The biker who lived at the end of our cul-de-sac watched my nine-year-old daughter ride a cardboard-and-beer-can pretend Harley back and forth along the street for three Saturdays straight — and then, on the fourth Saturday, he knocked on my front door at six-eighteen p.m. with something sitting in the bed of his truck that left my daughter completely speechless on the porch for ten full seconds.
First, I need you to picture our cul-de-sac.
It is a short residential street in suburban Lakeland, Florida, just off Combee Road on the eastern side of town. Eight small concrete-block homes painted pastel beige, cream, and faded yellow. Mature live oak trees and palms. Two pickup trucks parked in every second driveway. A little American flag hanging from the third house. The kind of Florida cul-de-sac where the heat is already rippling above the pavement by ten a.m. in June, and the only noise for most of the day is a window air-conditioning unit humming somewhere beyond a fence.
I am Goldie’s mother. My name is Renee. I am thirty-four. I work as a cashier at a Publix on South Florida Avenue and as a hostess at a Cracker Barrel near I-4 on weekends. I have been raising my daughter alone since the spring of 2019. We have lived on this cul-de-sac since 2021.
My daughter’s name is Marigold. Everyone calls her Goldie. She is nine years old. She has my dark brown hair, which I trim myself at our kitchen table because the least expensive children’s haircut in Lakeland costs twenty-two dollars, and we do not have twenty-two dollars to spare. She has her father’s hazel eyes — her father is somewhere in Georgia. She has a small, slender nine-year-old frame and the kind of complete, fearless confidence nine-year-old girls possess just before the world begins trying to take it from them.
She has loved motorcycles since she was four.
She can recognize a Sportster from a Road King from fifty feet away. She can explain the difference between a Shovelhead and an Evo engine simply by hearing them idle. Since the previous May, she had been putting away four dollars of her weekly allowance toward buying a Harley.
She had figured out that, at that pace, she would have one thousand dollars in twenty-eight years.
She was not willing to wait that long.
So, on a Saturday morning in early June, she pulled a large brown Amazon box from our recycling bin and spent the whole morning at the kitchen table with my scissors, a roll of duct tape, two Sharpies, and a little bottle of red poster paint from Dollar Tree.
By eleven a.m., she had made — entirely from cardboard — a hand-cut Harley-Davidson gas tank. It was painted red. HARLEY-DAVIDSON was written across the top in white block lettering. In the center was a small hand-drawn bar-and-shield emblem she had copied freehand from a YouTube thumbnail.
She attached the cardboard tank with duct tape to the crossbar of her 2002 Schwinn ten-speed bicycle.
She zip-tied two empty silver Budweiser cans, which I had not realized she was collecting from our recycling, to the back axle as “exhaust pipes.”
She glued a black foam handlebar grip, taken from a broken handlebar in our neighbor Mr. Hutchinson’s garage, onto the right grip so it would resemble a Harley throttle.
She fastened a tiny American flag — made from a Popsicle stick and colored with Sharpie — to the rear rack.
At eleven-fifteen, she pushed the bicycle down our driveway.
She climbed onto it.
She began to pedal.
With her cheeks puffed out and her face glowing, she made loud vroom-vroom noises with her little mouth, loud enough to be heard three houses away. It was the kind of simple, unburdened nine-year-old happiness that I had not managed, during three years as a single mother working two jobs in Lakeland, Florida, to give my daughter with the money we had.
The fourth property from ours on the left side of the cul-de-sac is a small white concrete-block building with a two-car garage and a hand-welded red metal sign above the bay door that says GUNNER CUSTOMS.
The owner is a fifty-year-old biker named Gunner Wallace.
Six feet one inch tall. Two hundred and twenty pounds. Bald head. A full, heavy gray beard. Both arms covered in old prison-style tattoo sleeves, so faded and blue that from the other side of the cul-de-sac they look almost solid. He has worked as a master Harley custom builder for sixteen years. He has been sober since 1996. He is exactly the kind of man my mother warned me about when we moved into the house, telling me not to allow Goldie to wave at him.
Goldie has waved to Gunner every day for the past three years.
At eleven-twenty, she rode her cardboard Harley past his open garage bay.
She lifted her free left hand and waved.
Gunner was seated on a folding stool near the front of the bay, holding a coffee cup in his massive tattoo-covered right hand.
He raised his hand and waved back.
Then he placed the coffee cup on the concrete floor.
He got to his feet.
For two hours that Saturday morning, he silently watched my nine-year-old daughter ride her homemade beer-can Harley up and down our cul-de-sac without speaking one word.
He watched her again the following Saturday.
He did the same thing the Saturday after that.
What Gunner Wallace created inside his garage between the second Saturday of June and the fourth Saturday of June 2024 — and what he lowered onto the concrete of our driveway at six-eighteen p.m. one Saturday evening while my daughter stood frozen on the porch in her pajamas for ten complete seconds — is the part of this story I have been unable to put into words for fourteen months. Because every afternoon at four-thirty since that day, my nine-year-old daughter has ridden one particular small custom bicycle past Gunner’s open garage bay, and the two of them have made one particular gesture with their hands as she passes.
PART 2:
I want to explain who Gunner Wallace was before he became the man living at the end of our cul-de-sac.
His full name is Garrett Wallace. People have called him Gunner since he was nineteen, when he earned the nickname during a period of his life that began in 1992 and ended in 1996 inside a state prison known as Polk Correctional Institution in Polk City, Florida. He served four years for an incident involving another man, a bar parking lot in Tampa, and a baseball bat he never should have had in his hands. He was released at twenty-three. He has stayed clean since the day he stepped through those gates.
He is fifty years old today. He stands six foot one. He weighs two hundred and twenty pounds. His head is shaved completely bald, and his full, heavy gray beard reaches the third button of his leather cut. Both of his arms are covered in old prison-style tattoo sleeves that have faded soft and blue over time — the kind of ink that does not come from a professional tattoo shop, but from a sewing needle, pen ink, and a man with three years and nothing else to occupy him.
He has worked as a master Harley-Davidson custom builder for sixteen years.
He began building custom motorcycles in 2008 inside a one-car garage near Crystal Lake Drive in Lakeland, using a credit card and a single MIG welder. By 2010, he had relocated to the small white concrete-block building on our cul-de-sac and personally welded the GUNNER CUSTOMS sign above the garage bay. According to the small handwritten ledger I have seen hanging on his shop wall, he has built one hundred and forty-three custom Harleys during those sixteen years.
From what I have personally observed across the cul-de-sac, his customers are mostly orthopedic surgeons from Tampa, dentists from Sarasota, a hedge-fund manager from Coral Gables who flies into Lakeland Linder every three months to collect a project bike, and the sort of wealthy middle-aged Florida men who purchase a hundred-and-eighty-thousand-dollar Harley and ride it only twice each year while returning from their lake house.
Gunner has been married to his wife, Cheryl, for twenty-two years. Cheryl is forty-eight. She works as a dental hygienist. They had a daughter named Hazel, who died in 2014 from a congenital heart defect when she was seven years old. From everything Cheryl has told me during the small number of conversations we have shared across the back fence over the years, Hazel had been fascinated by motorcycles since she was three. Hazel had constantly begged Gunner to teach her to ride a Harley once she became big enough.
She never became big enough.
In the eleven years since 2014, Gunner has not built a Harley for even one child belonging to any of his wealthy clients. According to something he told Cheryl across their kitchen table in May 2014 — Cheryl shared this with me, with her permission, in the spring of this year — Gunner had said, “Cheryl, I am not going to build motorcycles for rich men’s children who do not even want them. For the rest of my life, I am building bikes for the men who can afford to pay for the things their children will receive without appreciating them.”
During those eleven years, he had never ridden past a child on a bicycle who looked the way Hazel might have looked at nine.
He had never seen one.
Then he saw one on the first Saturday in June.
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PART 3
I want to tell you about the second Saturday of June.
Goldie rode her cardboard Harley around the cul-de-sac for three hours that morning. She had upgraded the cardboard between Saturdays. The gas tank now had a small painted skull on the rear-fender side that she had copied off a photograph of a real Harley fender she had pulled out of a magazine. She had added a second American flag. She had refined the vroom sound with what I can only describe as a thirty-six-hour personal practice regimen of listening to V-twin engines on YouTube and adjusting her mouth-shape to match.
She came past Gunner’s garage at eleven twenty-two.
She waved.
Gunner was standing in the open bay door with his coffee cup in his right hand.
He waved back.
Then he did something he had not done in the eight days of cardboard-Harley rides.
He walked out to the edge of his driveway.
He waited until Goldie circled back around. He held up his right hand. She braked, on the pedal-back brakes of her 2002 Schwinn, and she stopped at the curb.
She looked up at him.
He looked down at her.
I was watching from the front porch. I was watching because I am a single mother and I watch where my nine-year-old daughter is at all times when she is on the street. I had also been watching, for three years, every interaction my daughter had ever had with Gunner Wallace, because my own mother had told me to not let her wave at him, and I had been waiting in some quiet part of myself that I am only now able to name to see what kind of man Gunner Wallace actually was.
I was about to find out.
Gunner crouched down on the curb on his haunches in front of Goldie’s bike. He was eye level with her now. He set his coffee cup down on the asphalt beside him.
He pointed at the cardboard gas tank.
He said: “That’s a nice piece of work, kid.”
Goldie said: “Thanks. I made it myself.”
Gunner said: “I see that. What year is this Harley supposed to be?”
Goldie did not hesitate.
She said: “1998 Heritage Softail. Sequoia Yellow Pearl with black trim. Two-tone leather seat. The one in Cycle
World July issue 2003.”
Gunner looked at her.
He looked at the bicycle.
He looked back at her.
He said: “Kid. What’s your name?”
She said: “Marigold. People call me Goldie. I’m nine.”
He said: “Goldie. You ever sat on a real Harley?”
She shook her head.
He said: “You wanna?”
She nodded. She did not say anything. She just nodded.
He said: “Wait here.”
He stood up. He walked back into his garage. Sixty seconds later he rolled a custom 2018 Heritage Softail Sequoia Yellow Pearl, two-tone leather seat, the bike a customer had picked up the previous Friday and that Gunner was, by his own report later, just about to deliver across town that afternoon-Gunner rolled it out of the bay and parked it on the curb in front of my daughter.
He said: “Goldie. Hop on. I’m not gonna start it. Just sit”
She got off the cardboard Harley. She laid it down very carefully on the grass strip between the curb and the sidewalk. She walked over to the Heritage Softail. She put one foot on the left peg. She swung her leg over the seat the way she had been watching people do it on YouTube for five years.
She sat down on the leather seat of a sixty-thousand-dollar custom Heritage Softail in Sequoia Yellow Pearl.
She put both her small hands on the ape-hanger handlebars.
She closed her eyes.
She made the vroom sound with her mouth.
For exactly four seconds.
She opened her eyes.
She said: “Mister Gunner. Thank you. That was the best thing that ever happened in my whole life”
She got off the bike. Very carefully. She did not scratch a single inch of the paint.
She picked up her cardboard Harley off the grass.
She got back on it.
She started pedaling again.
She made the vroom sound the way you make the vroom sound when you have just heard, in your head, what a 2018 Heritage Softail actually sounds like.
Gunner watched her ride back up the cul-de-sac.
He picked up his coffee cup off the asphalt.
He went back into his garage.
He did not come out for three hours.
PART 4
I am going to tell you, because Cheryl told me, what Gunner did in his garage between Saturday afternoon, June 8th, and Saturday afternoon, June 22nd, 2024.
He did not deliver the Heritage Softail to the customer that afternoon. He texted the customer a heart surgeon in Tampa named Dr. Petrosian and told him there was a fabrication issue and the bike would be ready Monday. Dr. Petrosian, who is sixty-one years old and a very patient man, said okay.
Gunner spent the rest of Saturday afternoon at a Goodwill on Memorial Boulevard, where he bought a used twenty-four-inch BMX-style bicycle frame for eleven dollars.
He spent Sunday morning at the Lakeland Harley-Davidson dealership where he has had a working relationship since 2009. He bought, at parts cost, two used items from their backroom inventory: one fuel-tank emblem off a 1998 Heritage Softail that had been parted out for insurance reasons in 2019, and one small section of chrome exhaust pipe from the same parts bike.
He bought, full price, one quart of Sequoia Yellow Pearl factory Harley paint.
He spent Sunday afternoon back in his garage on the twenty-four-inch BMX frame.
He stripped it to bare metal. He welded a custom crossbar plate to it that would hold a hand-cut steel gas-tank cover the same shape and dimensions as a 1998 Heritage Softail tank, scaled down to roughly forty percent. He cut the tank cover out of sheet steel in his garage on the Saturday night with a plasma cutter. He hand-welded the seams. He ground them smooth on Sunday.
He primered it on Sunday night.
He laid down the Sequoia Yellow Pearl in three thin coats over the next four nights Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday letting each coat cure for twelve hours. He hand-applied the black pinstriping with a small brush at the kitchen table on Friday night under a desk lamp, with Cheryl reading a book on the couch behind him.
He laid the genuine Harley fuel-tank emblem he had bought on Sunday at the dealership into the tank cover on Saturday morning.
He cut and welded the small section of chrome Harley exhaust pipe into two short pieces that he mounted to the frame as functional “exhaust cosmetics” on the back wheel.
He hand-stitched a small leather seat from a sheet of real Harley-brand seat leather he had in his shop, with a two-tone insert that matched the colors of the 2018 Heritage Softail Goldie had sat on. He stitched it himself with a leather needle and waxed thread at his workbench. He had not, by Cheryl’s report, hand-stitched a seat for a customer in four years because the shop pays a specialist in Tampa to do it now. He did this one himself.
He built two small leather saddlebags from the same leather. Real Harley leather. Hand-stitched. Sized to fit a nine-year-old’s school backpack.
He built two small leather saddlebags from the same leather. Real Harley leather. Hand-stitched. Sized to fit a nine-year-old’s school backpack.
He cut down a set of mini ape-hanger handlebars from a parts bin in his shop – handlebars that had originally been on a Sportster to twenty-four-inch BMX scale. He chromed them himself with a small powder-coater he keeps in the back of the shop. He installed real Harley grips.
The bicycle, when he was finished on the night of Friday, June 21st, weighed thirty-one pounds.
It was a working twenty-four-inch BMX bicycle.
It looked like a forty-percent-scale 1998 Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail.
It had cost Gunner Wallace, by Cheryl’s count of the receipts in their kitchen drawer, four hundred and twelve dollars in parts.
It had cost him sixty-two hours of his time.
He did not, by Cheryl’s report, sleep more than four hours a night for the fourteen days he was building it.
On Saturday morning, June 22nd, he put it in the bed of his truck under a tarp.
He drove the four houses up the cul-de-sac.
He pulled into our driveway at six-fifteen p.m.
He knocked on our front door at six-eighteen.