me. Nothing.”
“That’s not true,” I said quietly. “You were everything to me.”
He laughed, a harsh sound nothing like the joyful giggle I remembered. “Right. That’s why you chose that lifestyle over us. Why you couldn’t even show up to visitations like a normal father in normal clothes. Why you missed my college graduation, my wedding—”
“I wasn’t invited,” I interrupted, feeling a flash of my own anger. “Your mother made sure of that.”
“Don’t you dare blame her,” David hissed. “She protected me from you and your death cult. Do you know how many of your ‘brothers’ I watched die? How many times Mom came home from the ER crying because she couldn’t save another selfish biker who thought the rules of safety didn’t apply to him?”
I wanted to defend myself, to explain that motorcycles had saved me when nothing else could. That the brotherhood had given me purpose when the world had discarded me. That I’d stayed alive for him.
But looking at him – this stranger with my blood – I knew it wouldn’t matter. The narrative had been written long ago, and I wasn’t the hero in his story.
“I just wanted to see you one last time,” I said finally. “To tell you that I’ve always loved you, even when I couldn’t show it right.”
Something flickered in his eyes – uncertainty, perhaps. Or simply impatience. He glanced at his watch.
“I have to go,” he said, but made no move to leave.
I nodded, reaching into my vest pocket. “Can I leave this with you? You don’t have to read it. Just… keep it. Please.”
I held out an envelope – my final words to him, written during long nights on the road. Explanations. Apologies. The truth about why I became who I was.
He looked at it like it might bite him, then reluctantly took it. “Is that all?”
The dismissal was clear. I was being given my exit cue, allowed to make my final bow before being written out of the script entirely.
“Yeah,” I said, suddenly bone-tired. “That’s all.”
I turned to leave, each step heavier than the last. Behind me, I heard his car door close, the engine revving as he prepared to drive away. Then, unexpectedly, his voice again.
“How long?”
I stopped but didn’t turn around. “Doctors say three months. Probably less now.”
Silence stretched between us, filled with thirty-two years of misunderstandings and missed chances.
“Where are you staying?” he asked finally.
“Haven’t figured that out yet,” I admitted. “Just got to town.”
More silence. I could feel him wrestling with something – duty, perhaps. Or simply the guilt of sending a dying man away.
“There’s a diner on Morrison Street,” he said eventually. “Dot’s Place. I’ll be there at noon. One hour, that’s all I can spare.”
Before I could respond, he was gone, the sedan disappearing down the quiet suburban street, leaving me alone with a promise that felt as fragile as my remaining health.
I made my way back to my Harley, each step sending pain shooting through my body. The cancer was advancing faster than the doctors had predicted, accelerated by the grueling cross-country ride. I wasn’t sure I had three weeks left, let alone three months.
But I had noon. I had one hour. It was more than I’d dared hope for.
I found a motel near the diner – another anonymous room in the countless ones I’d occupied over decades of wandering. I took a shower, swallowed more pain medication, and contemplated changing out of my riding gear. Would David respond better to me in “civilian” clothes? Would hiding who I was make our last conversation easier for him?
In the end, I chose honesty. I was a biker. Had been for forty years. If we were going to have any real conversation, it had to start with truth, not pretense.
I arrived at Dot’s Place twenty minutes early, choosing a booth near the back where I could see the door. The waitress – an older woman with kind eyes – took one look at me and seemed to understand.
“Coffee while you wait, honey?” she asked.
“Please,” I nodded, grateful for the simple kindness.
I sat there watching the minute hand crawl around the clock face, wondering if David would actually show up or if he’d thought better of it. Would this be one final disappointment in a lifetime of them?
At exactly noon, the bell above the door chimed, and there he was. He’d changed out of his work clothes into jeans and a polo shirt. He scanned the diner, his expression guarded, until he spotted me.
He walked over slowly, as if approaching something dangerous. I tried to stand, but pain shot through me, forcing me back down. He noticed my grimace.
“Are you okay?” he asked, the first hint of genuine concern I’d heard from him in years.
“Just the usual,” I tried to smile. “Getting old isn’t for the weak.”
He slid into the booth across from me, studying my face. “You look different.”
“Cancer does that,” I replied simply.
The waitress returned, sensing the tension. “Ready to order, gentlemen?”
David ordered a club sandwich. I asked for soup, the only thing I could keep down these days. When she left, silence fell between us again.
“You read my letter?” I asked finally.
He nodded, not meeting my eyes. “Some of it.”
“And?”
He sighed, rubbing his temples. “What do you want me to say, Dad? That I understand now? That I forgive you for choosing that life over us?”
“I never chose it over you,” I said quietly. “The road saved me when nothing else could. After Vietnam—”
“I know, I know,” he cut me off. “The war broke you. The motorcycle fixed you. I’ve heard it all before. But what about us? What about Mom? We needed you too.”
“I was broken, David. For a long time. The man I was before the war… he didn’t come back. The man who did… he needed the wind and the brotherhood to keep the demons at bay.”
“So you chose your healing over your family?”
The accusation hung between us, and for the first time, I truly heard it. Not as an attack, but as the wounded cry of a child who felt abandoned.
“I thought I could have both,” I admitted. “I was wrong. And by the time I realized it, your mother had already decided I was a danger to you.”
“You were,” he said flatly. “Every time you got on that motorcycle, you risked making me fatherless.”
“And yet here I am, dying of cancer, not a motorcycle accident,” I said with grim irony. “Life’s funny that way.”
Our food arrived, interrupting the tense exchange. David ate mechanically while I stirred my soup, taking occasional small sips that burned going down.
“That call,” I said eventually. “The one you made during the storm. Why after all these years?”
He set down his sandwich, looking uncomfortable. “I saw an accident on I-5. A biker went down. It was… bad.” He swallowed hard. “He was wearing a vest like yours. For a minute, I thought… I thought it was you.”
Understanding dawned. “So you called to make sure I was still alive, just so you could tell me you wished I wasn’t?”
He had the grace to look ashamed. “I was upset. Seeing that man, thinking it was you… it brought everything back. All the worry, all the nights Mom paced the floor waiting for a call that you’d been killed.”
“I rode for forty years without a major accident,” I pointed out. “Turns out cigarettes were more dangerous, and I didn’t even smoke.”
“It’s not funny,” he snapped.
“No,” I agreed. “None of this is funny. A father and son sitting like strangers because one couldn’t understand the other’s choices.”
“Your choices affected us all,” David insisted. “Every time you chose the road, you chose against us.”
I nodded slowly. “Maybe. Or maybe I chose to stay alive for you the only way I knew how.”
I reached into my vest pocket and pulled out a small, worn photograph – the same one I’d looked at in the motel. I slid it across the table.
“Do you remember this day?”
He picked it up reluctantly. It showed him sitting on my parked Harley, grinning beneath my helmet.
“Vaguely,” he said, but his eyes lingered on the image.
“You begged me for weeks to sit on the bike,” I told him. “Your mother finally agreed, as long as it wasn’t running. You wore that helmet for the rest of the day, wouldn’t take it off even for dinner.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips, then vanished. “Kids don’t understand danger.”
“No, but they understand joy,” I countered. “That day, you weren’t afraid of the motorcycle. You didn’t see it as a death machine. You saw it as freedom, adventure, everything good about your old man wrapped up in chrome and steel.”
He handed the photo back without comment.
“When did it change?” I asked. “When did you start hating what I was?”
He was quiet for a long moment. “Mom’s friend Jean lost her husband. Motorcycle accident. I was maybe eleven. She came to stay with us for a while. I heard her crying at night, heard her and Mom talking about how selfish bikers are, how they only think about their own freedom, never about the people left behind.”
“And you started seeing me differently.”
He nodded. “Then Marcus died. Mom came home from the hospital… I’d never seen her like that. Broken. She kept saying, ‘I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t save another one.'”
“Marcus was hit by a drunk driver delivering toys to sick kids,” I said softly. “He died doing something good.”
“He died because he was on a motorcycle,” David countered. “If he’d been in a car, he might have survived.”
There it was – the fundamental divide. Two perspectives that could never quite reconcile.
“I’m not here to defend motorcycles,” I said finally. “Or to justify my choices. I’m here because I’m running out of road, son. And I couldn’t bear the thought of the last words between us being what you said during that call.”
Something in my voice must have reached him. He looked at me – really looked at me – perhaps seeing for the first time how thin I’d become, how the disease had hollowed me out.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” he admitted. “About bikers deserving to die. It was cruel.”
“But you meant it,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
He didn’t deny it. “I spent my life afraid of losing you to that motorcycle. Afraid of becoming the kid whose dad died doing something reckless. Then angry when you wouldn’t give it up, even for me.”
“I couldn’t,” I said simply. “It wasn’t about rebellion or freedom or any of the things people think. After the war, it was the only thing that quieted my mind. The only time I felt… human again.”
“PTSD,” he said. Not a question.
I nodded. “They didn’t call it that back then. They just called it weak.”
“There were other treatments. Therapy. Medication.”
“Not in 1972 in rural Michigan,” I countered. “For guys like me, it was drink until you forget, or find something else that drowns out the noise. I chose the road.”
Our hour was almost up. I could see him checking his watch, feeling the pull of his real life – the one that had no place for an aging biker with cancer.
“I have something for you,” I said, reaching into my inside pocket. “Last gift, I promise.”
I withdrew a small box and slid it across the table. He hesitated before opening it.
Inside was the silver Zippo lighter I’d carried through Vietnam. It was engraved with my unit insignia and had saved my life once when it deflected a piece of shrapnel.
“I don’t smoke,” he said, confused.
“Neither do I,” I smiled faintly. “That lighter got me home when nothing else did. Carried it every day since. Thought maybe… when I’m gone… you might want something that was part of me. The real me, not just the biker.”
He closed the box but didn’t push it away. “I should go.”
I nodded, suddenly exhausted. The pain was returning as the medication wore off. “Thank you for coming. It means more than you know.”
He stood, awkward now that the moment of parting had arrived. “Where will you go? After this?”
I shrugged. “Back to Michigan, probably. Die among the few brothers I have left.”
“Alone?” he asked, and I thought I heard genuine concern.
“Used to it,” I said. “Road’s a lonely place sometimes.”
He shifted his weight, internal conflict visible on his face. “There’s a VA hospital here. Good cancer center.”
I looked up at him, surprised. “You suggesting I stay?”
“I’m suggesting you get proper care,” he said carefully. “If you want.”
It wasn’t forgiveness. It wasn’t reconciliation. But it was something – a small crack in the wall thirty years in the making.
“I’ll think about it,” I promised.
He nodded, picking up the box with the lighter. “I have to go. But… maybe we could talk again. Before you… before…”
“Before I kick off?” I supplied with a small smile. “I’d like that.”
He almost smiled back. Almost. “Goodbye, Dad.”
“See you down the road, son,” I replied, using the old biker farewell out of habit.
I watched him walk away, this man who had once been my little boy. He paused at the door, looked back briefly, then disappeared into the afternoon light.
The waitress came over, sympathy in her eyes. “Refill, honey?”
“No, thank you,” I said. “Think I’ll just sit a minute.”
She nodded, placing the check face down on the table. “Take your time.”
I sat there long after she left, thinking about roads taken and not taken. About choices made when there were no good options. About a son who might, just might, be willing to hear my side of the story before it was too late.
The cancer would take me soon. That was certain. But maybe, just maybe, I could make peace with my son before I made that final ride.
I paid the check and walked slowly back to my motorcycle, each step painful but purposeful. The Oregon sky was clearing after a morning shower, sun breaking through the clouds.
I didn’t know if David would actually call again. Didn’t know if this fragile bridge we’d started to build would hold. But for the first time in years, I felt something I hadn’t expected to feel again in this life.
Hope.
I swung my leg over my Harley, the movement familiar despite the pain. The engine roared to life beneath me, that distinctive rumble that had been the soundtrack to my adult life.
Maybe I would check out that VA hospital. Maybe I would stay in Portland a while longer. The road had been my home for forty years, but perhaps it was time for one last detour.
After all, every rider knows the journey matters more than the destination. And this journey wasn’t over quite yet.
