She stopped on the way and parked her well-used Toyota close to the burned shell of the Malibu. She wanted another look at the ridge to see if there were any more of those little cacti or any strange tracks she’d missed. She remembered the animal she’d seen in the road the evening she got lost. The thought made her uneasy, but she convinced herself it was a dog, or maybe one of those big wolf hybrids.
An assembly of clouds hung in the late afternoon’s huge, brilliant sky, a hint at the undelivered promise of rain. She stood on the sandy earth and took in the sight of Ship Rock, more rugged than it looked from the angle at which she saw it most often. She had met people who found this landscape unsettling, people from elsewhere who felt uncomfortable without a green canopy of trees overhead. She liked trees well enough, as long as she could still look out and see the sky. She considered the pi?ons and junipers that lived in coexistence on much of the Navajo Nation’s land to be nature’s best tree creations. It took the pi?ons a hundred years to grow twelve feet, and they provided tasty nuts. Juniper was used in ceremonies and as medicine. She’d grown up drinking juniper tea when her stomach felt uneasy, and as a girl she had used the little brown seeds inside its blue berries to make bracelets and necklaces. Good trees, and they didn’t usually block the view.
Her eye caught a flash of motion near the ridgetop. She focused. Saw it a second time. In addition to coyotes and dogs, there were horses out here, although an animal that large seemed unlikely on the rocky slope. She kept her gaze on the ridge, but she didn’t see it again.
The vibration of her phone in the backpack surprised her. She fished it out of the front pocket. Chee!
“Hey, there.” His voice sounded as strong as if he’d been standing beside her. “I talked to Bahe, and I can head back to Shiprock.”
“It seems like you’ve been gone forever.”
“Sounds like you’re standing in a tunnel, sweetheart. Where are you?”
“I’m getting ready to visit Hosteen Tso. You know, the man who lives near Ship Rock. When I leave, I’m spending the night at Mama’s. Darleen and Mama and I have a lot to talk about.” She’d save the bad news for when she saw him, after she’d interrogated Darleen. “I can’t wait to see you.”
“I can barely hear you, honey. Call me when you get to Mama’s, OK?”
“Sure thing.”
She ended the call, wondering not for the first time if the aggravation caused by all the times cell phones didn’t work was offset by their convenience when they did. She still voted in favor, but the margin was slim.
She climbed the ridge, wishing the day were cooler and that she’d worn her hiking boots. She saw a lizard nicely camouflaged against the gray rocks, but no cactus plants, or yellow markers for them. No more tracks, either.
The old man was sitting on the same wooden bench where she’d seen him last. He stood when she stopped her car and hobbled out to her, greeting her in Navajo and adding the word for “friend.” He motioned her to the side of the house. “Put your car there, where you saw my grandson’s truck. Get some shade from that tree by the corral.” She parked, grabbed her backpack, and walked to the porch.
“I like your hair fixed like that, the old way. It keeps the wind from stealing your thoughts. I used to wear my hair like that, too, back when I was young.” She wasn’t surprised; the hairstyle was part of the Navajo tradition.
She showed him the bag with the plums and the coffee. “These are for you, Mr. Tso. I thought you might enjoy them.”
“Ahéhee. Thank you.”
Then Bernie gave him the belt. He ran his hands over the fabric. “A nice one. Soft.” He started to hand it back to her, but she shook her head.
“It’s for you. You can wear this when your daughter takes you to that big food corral.”
He looked puzzled. “I don’t know about a place like that.”
“It’s in Gallup. You mentioned that you liked the Jell-O there.”
Mr. Tso shook his head. “Maybe the heat is bothering you. Come and sit with me.”
Bernie didn’t press the point. She took her place in the chair next to Mr. Tso’s bench and shared the view. They watched a pair of ravens soar against the deep blue sky.
“My grandson came earlier today to tell me he has a new job. The people who want to put up those mirrors hired him.” She sensed a grandfather’s pride, but something else in his voice as well. Concern?
“The solar company? That’s wonderful for him. Maybe you will see more of him now.”
But Mr. Tso shook his head. “They are the ones who gave me those lights down there.” He moved his head toward the side of the house where she had parked. “Go take a look. Then I will tell you more.”
She stepped off the porch and next to a chain saw and the red plastic gas can, she found a row of little lanterns mounted on long metal stakes with pointed ends. Each of the six had a flat dark rectangle on the top of a little box that was glass on all sides. They looked new.
She returned to Mr. Tso. “Those are interesting. Do they work?”
The old man frowned. “The one who wants to put those mirrors out there, he gave them to me. He and my grandson pushed them into the ground. When the sun went down, when the first stars could be seen, they turned themselves on.” He shifted on the bench. “No good. They make light when it should be dark.”
Bernie pictured the scene. She thought solar lights were an excellent idea, especially for a house without electricity.
“When I was a boy, we respected the darkness. We went to sleep when it got dark, got up when the sun rose. In the winter, the long nights gave us stories.”
A coyote yipped in the distance, joined by another. Then came barking dogs. Mr. Tso began talking about a pack of dogs that had killed his goat when he was a boy, a story he had told her the first time she visited. An old shotgun was propped by the bend on the porch. It reminded her of the gun her uncle had kept for creatures who threatened the sheep.
It was not uncommon on the Navajo reservation for feral dogs, perhaps interbred with coyotes, to attack livestock and even children. Perhaps, Bernie thought, even an old man. She understood why Mr. Tso’s daughter and grandson worried about him. “Those lights might help you see if a coyote or a dog pack is bothering your sheep. Maybe you should ask Aaron to put them by the corral.”
“Those are my daughter’s sheep. With the lights, the sheep couldn’t sleep.” Mr. Tso chuckled. “They would have to start counting people. Not enough people out here to make them sleepy.”
Bernie said, “Your daughter worries about you because of that burned car. I think that you know more about the burned car than you have told me. If you helped, maybe the police could find the one who burned the car, and your daughter wouldn’t worry so much.”
Mr. Tso stared out at Ship Rock. Finally he said, “Some evil things the police cannot help us with.”