The Biker At The Chapel And The Sins Of Blackwood Creek
CHAPTER 1: THE OUTLAW ON SACRED GROUND
The autumn wind swept down from the Blue Ridge granite ridges, carrying the pungent scent of curing tobacco, rotting oak leaves, and mountain cedar. Outside the whitewashed timber chapel of White Rock, the black-clad congregation stood motionless beneath the canopy of ancient weeping willows. The polished mahogany casket of James Sterling rested upon a brass lowering bier at the chapel steps, carpeted with sprays of crimson and white mountain roses that shivered in the cold mountain gust.
Richard Sterling stood at the head of the casket, his tailored Italian charcoal suit pristine against the rural backdrop. At thirty-four, Richard had his late father’s aristocratic cheekbones, dark slicked-back hair, and the razor-sharp posture of an equity litigator from Richmond. A single white rosebud was pinned to his left lapel, its petals trembling as his dark eyes locked upon the perimeter of the chapel gravel turnaround.
A low, guttural vibration cut through the solemn organ prelude drifting from the open chapel sanctuary doors. It was not the civilized purr of an executive town car. It was the brutal, unbaffled throb of a vintage high-compression shovelhead chopper.
The motorcycle rolled to a halt at the edge of the cemetery grass, its chrome exhaust pipes scorching the yellowed weeds. The man straddling the custom machine was easily six-foot-three, his broad, battle-hardened shoulders wrapped in an oil-darkened leather vest heavy with faded club rockers: SHADOW RIDERS stitched across the top, and a lone nickname—HAMMER—sewn in blood-red thread over the heart. Beneath a mane of wind-whipped silver hair and a neatly trimmed white goatee, the elder biker possessed the watchful, unblinking eyes of an old timber wolf surveying a flock of sheep.
Richard descended the stone steps, his leather dress shoes crunching violently into the crushed limestone gravel. His jaw was clenched so hard the tendons stood out along his throat like guitar wire.
“Take off that vest,” Richard said, his voice dropping into a harsh, commanding pitch that silenced the whispers among the mourners. “Take off that filthy leather, or get the hell away from my father’s funeral.”
The elderly biker did not flinch. He slowly unbuckled his black full-face helmet, resting it securely against the polished gas tank. His brown eyes, surrounded by deep, sun-etched crows-feet, gazed at the polished mahogany casket with a grief so profound and ancient that Richard felt an involuntary tremor in his chest.
“I won’t disrespect James Sterling’s family, son,” the biker rumbled. His voice was deep, bearing the gravel-scraped rasp of fifty years of open-road dust and industrial timber mills. “And I won’t strip the colors your father gave me forty years ago.”
“My father was a county commissioner and a decorated magistrate,” Richard hissed, stepping into the biker’s personal space until their chests were inches apart. “He had nothing to do with outlaw degenerates like you. If you don’t turn that machine around right now, I’ll have the county deputies drag you off this sacred ground in chains.”
“Wait! Mr. Sullivan, wait!”
A desperate, high-pitched cry shattered the standoff. Sprinting across the wet chapel grass from the church annex, ten-year-old Toby Miller, the parish altar boy, waved a large, yellowed manila envelope over his head. The boy’s dark bomber jacket was unzipped, flapping wildly in the mountain wind as he skidded to a halt on the gravel between Richard and the massive biker.
“Mr. Sullivan!” Toby gasped, his chest heaving, his cheeks flushed scarlet with exertion. “Mr. James gave this to my grandfather three days before he went into the hospital. He made him swear on the Holy Bible that if his heart stopped beating, this envelope had to go directly into your hands before the dirt touched the box. He said nobody else was allowed to break the wax.”
Richard stared at the boy in utter disbelief. “Toby, what are you talking about? My father was in a coma for forty-eight hours before he passed. Give me that envelope.”
“Your father didn’t give it to you, Richard,” Hammer said quietly, his gloved hand closing around the heavy paper with deliberate firmness.
With the thumb of his leather riding glove, Hammer broke the hardened red sealing wax. He tilted the envelope. A faded, scalloped-edge black-and-white photograph slid out onto his scarred palm, accompanied by an official document folded into thirds.
Richard leaned over the biker’s shoulder, his furious demand dying instantly in his throat.
The photograph, dated July 1974 in faint blue stamp ink, showed a young woman with laughing gray eyes and sun-bleached hair, leaning against the chrome fender of an antique Harley. She was holding a swaddled infant wrapped in a hand-knit wool blanket. Her arm was locked intimately around the waist of a handsome, muscular young man in a leather riding jacket who possessed the exact same dark, unruly curls and sharp jawline Richard saw in his own mirror every morning. Standing beside them was a younger, black-haired Sullivan, holding a heavy logging axe, and standing off to the right was James Sterling, dressed in a formal deputy sheriff’s uniform, looking at the young couple with a somber, protective gaze.
“That’s…” Richard’s breath caught in his chest like an iron fishhook. “That’s my mother Margaret. But who is the man holding her? That isn’t my father.”
Hammer turned the back of the envelope toward Richard. Across the yellowed paper, written in James Sterling’s distinctive, heavy fountain-pen cursive, were three sentences:
Margaret, Cole, Hammer, me. Summer of ’74. If Richard ever opens this box, Hammer must finally tell him why I only raised him as my son, and why Cole had to die in the Blackwood Creek fire so the boy could live.
Richard’s vision tunneled into blackness. His hands reached out, snatching the folded document from Hammer’s grasp with shaking fingers. He snapped the parchment open.
It was an official Commonwealth of Virginia Certificate of Live Birth. The child’s name was printed in stark, unyielding black type: Richard Cole Cross. The father’s name was listed not as James Sterling, but as Cole Sullivan Cross.
“Raised me…?” Richard whispered, his voice splintering into a cracked, horrified gasp as he looked up into the old biker’s tear-filled eyes. “Then whose son am I?!”
