No one said anything. Fifteen veterans in leather jackets sat still, staring at the small boy in the dinosaur shirt who had just urged us to kill someone like he was asking for more ketchup. His mom was in the bathroom and didn’t realize that her son had gone to the Denny’s table that looked the frightening. She had no idea what he was about to say.
“Please,” he murmured, his voice low yet forceful. “I have seven dollars.” He grabbed some crumpled up bills out of his pocket and put them on the table between the coffee cups. His hands were shaking, but his gaze were serious.
Big Mike, our club president and grandfather of four, knelt down. “Hey, what’s your name?”
The youngster replied softly, “Tyler.” “Mom will be back soon.” Are you going to help or not?
“Tyler, why do you want us to hurt your father?” Mike asked in a low voice.
The boy tugged his shirt collar down. There were faint purple fingerprints on his neck. “He said that if I tell anyone, he’ll hurt Mom more than he hurts me.” “But you ride motorcycles. You’re tough. You can put a stop to him.
That’s when we spotted everything else: how he leaned to the left, the brace on his wrist, and the faded yellow mark on his jaw that someone had tried to cover up with cosmetics. Before anyone could answer, a woman came out of the bathroom. She was gorgeous, yet she walked slowly as if she were hurt. She seemed worried when she saw Tyler at our table.
“Tyler! I’m sorry that he’s making you mad. We all saw her wince when she ran over. We also saw that she had a lot of lipstick on her wrist, but it was smudged just enough to expose bruises that looked like her son’s.
“Not a problem at all, ma’am,” Mike said as he rose up slowly. “Why don’t you both come along?” We were just ready to eat dessert. It’s our treat. It wasn’t a request.
She sat down, but only after getting Tyler near. “Tyler,” Mike asked, “is someone hurting you and your mother?”
She lost it. “Please,” she murmured softly. “You don’t get it. He’ll kill us.
Mike replied softly, “Ma’am, look at this table.” “Every man here has been in a war.” We have all kept bullies away from people who don’t deserve it. That’s what we do. “Is someone hurting you right now?”
We only needed her wordless, sad nod to get it. A man in a polo shirt jumped out of a booth across the restaurant, his face red with rage. “Sarah! What the heck are you doing talking to these strange people? And you, kid! “Come here right now!”
He started running toward our table.
Big Mike got up right away. He didn’t shout. He didn’t clench his fist. He just become a mountain. “Son,” he said in a low, threatening voice that cut through the noise of the diner. “I think you should go back to your booth,” I said. We’re having ice cream with your family.
“No, they aren’t!” The man, who was certainly the stepdad, spit. “That’s my wife and kid!”
“No,” Mike said as he took a small step forward. The other fourteen bikers stood up discreetly behind him.
“That mother and child are now secure with us. You won’t be able to take them anywhere. You will go back to your table, pay, and then leave. And you won’t follow them. Do you get it?
The man looked at the wall of leather and wrath that had risen up between him and the people he had hurt. He was a bully, and bullies are weak. He stammered, grew pale, and raced away.
The fight was over, but the war was only getting started. We wouldn’t let them go. We took Tyler to the clubhouse, and one of our lawyers, whom we call “Shark,” went with Sarah to file a restraining order. We got him the biggest chocolate milkshake he had ever seen. He looked like a little boy for the first time all day, not a stressed-out client.
We didn’t kill the stepdad. What we did was much worse. He was gone. Shark and some of our more convincing brothers went to see him one last time. They didn’t do anything to him. They only told him what would happen to him in the future. This included a long number of assault charges that we would make sure were upheld, witness protection for Sarah and Tyler, and fifteen veterans who would watch his every move as if it were their own. He was gone when the sun came up.
Not only did we get rid of the beast, but we also helped heal the wounds. We pooled our money and got Sarah and Tyler a new, safe place to live on the opposite side of town. We helped them move, and our noisy Harleys were the scariest moving truck escort ever.
We became Tyler’s uncles. We took him to baseball games. We taught him how to fix an engine. We went to his school’s parent-teacher night, when a line of big guys in leather told everyone that he loved and protected them. We taught him what real men do: they protect, not hunt.
A few months later, Tyler gave Big Mike a picture at a picnic at the clubhouse. There was a picture of a gigantic, happy T-Rex with a motorcycle vest standing over a little youngster. Tyler said, “That’s you.” “You scared away the bad dinosaur, T-Rex.”
Mike smiled, but his eyes were wet. He took out the seven crumpled dollars from his wallet, which he had kept flat and safe. He said in a husky voice, “Best payment I ever got for a job.”
Tyler didn’t get the hitman he wanted to hire that day. He got a lot better. He had a family.