PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

We stopped at a trading post to pee. A mirage in the night, it appeared out of nowhere when we needed it the most. We could just as well have stopped and squatted right in the road, hadn't passed a car since we got off the interstate.

A burly Indian stood behind a counter festooned with novelty objects over a glass case full of silver & coral cuffs, turquoise rings and a large squash blossom necklace. A stuffed coyote grinned at us from atop a cupboard containing an assortment of taxidermied desert varmints, a rattlesnake in a Mexican stand-off with a roadrunner, a sadly armadillo that looked as if it might've been roadkill before its present re-animation, tarantulas & scorpions forever locked in clear polyurethane prisons and, common to nearly every touristy stop in the Southwest, a mounted head of the quirky jack-a-lope stared down glassy-eyed from over the doorway.

"Where you headed?", the burly Indian spoke in a friendly manner.

"To Quagmire Weep", Lily replied.

"If you don't mind my asking what exactly are you doing up here, two women driving around on the rez in the middle of the night in the middle of winter during a new moon. Either you're crazy or you must have some very urgent business."

"We're going north to see Ol' Minnie."

"Rainmaker Minnie! You'd better take these." He reached into the shelf behind him and placed a box of Twinkies on the counter in front of us.

"And this." He grabbed a pouch of cheap cherry flavored tobacco and laid it on top of the Twinkies.

"And she really likes these." His eyebrows raised as he held up a tattered Jughead comic from 1972.

"I thought she was blind", said Lily skeptically.

"Nah she just can't see", as if that made any sense at all.

"Ok thanks uh?"

"Wibble", he touched the brim of his black bowler hat, "and tell Minnie she still owes me 3 cigarettes from the last poker game."