Suns Set

When she was fourteen, Kim remembers, her father asked her if she smoked weed. Kim lied and said no. At that, Maxie rolled up three joints and said he knew she was lying. But Kim still wouldn't hit the joint until Maxie started laughing over that old Wendy's "Where's the beef?" commercial. Then, when he passed the spliff to his daughter, she took it with a natural stoner's grace.

"I knew you get high," Maxie told her. "I want you to tell me everything about you. If you don't tell me, then I don't know who you are. Drugs, sex, whatever -- don't lie to me. I wanna know who you are."

By the time she was sixteen, Kim was spending most weekends in Denver. She called Maxie "Daddy" and he called her "Baby." Since everyone knew Maxie preferred younger women -- they could be trained easier, he said -- several people assumed Kim and Maxie were lovers. Kim went on biker runs and to biker parties. Maxie had her experiment with drinking different liquors so that she could find her tolerance level. He taught her to ride a motorcycle and how to shoot a gun.

He made Kim promise that she'd never mess with bikers. She couldn't keep that one -- she was her father's daughter, after all -- but at least she fell for a biker from a different club. "Don't mess with any of my friends, because I don't want to have to kill him behind you," Maxie once told her.

No man ever disrespected Maxie's daughter at the Suns clubhouse.

Once, drunk on gin after a bike run and some fishing, Kim started telling a story about catching and cleaning a fish. When Maxie accused his daughter of bluffing, Kim called over a witness, who backed up her story.

"See," she said, tossing a freshly opened beer at her father's head. She missed, but still her father grabbed her by the back of the neck and walked her out to the bike.

"Don't you ever disrespect me in front of my club brothers," he said, shoving her on the back of the bike. On the drive home, Kim started acting up, punching her father. When Maxie pulled over, Kim leapt off the bike. She stripped to her socks, bra and panties -- the only clothes her mother had paid for. Maxie stood there dodging boots, jeans, chains, leather chaps and the jacket he'd bought for his daughter.

The semi-nude seventeen-year-old finally walked home, only to find her father waiting.

"You want to act like a little girl, I'm going to treat you like a little girl," Maxie said. He bent his daughter over his lap and spanked her.

---

The Suns of Darkness continued to party hearty as they got older.

Nopork, who'd become a cinematographer specializing in shooting corporate videos and feature films, finally was named an official Sun in 1989.

Sugar's 22-year career as a customer-service agent and baggage handler for Continental Airlines came to an end in 1990 when he hurt his back on the job. But he could still ride.

Doobee had been arrested on a variety of charges -- including carrying a concealed weapon, assault, shoplifting and a couple of DUIs -- before he finally caught a case for what he says was a gram and a half of cocaine in 1990. He went back to prison and did about three and a half years of a ten-year sentence. After he got out, he returned to his gig as an apartment maintenance man. Since then he's gotten arrested only once -- for firing an antique rifle to celebrate the new year in 1997. He's still pissed that the cops took the gun.

Maxie started working for the U.S. Postal Service to help Kim pay for an associate's degree in electronics, which she was earning at her father's suggestion.

He was cruising his Harley along Downing Street one day when a truck pulled out in front of him. The crash messed up Maxie's wrist, and his spleen had to be removed. He had to stay off his bike for a while after that.

A few years later Maxie had an aneurism. He wanted to keep things quiet, but the Suns made Kim promise to keep them informed of el presidente's health.

Maxie's busted wrist didn't heal as it should have, and he noticed he was more prone to bruising than in his earlier years. Doctors ran tests and determined that he had a critical blood disorder that would probably lead to leukemia.

In 2001, Maxie called Kim over to the house. "I'm dying," he told her. "It's time for you to know. I've been thinking about this, and I don't want no one else to know." Kim started crying. Not only was he her father, but her two children also called Maxie "Daddy," and he was only too happy to play the role.

"You can take that home and get it all out and do what you gotta do and be back here on Monday to take me to the doctor," Maxie said.