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.

Poor Thomas’ Almanac for December 18: In 1719, Thomas Fleet published “Mother Goose’s Melodies For Children.” We’re still waiting for the Kanye West album to drop.

Before I drink almond milk, someone needs to show me the teets on a nut.

Remember that sound your father’s belt made as he ripped it from his loops, intent on giving you a whipping? Believe me — not a good time to pants him and run.

Yes, I have a dirty mind and no, you may not wash my brain.

My wife says I’m a terrible person and who knows, she may be right. A friend came over for a visit and while we were sitting at our dining table, drinking coffee, he asked, “Do you have a bathroom?”

I smiled, got up and pulled a garden spade from the kitchen drawer where we keep some of our smaller household tools and handed it to him.

“What the hell’s this for?” he asked.

“It’s to dig a hole in the ditch in the back yard,” I answered, “where you can take a crap if that’s what you need to do.”

Poor Thomas’ Almanac for December 17: In 1903, The Wright Brothers made the first sustained motorized aircraft flight. If someone else flew first, it wouldn’t have been Wright.

Did you hear the one about television? Me neither — I was too busy arguing with everyone on Facebook.

I over heard a mother singing a practical Christmas tune in the grocery store: ‘I’m making a list, chicken and rice…’

“The vast sage desert undulates with almost imperceptible tides like the oceans,” wrote Native American author Frank Waters in 1999. Unfortunately, Nelson Franks had no mind for such quotes, had he even the slightest idea who Waters was.

It was a town that didn’t appear on his electronic device, but that didn’t matter to Nelson. He was on the road seeking an escape and an unlisted spot along side the highway was exactly what he was looking for as he dropped the kick-stand on his motorbike.

Though he looked more like a lawyer or perhaps an accountant, once his helmet was off, Nelson was in fact a wanted man. He’d been dodging the law and much of civilization for nearly two months by staying to the back roads and the backwater towns, including this one, someplace in Nye County, Nevada.

To shake the road dust from himself, he entered the diner down the corner from where he’d parked. He made eye-contact with the comely blond-haired, green-eyed waitress and his world fell to complete black.

When he woke up, Nelson was bouncing around the wooden floor of a fast-moving box. Though confused, he pulled himself up right only to realize he was inside an old-fashioned stage-coach, the kind he’s seen in TV westerns.

He crawled up into a seat and peered out the window. The horizon had a strange orange-red glow and the road the stage traveled over was a golden-brown sand.

He leaned out the window, where he saw the driver hunched over the reins and snapping a rawhide whip at the six bay horses beyond. Above him he noted the words painted above the door and windows: ‘Ferryman Stage.’

As Nelson did his best to make head-or-tails of the situation a Raven flew in through one of the coaches windows. It lit gently on the seat beside him, and though the stage was running rough-shod over the road, the bird seemed unfazed.

Feeling every bump, jolt and toss, Nelson struggled to maintain his balance as the bird spoke, “I don’t suppose you know what a psychopomp is, would you?”

Nelson didn’t answer. He simply sat and stared at the coal-black, talking bird.

“No matter,” he continued, “Where you’re heading you won’t need to know the meaning of such words.”

The carriage swayed hard to the left and then to the right as it struck a large rock with its steel-bound wheels. The metal on rock created a shower of sparks which rained onto the pair through the windows.

“I must remember to talk to Mr. Charon about his need for excessive speed and to remind him that he doesn’t need to hit everything he see’s with his stage,” the Raven stated, adding, “You do speak english, don’t you?”

Nelson violently shook his head as if trying to dislodge the vision of a talking bird from his mind, before he slowly nodded in the affirmative.

“So that you know,” the psychopomp continued, “There are many ways to cross the River Styx. You’re experiencing one of them now. The desert sand is like a sea, an ocean, a dry river bed and you, my dear friend, you’re on your way to Hell.”

Nelson scrambled from the floor and into the seat furthest from the bird. His eyes were wide as sweat rolled from his forehead down his cheeks.

He glanced out the stage window, hoping this was all a dream, but he knew it wasn’t. When he looked back towards the bird, it was gone — and in its place were two shiny gold coins, the exact toll needed for the Ferryman Stage.