I was a little boy in an old neighborhood with towering trees. I was exploring an abandoned house on a street near mine. It had a screened-in porch and an over-hanging roof with missing shingles. It was twilight.

A man came out of the house and stood on the porch looking at me standing in the yard. He wore a red T shirt and old jeans. I ran away from him, and he chased me, up a hilly, black-top trail that wound through trees and yards. The trees were black, and their branches were twisted and spread out against the sky. I stayed in the lead and lost him, but it was a small neighborhood, and I thought he's probably find me anyway.

I was getting married to Rob, who was also a stranger. Our wedding theme was a gender-bender cartoon fairy tale. Rob was the princess, and he wore a green scarf tied around his torso like a halter top. He had a blond wig and sparkly eye-shadow. I wore a buckskin suit and a fur hat. We sat in the stands at a rodeo with the wedding guests and watched the entertainment. A Native American man stood in the center of the ring and played a clarinet, aiming the bell at a small, wooden cart. The cart began to roll away from us, and the man walked behind it. It veered to the right, so the man bent down and played his clarinet as hard as he could at the right, rear wheel. The cart stopped, then slowly began to turn to the left. When the cart reached the edge of the ring, it filled up with cows and rolled quickly across the ring toward us. It took off and began to fly, and just as it passed overhead, a burst of bees and deer exploded out of it, and the cows leaped out and began to run through the sky.

After the wedding, I drove us home through downtown Durango. I stopped at a Native American store to request a taxi. Two teenage boys wanted to share it with us. We got in, and I drove us all together to the hotel. The meter said $30, so I asked the boy in the front seat for $15. He began to cry at the expense and handed me a wad of bills. I looked through it, decided to pay it all myself, and handed him back three $6 bills.

I went inside to get dressed for a night out. A woman from the Native American store called and asked me strange questions about what sort of wedding package I had rented from them for the wedding. I didn't trust her and refused to answer her questions directly. I suspected that she hadn't processed the return correctly and was trying to pin it on me so that I would have to pay extra. I told her I had already returned the package and had a receipt to prove it.

I went back to the store to see what else I could buy from them. The man at the counter told me I would like the selection of walking sticks. I couldn't hear him and had to ask him to repeat himself over and over. He showed me a walking stick in the style of a walker. It was made of sticks carved into each other so that they created a big square frame with a handle. It was decorated with feathers and beads, and the wood was shiny yellow. I said I'd take it, and walked around the store trying it out. It was too short for me, and I had to hunch a little to use it, but I decided it was worth it because it was so pretty. I browsed the glass cleaners, as well. There was a shiny, metal ledge to spray the cleaners on to see how well they worked. I also purchased some clear packing tape.