The last photograph I used, which was undated, showed a group of thirty or so Indians in full headdresses standing with Buffalo Bill in front of a backdrop of tipis and tents. There were two Native children in this one. They were wearing feathered headdresses as well.

In all four of the photographs, the feathered headdresses were the markers, the sign that these were Indians and not Chinese workers at the Three Gorges Dam or coal miners on a coffee break in West Virginia.

A few of the Indians in the Wild West show photographs didn’t have headdresses, and I had to conclude that there had been only so many headdresses available, that if you came late for the shoot, you’d have to settle for a single feather or a leather headband.

THE STORY OF UNCLE LEROY and the medicine bundle delights Oz. “He paints the house with cow shit?”

“He does.”

“Then he must join the Wild West show?”

“Captain Trueblood’s Wild West Emporium.”

“And comes to Europe?”

“Paris, Athens, Amsterdam,” I tell him. “We have the postcards.”

“And he comes also to Prague?”

“Yes.”

“And he sees the astronomical clock?”

“Probably.”

“So far from home. But he returns?”

“No,” I say. “He never returns.”

“To be a refugee.” Oz shakes his head sadly. “A very hard life.”

I had never thought of Uncle Leroy as a refugee. But, of course, that is exactly what he was. Forced off the reserve, dragged through an assortment of countries and languages. Homeless.

The old man in Keleti station with the vacant eyes. The women huddled in the corner. The child with her stuffed monkey. The young men with angry faces, ready to fight.

“But tell me more about this bundle.”

“What do you want to know?”

“What is inside the bundle?”

I had never seen the bundle, and neither had Mimi. Not even Mimi’s mother had been alive the last time the bundle had been opened.

“Could be anything,” I tell Oz. “A stone, a tooth, a feather, a piece of cloth, a bone of some sort.”

“And this is sacred?”

“No,” I say, “it’s more a family history, a collection of stories.”

“Bones and stones?”

“They remind us of stories.”

“And now you make a new bundle.”

“My wife’s idea.”

“To replace the bundle that has been lost.”

“Yes.”

“Nylon? With a zipper?”

“One of the women on the reserve did some beadwork on the pouch,” I tell Oz. “It looks pretty nice.”

“Of course,” he says, “of course. Cultures are living things. They must continue to change or they will die. This is true, is it not?”

I don’t disagree with Oz, but there is still something about a nylon medicine bundle that bothers me.

“And what do you put in this new bundle?”