“It’s the twenty-first century, Mum.”

“In the old days, you’d have to make amends by giving me a horse.”

“Bird is not going to get you a horse.”

“But seeing as we’re modern Indians, I’ll settle for a used pickup.”

“Be nice,” Mimi would tell her mother. “Remember, it was Bird who insisted that we name Tally after Grandma.”

“And if you lived on the reserve, I could help raise my grandkids. Who’s going to teach them to speak Blackfoot?”

Our conversation generally followed the same pattern. In the end, she’d remind me that since I was part of the family, I’d need to learn the stories. Which was the way she would always begin the saga of Uncle Leroy and the Crow bundle.

SO WE’RE IN PRAGUE. In the breakfast room of the hotel. Mimi eats with one hand and works the guidebook with the other.

“What do you want to do?” she asks.

This is a rhetorical question.

“For example, we could go to Old Town Square and see the astronomical clock.”

My hot entree arrives. It’s a thin slice of ham sandwiched between a piece of cheese and a fried egg on some kind of flatbread.

“We could go to the castle.”

I try it, and it’s good, especially the cheese.

“There’s the Dancing House.” Mimi helps herself to my entree. “We could also go to the Prague Zoo, but you don’t like zoos.”

“Neither do you.” I try to fend off the assault on my breakfast. “What about the bundle?”

“We could check out the National Museum.” Mimi consults her map. “See if they have ever heard of Leroy Bull Shield.”

“Sure.”

“Course, you hate museums too.”

“They’re pretty much all the same.”

“Maybe Prague has a typewriter museum. You’d like that. You could buy a postcard and send it to that typewriter friend of yours.” Mimi spears a piece of pineapple off my plate with her fork. “What’s her name?”

I lean on the table and try to protect my food with my forearm.

“And look at this,” says Mimi. “There’s a Sex Machines Museum. Tell me you don’t want to see that.”

“You know you’re eating my breakfast.”

“You’re not eating it.” Mimi closes the guidebook. “Stop changing the subject. You know the first thing I want to do?”

“I was taking my time. I don’t gulp my food.”

“I want to walk the Charles Bridge.”

“We walked it last night.”

“That was in the dark.” Mimi licks her fork. “Come on. Everything always looks different in the light.”

LEROY BULL SHIELD was the black sheep of the Bull Shield family, and every time we went to Standoff to visit, Mimi’s mother would sit me down at the kitchen table and tell me the story.