Wikieup Trading Post
It was February 10th.
I was driving from Mesa to Laughlin, north on 93.
I had made arrangements to meet my mother and sisters (Diane and Debra) in Laughlin. We would visit, eat and gamble for a few days.
The drive was not uneventful in that I was constantly surprised by the beauty of the passing desert. Forests of saguaro cactus would cover the hillsides, interspersed with barrel cactus, prickly pear and many other sharply armed plants that I do not know the names of. Then around another corner a forest of Joshua trees would become the dominant theme. The parched desert ground was dotted with tufts of grasses and hardy bushes and spindly shrubs. The ever changing scenery was topped by a constant blue blue sky and washed over by a bright winter sun.
So.
I was driving from Mesa to Laughlin, north on 93 through the desert, when about 90 minutes out of Laughlin the road narrowed and the speed was reduced to 35. Up ahead on the right was a turnout to a weathered wooden building and a sign that identified it as Wikieup Trading Post. The parking lot was empty, I was needing to stop so I pulled off and parked in front of the building and it was about this time that a lone cloud moved in front of the sun.
I got out and out of habit locked the truck, then entered Wikieup Trading Post. A bell announced my entry and I followed signage to the restrooms without much looking about. After washing my hands I exited the restroom and began to take in my surroundings.
The store was smaller than it looked from the outside. To the left of the door was a long glass topped counter supporting an ancient cash register. All about the room were displays, collections of knicks and knacks for sale and collections of darkness. Not the scary kind of darkness. But a darkness that gave the feel of time piled upon itself and seldom disturbed.
I browsed, avoiding the collections of darkness and concentrating on the collections of knicks and knacks. Nestled between a display of knicks and knacks and a collection of darkness was a small table with folded material, the hand scrawled sign above the material labeled them as SHAWLS.
My mother lives in the high desert of central Washington and the mornings, even in summer, can be quite cool and I thought a shawl would make a nice birthday present.
I started to thumb through the shawls. The feel of each was unique, soft, coarse, stiff, pliable with none that piqued my interest.
Then.
The last one in the pile furthest from me seemed want to touch my hand. I was surprised by the sensation and clumsily dropped the shawl off the table and into a collection of darkness. I looked about for help but the store seemed empty and it was quiet except for my noises. I knelt down to look for the shawl. The collection of darkness hid the shawl from my eyes. Reluctantly I started to reach into the darkness to try and feel for the shawl. At first touch the collection of darkness was cold and I drew my hand back quickly with a loud gasp.
I heard, “May I help you?”
Startled, I looked for the source of the voice.
Behind the counter stood a short native woman.
How should I describe her?
Old of age? Yes.
Ancient? Not sure.
Where she had been all this time I did not know.
Her chin was thrust forward so that she had to look down her nose at me and her hands were flat on the top of the counter and her shoulders looked as though they were bearing her weight a little. She looked as though she were standing on tiptoes in order to see me over the counter.
She was wearing a shawl just like the one I had just dropped into the collection of darkness.
“I..uh..I dropped something here and cannot seem to find it.” I said.
The corners of her eyes crinkled and she grinned.
“I seem to drop things often too.” she said. “Let me come around the counter here and see if four eyes are better than two.”
She shrunk a couple of inches as she stopped balancing on her toes and walked toward the end of the counter nearest the door. She rounded the corner and came towards me by a seemly wandering path that always was near one of the collections of darkness. She arrived and stood to my right, nearest the darkness beside the table of shawls.
“Hmmm, I don’t see anything.” she said.
I pointed to the collection of darkness.
“It fell into that dark area and I cannot see it.” I said. “I tried to reach for it, but the coldness surprised me and I stopped trying.”
She looked askance at the dark area at her feet and a concerned look came over her face.
“Well that has not happened in quite a while.” she said. “I prefer to let sleeping dogs lie but I suppose I should ask what it was that you dropped in there.”
“A shawl from this table, exactly like the one you are wearing.” I replied. “I was thinking of buying it.”
Her face changed from concerned to surprised as she looked down and seemed to notice the shawl on her shoulders for the first time.
“Well, those silly billys. What are they up to this time?” she said. “If the shawl had stayed in the darkness I might have been able to retrieve it. But now…?”
My confusion was verbalized as confusion.
“Wait...what? Silly...uh...billy? Stayed in the darkness? But now...what?”
By way of explaining she tugged on the shawl to show that it would not come off.
“The ignorant white man who started this trading post, built it over the vortex of Coyote Tricksters home. Coyote Trickster is not their real name it is just the name the ignorant white men gave them. Tricksters real name has been lost. Even the native peoples were ignorant of the real name. But no matter what name they were called it was always some variation of Trickster in every language.”
“Okay…” I said slowly.
The feeling that reality was getting slippery, and my grasp on it was becoming tenuous, was beginning to make itself known. I glanced at the door to judge my chance to leave quickly.
Was it dark outside?
“You cannot leave until we figure out how to get this shawl back to you.” she said.
“I have decided that I do not want the shawl.” I said.
“But the shawl wants you.” she said. “The Tricksters must have enchanted this shawl.” Tapping the shawl on her shoulders.
She was walking back behind the counter while talking. Once behind the counter she began to rummage through stuff hidden from me. She was barely taller than the counter and walked back and forth behind the counter mumbling yeses and nos and maybes. Occasionally a hand would place something on the counter top. Soon there were two bottles of Fireball whisky the size that airlines serve and charge $7 for, a bundle of smudge on a plate and a Rickie Lee Jones CD (Flying Cowboys. I think).
She asked me over to the counter to help her.
“This is an interesting collection.” I said. “What does it have to do with the shawl and the Tricksters?”
“The Fireballs are for us. They must be the only survivors from New Years. The smudge is to calm the Tricksters until I can invert the enchantment and the CD because I want to listen to Rickie Lee Jones but am not tall enough to put it into the player.” she said, pointing to a CD player on a shelf about 6 inches higher than she could reach. Grabbing the CD, she handed it to me and tilted her head towards the CD player.
“Would you be a dear and put this in there and press play?”
And in ‘there’ I did put the CD... and ‘play’ I did press... and we were both rewarded by the cool bohemian stylings of RLJ.
The music made me smile.
The faraway look in her eyes as the music played made me smile more.
How should I describe her?
Old of age? Yes.
Ancient? Not sure.
She slid one Fireball to me and the other she drank without ceremony, smacking her lips in satisfaction. I followed suit and was rewarded with the feeling of having swallowed hundreds of cinnamon toothpicks at once. She slid the plated smudge across the counter to me and pointed to the table of shawls next to the collection of darkness.
I carried the plate with the smudge over to the shawl table and she had come around the counter and met me there. She took the plate and set it on the floor. She began to pat her pockets and then looked at me quizzically.
“Do you smoke?”
I shook my head no and she pointed back at the counter.
“There are some matchbooks next to the cash register. Would you please grab one.”
While I retrieved the matchbook from the counter she talked.
“I think I have this figured out. I will need your assistance though. I will light the smudge and we will have to wait a bit for the Tricksters to settle down. Then I will reach into the darkness and should be able to snatch the shawl off my back. You will have to hold my hand and not let me be pulled into the darkness with the Tricksters. Whatever you do you cannot let me be completely swallowed by the darkness. As long as one hand is clear of the darkness I will be safe. I shall have to lean far into the darkness to reach the shawl on my back. They are just Tricksters on this side of the darkness, I do not want to find out what they are like on the other side.” she looked me in the eyes, “Are we clear?”
“Yes.” I said.
Just as she was lighting the smudge the song Ghetto Of My Mind started to play on the CD player. We both listened in silence, she fanning the smoke into the collection of darkness and me just sitting.
Ghetto Of My Mind ended and she nodded and held out her left hand for me to hold onto.
“Hold it tight but you do not need to crush it. Wish me luck.”
Things moved faster now.
She entered the darkness with a sense of purpose.
Rodeo Girl was now playing on the CD.
Her left arm, shoulder, hip and leg were still outside the darkness when the pull started to increase. She had her left foot firmly planted on the floor to resist the pull but it was sliding slowly toward the darkness. Her left shoulder was being engulfed by the darkness when I saw a hand reach out of the darkness and feel around. The hand found my hands engulfing her tiny left hand and slid itself up towards her left shoulder and back into the darkness. Suddenly the hand comes back out of the darkness gripping the shawl. Then re-enters the darkness where it came out.
The pull on her increased.
Her left arm was all the had remained free of the darkness.
But now the darkness had crept up to her elbow.
My feet are slipping.
Her forearm was being engulfed more and more rapidly.
The bell on the door rang.
“Help!” I shout. “Help me!”
A male voice exclaims, “What is going on here?”
“Don’t think. Just grab me and pull me back away from the darkness.” I scream.
Her wrist is just inches away from the darkness when I feel two arms snake under my arms and hands clasp at my chest. With the two of us pulling we begin to make headway against the darkness and we slowly pull her back into the store.
In her right hand was the shawl.
But that is not what holds my attention.
She had changed.
She was younger.
She looked now to be in her mid 30’s. She was still diminutive but her hair was dark and the lines on her face were smoothed out. The smile crinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth still show but are not as noticeable.
I stare.
She looks at me confused. Then her eyes shift focus to behind me.
“Excuse me…” a voice behind me says, “Who are you people? And what just happened?”
I turn.
In front of me is a giant of a man. Dark hair and a black eye patch over his right eye. A scar raking through his right eyebrow at an angle and disappearing under the eyepatch to reappear again across his nose and down his left cheek terminating above the left corner of his mouth. He was dressed in leathers and was wearing heavy boots. A helmet was dangling from his not diminutive right hand.
I stare, and think that this is embarrassing. I must stop staring at people. But when I am speechless, staring is what I do.
I try to answer but only make that fish face where your mouth moves and no sound comes out.
Giant guy holds up his hand and says, “I have to go potty real bad. Where’s the restroom?”
We both point.
Giant guy lumbers off in that ‘my bladder is full’ quick step we have all danced to.
I turn back to her. Realizing that I didn’t even know her name.
“What is your name?” I ask.
“Everyone just calls me Tiny.” she said.
“Well, Tiny, you have changed.” I said.
Tiny looked down at herself and then back up to me and shrugged.
“You look younger.” I said.
Tiny looked over to the collection of darkness she had just been pulled out of and nodded slowly.
“Tricksters.” she said.
She starts toward the counter, then turns back and hands me the shawl. Makes her way again to the end of the counter and goes behind it.
Rummaging sounds again.
More yeses. More nos.
Then.
Quiet.
Then.
“Damn! Damn those Tricksters!”
“Huh?” I added to the dialogue.
“Don’t you see? Those Tricksters have made my life more dangerous. As an old woman I was almost invisible. Nothing worth trifling with. Just a dried up piece of flotsam. Oh...I get robbed here now and then. But nothing violent. Nothing...well...you know.”
“If you own this place...sell it. If you just work here...quit.” I said, moving into my problem solving mode.
“I can’t leave here. I am the only thing keeping these Tricksters in line out here. I am tied to this spot just as much as the Tricksters.”
I do not reply, as what she just said had me wondering just who or what she really was.
Feeling the presence of something bigger than a bread box behind me, I turned around.
Giant guy is returning from the restroom and looking at us as if we owe him some answers.
I really do not have any answers so I ask him questions first.
“What did you say your name is?” I ask.
“My given name is Kevin, but since 6th grade everyone has called me Tiny.” he replied shyly.
I struggle mightily to keep a straight face, but our diminutive, newly minted, Tiny the younger, cannot keep her composure under control and a couple of muffled snorts and snorgles escape.
Kevin rolled his eye.
Feeling that a good offence is the best defence. I ask another question.
“What do you do for a living...uh...Kevin?” I ask.
“Nothing at the moment. I went to school to become an accountant. Worked construction to pay my way. That’s how I lost this eye.”
He pointed to his patched eye as if we wouldn’t have noticed it already.
“A short piece of rebar fell from the scaffold above. Someone yelled ‘look out!’ when I heard that I looked up to see what the problem was.”
He shrugged and shyly jestured toward his face.
“I got a hefty settlement and eventually went back to finish school. I have been trying to get a job in accounting but no-one seems to want to hire an accountant that looks like a pirate on steroids. The settlement was big enough that I should never have to work again. But I need something to do.”
“Well, uh... Kevin, I cannot explain what has happened here, but I do want to thank you from bottom of my heart. If you had not acted as fast as you did, this young woman here may have been lost forever.”
I nodded toward diminutive Tiny.
“She, on the other hand, can explain to you what you just stumbled into. Remember what you saw when you first came in here and keep an open mind. She may even offer you a job.”
I indicate that the two Tinys’ should talk.
Then I slowly looked about the room and shook my head. I will have to ask my mother if insanity has ever visited our family.
With that I turned toward Tiny the smaller and held out the shawl.
“I am taking this in payment for helping save your life.”
She waved me away as if I was a pesky fly and continued chatting with her new found Tiny friend.
I turned and walked out the door as Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying was playing on the CD.
Not a cloud in the sky.
Still day time.
Only my pickup and a new Harley were in the parking lot.
I unlocked the pickup and opened the door. I tossed the shawl onto the passenger seat and climbed in behind the wheel. I looked at the pickup clock and guessed I had been in Wikieup Trading Post less than an hour.
I sat for just a minute, now knowing how I should describe her.
Old of age? Not anymore.
Ancient? You bet.
It was February 10th.
I was driving from Wikieup Trading Post to Laughlin, north on 93.
