Do not think of me as gone -
I am with you still - in each new dawn.”
Nastas sat with his mother at the kitchen table until she fell asleep at three o’clock in the morning. Nastas carried her to bed, her short, thin legs dangling over his arm. From the doorway of his hogan he spent the next hours smoking his father’s pipe.
When his mother emerged dressed for church, Nastas wordlessly slipped into the borrowed car beside her. He took comfort with her cheek on his shoulder and from her fussing over his bandaged head.
At the church his mother took his hand and led him to the large double doors. Almost abreast with the dark-suited greeters, Nastas pulled back. Begging her forgiveness, he stalked away. Taking a seat at the empty picnic table, he put his head down and openly wept for his brother for the first time.
A small part of him, no more than a drop, was surprised to find Natalia sitting in the same spot when he finally lifted his gaze. He wasn’t sure how long he had cried or how long she had been there. This time he didn’t inch away when she moved to touch him.
“Tell me, Nassie. What happened to you?” Gently she touched the bandage on his forehead. She could feel the large bump. It made her sadder than she’d expected.
“He looked so peaceful after the accident,” he responded, first in Navajo, then quickly, in English. Nastas recalled with perfect clarity the image of Hasten sitting next to him, his head resting unnaturally to the side. “I held his hand until it turned cold. No one came for so long.” Nastas spoke with the solemnity of a repentant man in confession.
“I am sorry for your loss. Hozo-go nay-yeltay to.” Nastas looked startled. “Am I saying it right? I didn’t mean any harm…”
“You are saying it right. Your tongue makes the words perfectly. Hozo-go nay-yeltay to. May we live in peace hereafter.” The way Natalia spoke the words in Navajo sounded like the songbirds of the lower plains so familiar in Nastas’ youth. “It is a beautiful sentiment. Made even more beautiful when you say it.”
Natalia blushed.
Nastas looked black. “Hasten’s death was not a good death. All morning I have had a chant in my mind that my father taught me just before he passed. It is one of dozens of chants and prayers he shared, but only one of hundreds when compared with what I’ve learned from his writings. My father was a great shaman. But this chant was from the Witchery Way. If spoken, its only purpose is to kill.”
It was Natalia’s turn to look shaken. She quickly brushed the emotion away. “Whom do you wish to kill?” she said, her unblinking eyes still calculating her position.
“A drunk driver killed Hasten. He is still alive. I am still alive. At least one of us shouldn’t be.” Nastas’ voice rose angrily with each word.
Natalia placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.
They talked until a single bell signaled the end of the service. Nastas’ mother greeted Natalia with a warmth she’d never shown the young Navajo girls who frequented her son’s room long after sunset. So began a relationship that would bring Nastas inside a Christian church for the first time in his life. Nineteen-year-old Natalia held his hand and prayed earnestly with him for a year of Sunday morning services, alongside her missionary parents. They spent many nights together in her small Window Rock apartment.
On the one-year anniversary of Hasten’s death, Nastas found himself walking alone, deep into the desert, without so much as a bottle of water. He’d told Natalia he would only be gone for an hour to search for a rare herb she’d wanted in order to make an even rarer tea. Now, ten hours later, his throat parched beyond feeling, his legs exhausted, Nastas had to resign himself to an unprotected night in the desert. Nastas at nineteen had none of the desert survival skills he’d acquired by the night of the flash flood.
Though he’d told Natalia, as he always did before he left, that he loved her, Nastas was surprised to find that he wasn’t thinking of her, even though there was an excellent chance he might not make it back alive. “It is funny what we learn about ourselves when the world has left us to our own devices,” he thought. He could picture his father’s hogan, now his hogan, with all of its charts and lessons and rituals waiting to be unraveled. He knew it was time to make them his life again, to return to the ways of the Navajo. “Earth Mother, forgive me my transgressions. If I die this day, I die as a Navajo.”
Sitting on a round rock, he licked at his dry lips.
The rapidly cooling air carried welcome relief.
Nastas looked up to find several fat rain clouds bobbing in his direction. They looked like the black sheep his father used to tend: BahBah, BahJobe, BahJahova, and BahHumBug. They nourished him then and would nourish him now. He opened his mouth to the first drops, his head moving to catch them like an agitated cobra. “Thank you, Earth Mother. I will not forsake you.”
The rain continued, and the scattered drops graduated to sheets. The temperature dropped by degrees until Nastas began to shiver. He leapt on the rock and screamed with joy: “Holy Father, you honor me!” He laughed and coughed at the same time as water filled his eyes, nose, and mouth. The storm intensified. Nastas was having trouble keeping his footing against the waterfall streaming from above.
Forced to close his eyes, Nastas waited.
The sound was deafening.
The drops stung his skin.
Exhausted, he let himself fall backwards. He hoped nothing thorny would cushion his fall. His back made contact with a thin tree trunk. He leaned against it for support until it unexpectedly moved away.
The rain slacking, Nastas brushed the water from his eyes. What he saw made him marvel. A great black horse stood above him. Wet, huge, and brilliantly spectral, its orange shadow was a creature unto itself.
It was Musashi.
Allaying Nastas’ fears that the creature must be a manifestation of evil, Musashi bowed to him like a circus horse and joggled his head up and down until Nastas mounted.
Ever since then, they’d been kin to the desert.
They occasionally returned to their family’s government dwelling to ensure all the new arrivals were living well. Nastas’ aunt and uncle and their three children had moved in after he’d left so his mother wouldn’t be alone. Even on these visits, horse and rider stayed only for a day or two. Nastas’ family helped with certain provisions and accompanied him for sweats at the neighbor’s lodge, but usually he kept to himself, praying and studying alone in his hogan. When the sun set, Nastas would often sleep in the desert within earshot of their drunken voices, the banging outhouse door a frequent interruption to the desert still.
Nastas hunched over even further; his back bowed awkwardly. He wondered why he was still moving. He wondered if movement even mattered. Hours of fleeting consciousness passed, each one closer to complete darkness than the last. Blood from Nastas’ arm dripped from his fingertips onto Musashi’s foreleg, where it fanned out across his black hoof before the desert consumed it. Slowly but surely, Nastas was bleeding to death, his body weakening minute by minute. The branch had done its job well.
Nastas knew he should dismount and tend to himself if he could, that he should sew his torn flesh together and eat, drink water, and rest in the shade. Maybe even seek help. He was puzzled by
