The Arizona Suburb |
A few months ago our house used to be separated from our neighbor's house by a gravel driveway.
One day, I left the house to run some errands. I shut the front door
behind me and as I turned around I saw a man standing on the gravel next to my neighbor's backyard
fence. He was a Native American dressed in jeans and work boots. He also wore a dark brown leather belt wit
a large engraved silver buckle, a
plaid button-down shirt with long sleeves, and a cream-colored cowboy hat... very usual dress
for the Native Americans I'd seen. He was maybe 5'6", in his late 60's, and a little paunchy. He was
facing the house, or, more specifically, the corner of the house by which my car was parked,
and had his arms upraised as if in invocation.
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| It was an odd thing to see but not entirely unheard-of. How was I to know our home wasn't built on ground sacred to Native Americans or someone else? It did look like he was in the middle of praying, and I politely looked away as I continued down the sidewalk. |
| The walk between our door and where my car was parked was short and it only took five or six steps to reach the end, where my car was parked on the gravel. This was also directly across from where the man was standing. I would be backing my car out towards the man, so I looked up again to check his position... |
| ...and he had disappeared. |
Vanished. I was so startled to look up to see he'd gone that I let out a cry of surprise.
I walked over to where he had been standing but there was nothing there. A six foot chain
link fence surrounded my neighbor's backyard at the time and on the man's right it extended
for a good twenty-five feet from where he had been standing. To his left was another thirty
feet of solid wall of my neighbor's house. I doubt he could have clambered noiselessly over that fence in
the few seconds that I'd looked away, and there were no trees or bushes for him to hide in or
behind. My feet made loud crunching sounds as I crossed the gravel driveway.
 Anyone coming or
going on this driveway was loudly announced by that noise which we could clearly hear even
from inside the house. He could not have moved from where he had been standing without making
that same noise, but he was gone. Without a sound, without a trace.
There were no footprints in the thick gravel nor any other sign someone had been standing there.
I checked with the neighbors and they had no knowledge of such a person and had seen no one.
I have not seen the man nor anyone like him around here since then.
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�1999, Kelley Collins |
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