Part 2: A Memphis Biker Club President With a Scar Across His Face Showed His New Prospect a Stuffed Bear in His Saddlebag and Wouldn’t Explain Why — 18 Months Later, the Same Bear Was in the Prospect’s Bag With a Note
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What I am telling you, I am telling you with the explicit permission of every named person — Bill, Caleb, and Caleb’s mother Rebecca, who I drove to Tupelo to interview in person on a Sunday in July.
The unwritten rule has been the same since November of 1995.
Every member of the Saint Christopher Riders, Memphis chapter, must carry “something soft” in his or her saddlebag at all times. The “something soft” has to be a stuffed animal, a plush toy, a small fleece blanket, or a clean folded baby blanket. It cannot be a piece of clothing. It cannot be a towel. It has to be the kind of object that, in the hands of a frightened child, would feel like comfort instead of practicality.
The rule is not in the bylaws.
The rule is not in any written document.
The rule is taught to every new prospect by his sponsor in the second week of his prospect period. The new prospect is told to acquire a soft object, place it in his saddlebag, and never remove it.
The reason is not explained until the prospect asks.
Caleb asked Bill in the first month of his prospect period. They were standing in the parking lot of the clubhouse — a converted auto-body shop on Jackson Avenue. It was a Tuesday night in October of 2021. Caleb’s sponsor, a sixty-three-year-old retired plumber named Doc, was twenty feet away laughing at something with another patch.
Caleb said, “Bill. Sir. I’ve been carrying it. I’m not asking to stop. I just want to understand why.”
Bill looked at him for a long moment.
Bill walked over to his Harley. He unlocked the right saddlebag. He pulled out a small velveteen bear.
The bear was about eight inches tall. Worn to the cotton in patches across its belly. One ear half-detached. A pink ribbon around its neck that was now grey-pink. Two button eyes — one black, one mismatched and replaced at some point with a small brown one.
Bill held it in his palm.
He said, “Caleb. November of 1995. I’d been out of the Marines four years. I was thirty-one. I was riding home from a job in Olive Branch. I was on Highway 78. There was a wreck. A pickup truck had crossed the median and clipped a Honda Civic. The Civic was on its roof in the median grass.”
He said, “I pulled over. I was the second car to stop. The driver of the Civic was conscious but pinned. There was a little girl in the back seat in a child seat. She was upside down. She was about four years old. She was screaming.”
He said, “I got the back door open. I got her out. The medics weren’t there yet. I had her in my arms in the median grass next to my Harley. She was screaming and screaming. She was hurt — a small cut above her eyebrow, bleeding, scared more than hurt. I had nothing in the world to give her. I had a leather jacket and a wrench and a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of water.”
He said, “I tried to sing to her. I am not a man you want singing to you, son.”
He said, “An EMT arrived nine minutes later. Took the little girl from me. Cut her shirt off. Patched her up. She kept screaming for her mama, which was the woman in the front of the Civic, who was also being cut out at that point.”
He said, “I went home that night. I cried in my kitchen. I was thirty-one years old, I had been to Iraq, I had not cried in seven years, and I cried in my kitchen because I had nothing to hand a four-year-old who was screaming on a roadside.”
He said, “I bought this bear at a Walgreens in Olive Branch the next morning. I put it in my saddlebag. I have not ridden a single mile without something soft in my saddlebag in twenty-eight years.”
He looked up at Caleb.
He said, “Two months after the accident, when I came back to chapter, I told the boys. I said, ‘Brothers, I have a request. I want every one of us to carry something soft. Just in case.’ They voted yes. We have done it ever since.”
He said, “We have used those soft things forty-six times that we know of. Highway accidents. House fires. A train derailment in 2009. A school evacuation in 2014. We hand them to kids. We don’t ask them back.”
He said, “Soft means soft. That’s what soft means.”
Caleb said, “Sir. I will keep one in my saddlebag for the rest of my life.”
Bill said, “I know you will, son.”
What Caleb did not know — what nobody in the club knew except Bill — was that Bill had been waiting eighteen months to give him exactly this speech.
Caleb finished his prospect period on a Saturday night in April of 2023. The patching ceremony was held in the clubhouse. There were thirty-seven men and three women in attendance, all in cuts. The club’s chaplain — a sixty-eight-year-old retired pastor named Robert — gave a short prayer. Bill called Caleb up to the front.
Bill handed Caleb his full back patch. The Memphis chapter rocker. The center patch with the Saint Christopher medal in the middle. The small bottom rocker that said MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE.
Caleb shook Bill’s hand.
The room broke into applause and a few wolf whistles.
Bill held up one hand. The room went quiet.
He said, “Brothers. Sisters. We have one last bit of business with this prospect.”
He said, “Caleb. Walk out to your bike with me.”
The whole room walked out.
Caleb’s Harley was parked at the front of the clubhouse where his sponsor Doc had moved it. Bill walked over to it. He gestured at the right saddlebag.
He said, “Open it, brother.”
Caleb opened it.
Caleb had been carrying a small grey plush rabbit in his saddlebag for eighteen months. He had bought it at a Cracker Barrel in 2021 because it had felt like the kind of object he would want to hand a frightened child.
The grey rabbit was not in the saddlebag.
Sitting on top of his tools, in the place where the rabbit had been, was a small velveteen bear.
About eight inches tall. Worn to the cotton in patches. One ear half-detached. A grey-pink ribbon around its neck. Two button eyes — one black, one a slightly mismatched brown.
Caleb stood there.
The forty members of the Saint Christopher Riders stood behind him in a semicircle in the parking lot.
Caleb reached into the bag. He picked up the bear with both hands.
There was a small folded note tied to its left arm with a piece of black leather cord.
He untied the note.
He read it.
The note, in Bill’s careful block printing, said:
Brother. This bear has lived in fourteen saddlebags in twenty-eight years. Now it lives in yours. Carry it for as long as it serves you. Pass it to the next prospect when you know who it should go to. Soft means soft. — Bill
Caleb looked up at Bill.
He said, “President. This is — “
He could not finish the sentence.
Bill said, “Brother. We hand it forward. That’s the whole thing. We hand it forward.”
Doc stepped forward and put a hand on Caleb’s shoulder. The other men clapped, slowly at first, then properly.
Caleb put the bear back in his saddlebag.
He did not know yet that he was holding a piece of his own life.
Two months later, in late June, Caleb was at a small club gathering at Bill’s house in north Memphis. Bill kept a backyard with a fire pit and a brick patio and a few folding camp chairs. About fifteen members and their spouses were over for a Friday night.
Caleb was on his second beer. He was sitting next to Bill at the fire.
He said, “Bill. I’ve been thinking about something.”
Bill said, “Yeah?”
Caleb said, “The accident. November of 1995. The little girl. I wanted to ask you. Do you know what happened to her?”
Bill stirred the fire with a long stick.
He took a slow breath.
He said, “Brother. Why are you asking.”
Caleb said, “I don’t know. I just — every time I look at the bear, I think about her. I want to know if she’s okay.”
Bill set the stick down.
He said, “Caleb.”
Caleb said, “Yes, sir.”
Bill said, “Look at me, son.”
Caleb looked at him.
Bill said, “You are looking at her.”
Caleb did not understand.
He said, “I’m — what?”
Bill said, “The little girl. November 12th, 1995. Highway 78 outside of Olive Branch. The Honda Civic in the median. The four-year-old in the back seat with the cut above her left eyebrow.”
He paused.
He said, “That was you, son.”
Caleb sat very still.
He said, “Bill. That’s not — that can’t — “
Bill said, “Caleb. Your mother’s name is Rebecca Holloman. She was twenty-six years old that night. She was driving a 1994 Honda Civic. She was on her way back from her sister’s house in Holly Springs. She was hit by a man named Larry Vance who had crossed the median in a Ford F-150. She was pinned in the front seat for forty-two minutes. The medics got her out. She had a broken collarbone, three broken ribs, and a punctured lung. She lived. She raised you alone after that.”
He said, “You were in the back seat. Four years old. You had a cut above your left eyebrow that needed three stitches at the hospital that night. The cut is the scar you still have. I know because I see it every time you take your helmet off.”
Caleb’s hand went to his eyebrow.
The small scar his mother had never been able to explain.
Bill said, “I have known who you were since the day you submitted your prospect application three years ago. Your last name on the form. Your address. Your age. Everything fit. I called your mother that night to make sure I wasn’t crazy. She remembered me. She remembered the biker who got you out of the car.”
He said, “I did not tell you. I did not want to bias your prospect period. I did not want you to think you had been let in because of who you were. I wanted you to earn it. I wanted you to be voted in by the brothers based on you.”
He said, “You did. You earned it. They voted unanimously. They don’t know any of this either. Doc doesn’t know. Robert doesn’t know. Nobody knows.”
He said, “I waited until you were a full patch. I put the bear in your saddlebag because — Caleb — that is your bear. I bought it for you twenty-eight years ago in a Walgreens because I had been holding you for fifteen minutes screaming and I had nothing to give you. I held it back for myself for fourteen years. I gave it to a young brother in 2009 who carried it for six years. He gave it to a younger brother in 2015. He gave it to the next prospect after him. It has been in fourteen saddlebags.”
He said, “It has come home, son.”
Caleb sat in the camp chair next to the fire and could not speak for a long time.
Bill did not push him.
Eventually Caleb said, “Why did you join my mother’s club. Why did you come back.”
Bill said, “Brother. I didn’t join her club. You joined mine. You found your way to the people who were already looking for you. That’s how God does this work. I just had to keep my mouth shut and wait.”
I drove down to Tupelo to talk to Rebecca Holloman on a Sunday in July.
She was fifty-four. A small woman with dark hair turning grey. She worked as a nurse at a long-term care facility outside of town. She lived alone in a small house with a fenced backyard and a Carolina dog named Janie she had adopted in 2018.
I sat at her kitchen table.
She poured me coffee.
She said, “Sienna. I have been thinking about that biker for almost thirty years. I never got his name. I tried to find him in 2003 when Caleb was twelve and asking questions about his scar. I called the Memphis police. I called the EMT service. Nobody could give me a name.”
She said, “When Bill Underwood called me three years ago and told me who he was — and that my son had submitted a prospect application to his club — I sat on this kitchen floor for an hour.”
She said, “He asked me for permission to test Caleb. To not tell him. To let him earn his way in. He said he would tell him when the time was right.”
She said, “I told him yes.”
She said, “I told him yes because I have wanted somebody to give my son a part of his own story for thirty years. I have not been able to give him the whole thing because I was unconscious for most of it. The biker who held him in a median for fifteen minutes had the part of the story I didn’t have.”
She said, “Three years later my son has the bear that man bought for him in 1995.”
She said, “Sienna. Some debts are not paid in money.”
That was eighteen months ago.
Caleb still rides with the Saint Christopher Riders. He has been promoted to the position of road captain. He runs the toy drive in November now — a job Bill personally handed off to him a year ago.
The bear lives in his saddlebag.
He is going to keep it for as long as it serves him, and then, one day, he is going to put it in the saddlebag of a younger brother who will not know what he is being given until he is ready to know.
That is the whole rule.
That is the whole rule.
Last month I went on a club ride with the Memphis chapter to a children’s hospital in Jackson, Tennessee. They had brought sixty boxes of toys for the pediatric oncology ward.
Caleb rode at the front of the formation, behind Bill.
When they parked in the lot of the hospital, Bill got off his Harley and walked over to Caleb’s bike. He pointed at Caleb’s saddlebag.
He said, “Brother. Open it.”
Caleb opened it.
The bear was inside. Twenty-nine years old now. Even more worn.
Bill picked it up.
He held it for a moment.
He said, “I bought this for you when you were four years old, son.”
He handed it back.
He said, “Now go give the new ones to the kids inside.”
Caleb walked into the hospital with a box of brand-new toys under his arm and the old bear back in his saddlebag.
A six-year-old girl with no hair and an IV stand walked over to him in the pediatric lobby. She looked at his patches.
She said, “Are you a real biker?”
Caleb knelt down.
He said, “Yes, ma’am. I am. And every one of us is carrying something soft for somebody just like you.”
He pulled a brand-new teddy bear from the box.
He said, “This one is yours.”
She took it in both hands.
She held it against her chest.
Bill stood at the door of the lobby and watched.
He did not say anything.
Some debts are not paid in money.
Some are paid in rides.
If you want to see the bear now — twenty-nine years old, two button eyes, fur worn to the cotton in patches, riding in the saddlebag of a road captain who used to be a four-year-old in a Honda Civic on Highway 78 — I’ve shared the photograph the club secretary took the night of the patching ceremony in the comments.
