I started breathing, feeling my heart beat fast, as the biker walked toward me, his sunglasses aimed my way, then he abruptly stopped with a strange jerk.

He studied me, his face impassive, standing like he was caught in suspended animation, and I studied him right back.

I didn’t know bikers. I’d never met a biker. Bikers scared me. They did this because they looked scary. They also did this because I’d heard they were scary. They had girlfriends who wore tube tops and they had knives on their belts and they drove too fast and too dangerously and got in bar brawls and held grudges against other bikers and did things to be put in jail and all sorts of stuff that was scary.

As these thoughts tumbled through my head, he came unstuck, started moving my way, and in a deep, biker voice, he called, “You got a problem?”

Travis squealed again, pumping his arms, then he giggled as the big biker guy continued coming our way.

And as he did, slowly, my eyes moved to the traffic. It was bumper to bumper, crawling along at what couldn’t be over twenty miles an hour. Looking at it, I knew I’d stood there for at least ten minutes, on the phone, then not, baby on my hip, car with a flat.

And not one single person stopped to help.

Not one.

I turned my head back to the biker who was now standing three feet away, his eyes downcast, his sunglasses aimed at my baby boy.

He’d stopped to help.

“I… have a flat,” I forced out.

The sunglasses came to me and I felt my head tip to the side when they did because I got a look at him up close.

And what I saw made me feel strange.

Did I know him?

It felt like I knew him.

I screwed up my eyes to look closer at him.

He was a biker. I didn’t know any bikers, so I didn’t know him. I couldn’t.

Could I?

“You got Triple A?” he asked.

I wished.

“No,” I answered.

He lifted a black leather gloved hand. “Give me the keys, stand back from the road. I’ll take care of it.”

He’d take care of it?

Just like that?

Should I let a biker change my tire?

Better question: Did I have any choice?

Since the answer to the better question was definite, I said, “I… well, that’s very kind.”

At this point, Travis made a lunge toward the biker. I struggled to keep him close but my boy was strong and he tended to get what he wanted, and not only because he was strong.

Just then, he got what he wanted.

The biker came forward, gloved hands up, caught Travis at his sides and pulled him gently from my arm.