If you’ve never been where there’s no light whatsoever then you can’t even imagine the blackness of pitch black.

           Stan Miles woke up in such a situation and he could not see a thing. Well, at least he thought he was awake, because he sensed an intense and splitting headache, and he seemingly had been stashed into a confine somewhere unknown to him. Fear overwhelmed him and he believed that he was in a real pitch-black “abyss.”

         He recognized quickly that he was prone—flat on his back—because he could feel intense pressure on his spine, his rear, and the backs of my legs. He thought maybe he could move his arms, but he knew he couldn’t see anything, not even a splinter of light. Maybe he was in a box or a coffin and he began to flailing his arms. His arms and legs moved freely and he only hit the object he was laying on.  So it probably was a room of some kind but without even the slightest amount of light. He was not sure how long he had been here. When he rubbed the back of his head there was a huge lump and it felt like it was bleeding. At least it smelled like blood. The only conclusion that he could come to was that he hadn’t been in this predicament very long or his wound would not still be bleeding. Someone or something must have hit him hard in the back of the head and dumped him here. Maybe he was blind. He couldn’t be sure. Where ever he was he needed to find some source of light.

          He very slowly tried to sit up, but raising his head caused an extreme dizziness and overwhelming nausea. He felt forced to sink flat on his back again. His situation, he surmised, was not good. He suddenly felt very afraid of the spirit of darkness.

 

          As he concentrated, he remembered his last steps before realizing he was locked in confinement—coming to the Defense General Supply Center (DGSC) just south of Richmond, Virginia.  That is where he was supposed to have picked up Indian artifacts that were coming from Arizona’s Canyon De Chelly on the Navajo reservation.

 

           No one on the Navajo reservation had any idea what was going on in the pitch black confines where a young man struggled in distress. However a tall slender Navajo in his mid-fifties named Jay Ahkeah had tried several times to contact Stan Miles from a restaurant pay phone on the reservation in Chinle, Arizona. He wondered why no one could tell him where Stan was or when he would be back at work.

 

         Jay had helped with the archeological dig on Canyon De Chelly and he wanted his pay. Wallace Oaks, who worked for the Corps of Engineers, had hired Jay but had made arrangements for National Museum American Indians, museum in New York, to pay for his work. Jay wanted his money now that the job was over. Every time he came to town he used the restaurant pay phone to call Stan, who was the NMAI representative.

 

         While Jay fretted about his money, Navajo Police Officer Billy Joe Cornsilk didn’t know anything about Stan’s problem at DGSC or about Jay Ahkeah not getting paid, nor about Jay’s difficulty in contacting Stan Miles. Officer Cornsilk was headed in the direction of Jay’s hogan and lots of surprises.

 

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