Geronimo’s Bones

The truck pulled into the store’s parking lot and I hopped out of the bed. The couple waved as they returned to the highway and then made a sharp left off the pavement and onto a dirt road that disappeared somewhere in the radiating waves of heat.

With my rucksack on one shoulder, I adjusted my ratted-out cowboy hat and wandered over to the shade of the building. It was afternoon and more than hot, that much I could tell, but I wasn’t sure if I were in Arizona or New Mexico.

Off to one side of the store, which was a modern adobe style design, was a tee-pee and an open air-shack beyond it. The tee-pee looked terribly out-of-place as it was more appropriate for the plains-area than the desert, the woman inside the shack was cooking what smelled to be fry-bread.

Sitting inside the flapped doorway of the tee-pee was an older man. He was dark-skinned and his eye appeared to be dark and piercing, but not menacing.

He watched me as I watched him. Then he waved at me to come over and I did.

“Hello, have you traveled far?” he asked

I told him, “From Nevada.”

“Where are you headed?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Daughter,” he called towards the back of the shelter, “Bring our guest some bread. He’s traveled a long way to see us.”

I looked down at the rug under our feet instead of saying what I thought: “Buddy, you got the wrong idea about me – I’m lost and have no idea where I’m going.”

With a smile the woman I’d seen in the shack appeared. She had two large pieces of fry-bread wrapped in paper towels. She gave one to the Elder and the other to me before she disappeared.

“You think I’m crazy, no?” he asked.

“Maybe,” I answered.

He laughed, “At least you’re honest. Most Anglo’s aren’t, afraid they’ll hurt my feelings.”

“Well, the tee-pee kinda has me puzzled,” I replied.

He chuckled, “Tourist see a tee-pee and they think authentic Indian.”

“Good point,” I nodded, “A wikiup doesn’t have the same appeal, I guess.”

We both laughed as we each ate our bread, chewing in silence.

“You are here to hear my story,” he stated, breaking my revery,  “You see, I’m the great-grandson of Geronimo and I’m selling authentic reproductions of his likeness to raise money to get him back to where he belongs – with his people, with his land, under our sky.”

I sat quietly, not asking any questions, knowing the custom of not speaking until the older man finished talking.

“First they took great-grand dad from this land, his land, in a long train to Florida. Then the Anglo soldiers moved him to Oklahoma where he died, never seeing his home again. It was while at Fort Sill, in what was then called the Indian Territory, that he had this photograph taken.”

He held up a 4-by-6 sepia-toned picture of the Apache war chief holding a cowboy revolver, before adding, “Geronimo sold these to supplement what rations the Army gave the prisoners. After his death, someone stole his bones and they are now being held hostage by Yale, you know, the university.”

He took another bite of his Indian Bread and looked far off into the distance. It was a silent signal that my time to speak had come.

“Honestly, I had no idea I was coming here to learn this,” I said. “I’m jus’ trying to find my sanity and I don’t even have a pot to piss in, let alone the money to buy a picture from you.”

The idea of being broke at that moment left me defeated. I didn’t like it.

“No,” he replied, “You aren’t here to buy – you came to listen. What you are searching for cannot be bought and it cannot be sold. You will know and it will know you when you meet – that’s how I knew you were here to hear me speak of my great-grandfather without condition.”

We sat in silence for the next few minutes, eating our bread, staring at some far distant and as of yet unseen spot on the horizon.