A glimpse inside the heart of scary-motorcycle-rider guy

I am in the frozen food section of a grocery store, dazed in that Technicolor way that settles when we're faced with 14 kinds of margarine to choose from. I'm staring at the boxes when I catch sight of a man in a jacket.

It is superb, covered with patches and insignias, drab and worn in all the right places. It is so perfectly aged, it looks like a something from the wardrobe department of a Hollywood movie.

The man wearing it could also have stepped from a movie set -- he's what my kids, when they were younger, would have called a "motorcycle-rider-guy." He looks tough and convincingly self-sufficient. He's not smiling while he leans over the vats of butter and margarine to pick up a box. I'm staring. I spot the letters on one of his patches and string them together over the folds of a pocket. It says "Patriot Guard."

One year ago my friends attended the graduation ceremonies at Rocky Mountain High School and watched a boy graduate. Then they headed home to get ready for the party, to take the cheese plates out of the refrigerator, to unwrap the cold cuts, and double-check that the red and gold streamers hadn't blown away.

That's when they got the call from the wife of their oldest son. Sgt. Nicholas Walsh had been fatally shot in Iraq. Nick's wife wanted to tell them before two Marines, solemn faced and duty bound, made their long drive to arrive at the doorstep of this family that just moments before had been in celebration.

A full military funeral was held, smack in the middle of Fort Collins. The entire town stepped up. Word had it that crazy people -- and I don't use that phrase lightly -- from a Kansas hate group might picket the funeral. Hundreds of people showed up to place themselves as barriers, up and down the street, ready to shield the family from any potential ruckus. The Patriot Guard, clad in leather, with huge motorcycles and even bigger American flags, lined up to make an impressive and respectful wall.

At the grocery store, all this flits through my head. I look from the man's jacket to his face. He watches me stare at him. I blurt out, "Are you in the Patriot Guard?" He still doesn't smile; after all, I'm a complete stranger, staring, and in the dairy section no less. He answers a solid "yes."

Then everything moves together for me. I must have put the butter down. I leave my grocery basket and make my way around the refrigerated display. He's looking at me warily until I say "Did you ride for Sgt. Nick Walsh's funeral? His mom is my friend." His face falls, and then lifts and lights and softens all at once. His eyes fill half with tears.

He puts his butter down, and I hug him, and he's not even surprised. I thank him over and over again. He holds both my elbows, and says, "It wasn't about us, it was about Nick."

Before Nick's second deployment, his mother traveled to San Diego to see him, his wife, his two boys. As they drove through the gates of Camp Pendleton Marine base, they passed protesters with placards and signs about the war. His mom asked him, "Does that bother you?"

"What, that?" he said, following her gaze. He told her it didn't bother him at all. He said, "That's why I'm a Marine. To protect those kinds of rights, to protect those people."

After we left Nick's funeral last year, we walked past row after row of revving motorcycles, and crowds of -- I'll just say it -- some scary looking "motorcycle-rider-guys." I said to my sons, "See those riders? They are amazing. Don't ever be afraid of people just because of they way they look."

One son, who already wasn't afraid and was giving me the "Oh, brother" eye roll, said, "Not even the one with the spikes around his wrists and the skulls on his bike?"

"Not even him," I said.

The other son said, "Are they for the war or against it?" Because children see that Americans seem to fall into two camps over just about everything. "It doesn't matter," I told him. "They are both. They are all of it mixed up. They are Americans."

Natalie Costanza-Chavez is a writer who lives in Fort Collins and welcomes your e-mail. You can reach her, and read past columns, at www.gracenotescolumn.org, or e-mail her at grace-notes@comcast.net