Wayra Richards punched the card at the door of the Casino and stepped outside in the parking lot to go home. He lived farther north on the New Mexico Route 525 going towards Bloomfield and beyond. He looked at his wristwatch and noted the time piece showing few minutes to three o'clock in the morning.

The moonless night was dark and beyond the parkinglot lights, rest of the world was still engulfed in the ink like darkness and to add to that, the occasional sand blowing with the wind was making that scene foggy and more sinister than it actually was. The silhouettes of the surrounding indigo, mixed with brownish and Mesa structures were appearing like the protective citadel's ramparts. For a newcomer, it would have made a scary experience to be out driving in that eerily silent valley but for Wayra, it was nothing extraordinary; he was completely at ease with the place. This was his ancestral land that many Native American tribes worship as a sacred landmass where their ancestors' sprits were present to guide them to the spiritual world beyond.

He was a Quechua and then there were Shawnee, Mapuche, Zia and more tribes nestled in the bosom of the San Juan valley. He could drive home in the truck with his eyes closed as if it was not a mechanized vehicle but a real mountain Indian pony that knew the seventy five miles stretch of the road all the way home. The bumps on the fenders, the damaged wheels and twisted bumper of his truck was the proof of his driving half asleep and hitting the inanimate objects off and on the road. However, he had made it home safely just about every time he came from his graveyard shift at the Casino. He had not damaged anyone else's vehicle or made a road kill, mainly because there was just him driving on and off the road at that time and the vermin like the Mexican prairie dogs were too smart not to venture out at that hour to be a meal for the nocturnal hunters.

Perhaps by habit, he yawned loudly and a frightened Hare scurried off. Wayra was amused by that, laughed unnecessarily,jumped in the pickup and drove out of the parking lot. The old vehicle climbed up that stiff hill with the engine laboring to pull it towards the road heading north. The right headlight of his truck was not doing much service to the driver. Rather than illuminating the road in front with that halogen bulb's broad 'V' shaped beam,it was flooding the right shoulder and boulders and bushes beyond the edge of the white line markings. He never felt a necessity to straighten the headlamp holding that light, as no one else ever got in the driver's seat to drive it and he knew the road to Bloomfield like back of his hand as they say.

Dozing off and on he must have made fifty or so miles and with the last sharp turn, which always made him alert by instinct, he reached the top of that hill. He had turned the steering wheel hard towards left to complete that clover-leaf turn and also to avoid scraping the right fender on the flat table rock which he had done few times in the past. In spite of his sleep filled eyes, he saw something which the crooked light's beam had made distinctly visible just long enough, to make his brain wake up fully and synthesize the incoming optical input.

" there is a man's leg your truck missed by just inches" his cerebral cortex reported.

He jammed the brakes,stopped the truck and waited for few minutes to let his intellect and brain come together to synthesize the fresh input from his optical nerve, and also to arrive at a conclusion that there was a human body lying on the rock in a weird and twisted manner. Its legs were sort of resting on the ground but the torso was flat on the back, as if it was a chair without the back support.

"What the hell is that?" He asked himself.

"Could't be any undocumented man died without water? There are enough places to get food and water in this stretch of the road." He was thinking and sorting the possibilities.

Wayra was completely alert now and his mind was trying to reach to a sensible conclusion-
"investigate or keep on going and let the Sheriff find him in few hours was the option presented to him."

He wasn't afraid of dead ones; had seen them plenty in the Viet Nam when he was drafted right after the high school graduation in Bloomfield. But then, his curiosity got better off him and he decided to check it out. He drove in reveres until the truck came on the top of the hill, passed the flat rock and then stopped at a spot where the truck's search light like headlamp fell on the Father Francis' face and torso. He cut the engine, stepped out and stood there looking at the object of his curiosity for a moment; thinking rapidly at the same time.

" Looks like a Mexican or a Navaho." He muttered under his breath.

"Should I touch or not touch? If a Navaho; they might feel offended if I disturb the dead. If Mexican, it won't matter."

He was still pondering on the right action to take but then suddenly he heard a faint sound coming from the direction of that body and that settled the issue instantly. Wayra crossed the road and went on the side of lying man. He thought he heard the man speaking to someone in a strange tongue. Wayra Richard reached very closed to man's and then it ceased muttering and remained motionless again. He pulled a small twig with sage leaves on it and held it near the man's nostrils. The leaves barely moved but they gave the proof of spirit still being within its flesh and bones confinement. With that a new set of decision making need rose in his mind.

"Should I take him back to Casino or forward to Bloomfield?" A question rose and a prompt answer was needed. That called for an analysis of the situation and he began pondering:

"What if he is from another tribe and they want to handle his body in their sacred ways, just in case he died in my truck?"

Another problematic thought was about to pop up in his mind but he suppressed that and came to a swift conclusion:

"Well. Let me get some advice from someone lot more experienced in these matters."
With that, he reached to a decision and got his cell phone out. He went through the 'Contact' list and stopped at few names and then moved out to the next, shaking his head indicating unsuitability. Finally he stopped at the letter 'T and found, 'Tenskwatawa'- (means "Open door" in Shawnee language).That Name sounded appropriate as he knew they were open twenty four hours and seven days.
He called the number and after several rings a sleepy voice came on; "Yes? What do you want?"

"I am Wayra Richards- Quechua Indian; have a brother here on the road to Bloomfield about fifty miles south; he may be Navaho or something."

"What is the question?" The impatient man on the other side asked to make the conversation more precise and meaningful.

" He is unconscious or something, and- and- may not live, and, really, I...don't, really don't know if I should touch him; you know how it is about the .....".

"That means he is alive now; so what is this question about touching? Just
put him in your truck and bring him over here and Antiman ('Candor of the Sun'- in Mapuche tongue.) Will see him when he gets here."
The other man hung up with that and gave no opportunity for him to think anything more about the option.

Wayra wanted more detailed instructions; something like the barking orders Sergeant Matt gave to his platoon when he wanted to get something done. Sergeant Matt trusted no one under his command when it came to getting things done:

"Do exactly as I tell you'll, one last time," and then he would repeat the instructions hundred times with the 'one last time' suffix trailing the last syllable of the each last instruction.

That mechanical process of doing things without wasting your own brain power or disturbing mind on deciding how, when and what to do, had been engraved in the minds of everyone in that Infantry platoon who did not come home in the body bags or were not left behind in the Nam. Now, in the civilian life, he seldom had to do anything at the Casino or for that matter at home,that demanded any complex decision making and life was about as smooth as it gets without the barking of commands from Sgt. Matt and the bullets hissing by one's head. Difficulty like this situation he was having on hand, came up rarely in that ex-soldier's daily life.

Wayra bent over the lifeless body and remembering the wounded evacuation drill, flipped the body on his back and dragged it to his truck. The movement sort of brought some life in the man's leg muscles and somehow, he managed to get the load off on the passenger side but the man was not holding himself upright and was falling onto the driver's seat. Finally he climbed back of the truck, pulled a bundle of sisal rope and tied the body to seat, good enough so it would stay on the passenger side and the head resting on the corner of door window. By the time he completed the task,he had lost good half an hour.

"Damn, Maureen is going to get pissed off again if I don't reach home in time," he said to the companion who did not answer.

" Don't hang around anywhere; I get late to work if you don't show up in time." He imitated her in his mind, as he was remembering her instructions.
"What fucking reason I stopped to look at you I will never know?" He spoke to that unconscious passenger.

By the time he pulled off the road leading to the gas fields, the sun was already pushing the darkness out in the east and he barely missed Sheriff's cruiser coming south from Bloomfield. As he pulled into the covered driveway of that drab and windowless brick and mortar structure of the Tenskwatawa building, two men came out with a stretcher immediately, as if they were waiting for a patient to arrive. He got out the truck and came around to see if he could assist them.

One of the stretcher bearers opened the passenger side door and Father Francis' body tilted out of the truck because it was not secured properly.

"What the hell; you can't even hogtie a calf;" the man remarked and while grabbing the right arm and shoulder. Together they took him out without use of the stretcher. As they climbed up few steps and entered the veranda, two more men in white gown came forward and joined them. Together they managed to take the sick man to a bed. Meanwhile Wayra had back tracked and was about to back up his truck out of the drive way and one of the orderly came out and told him to wait.

"Reverend Antiman wants to talk to you and you need to sign papers also." The man informed him.

"I am running late; I got to go. Tell him I will stop by this evening." He responded and quickly backed out of the drive way, turned around and drove off, leaving behind a cloud of indigo dust.