Randy didn't know what to do next. She roamed through the house looking in trunks and thumbing through books trying to decide if she would go to Miss Marla or do something else. Pa wanted his ashes with Mama and baby Jonah. She knew what that meant. With the pain in her leg, she couldn't do anything on her own. She had to leave Pa where he lay in the dirt. Randy was going to have to get Cheveyo to help. Maybe he could help her decide what she should do once they were done taking care of Pa.
Randy saddled up Al to search the hills for the lonely Indian. Every bounce shot pain through her leg. She was relieved to find Cheveyo's partially underground home right where she thought it would be. It had been a long time since she'd been there and had never sought him out on her own before. Hopping up to his door on one leg, she knocked hoping he would be there.
"Oh, Little Hawk!" Cheveyo's leathery brown face wrinkled with his smile. "Where is Big Hawk?"
Randy couldn't hold it together. Tears streamed down her face. She shook her head unable to speak. Cheveyo hugged her, he knew. She bounced on one leg when he shifted her off balance and she cried out.
"Little Hawk, what happened?" He pulled away, looking her over.
With Cheveyo's help, she limped into his cool, earthy hut full of pungent smells from the herbs he kept in stacks along the walls. He left his people long ago to live a solitary life in the hills. Much older than her pa, many sought him for his Indian knowledge and wisdom since he was known as a peacemaker. That was how he lived peacefully in the desert. Her pa had always protected Cheveyo. Everyone in town and in the surrounding homesteads knew that. Randy wondered how Cheveyo would fare once news of her pa's death spread.
Cheveyo was there the day they burned her mama's and baby brother's bodies. Even though it wasn't the way of his people, he performed a sacred ceremony that day. She was calling on him to do it again.
It took some time before Randy could speak. "Two men killed Pa this morning. I hid in the attic but I didn't play the game as well as I could have. They shot me too." Randy wiped her face on her sleeve. "I need your help to take care of Pa."
Cheveyo sat on a stool in front of Randy. Miss Marla would approve that she was proper, wearing a skirt instead of trousers. He moved her skirt out of the way as he lifted her leg, rested it on his own, and examined her calf carefully, taking off the bloody bandage. He scrunched up his face, looking away.
"This is bad. How are you still walking?" Cheveyo rested her foot on the stool. He left to find a bucket of water. He plopped the bucket down, splashing Randy before easing her leg into it. She whimpered and gripped the wood of the chair.
"If it's not clean, you can get sick." He rummaged around the shelves on the wall, set some jars on the table. He dropped several herbs and water in a bowl to make a paste with a round mallet.
"I wanna go home and take care of Pa. He's still lyin' where he died."
"We need to take care of the living first. The dead can wait." Cheveyo cleaned the loosening dried blood off while her leg was immersed in water. He rested her foot on the stool again to let it dry while he cut strips of cloth to wrap over it.
Cheveyo slathered on the paste and wrapped it tight before he was ready to take her back home to take care of her pa.
By the end of the day they piled all the cut down sagebrush to make a large bed to set her pa's body on. With difficulty, she kneeled at his side to take off the necklace he always wore with her ma's wedding band on it. She removed his ring from his stiff finger and placed it on the chain with her ma's. Latching it around her neck, tears dripped off her nose onto his white lifeless face.
They wrapped him in the quilt she used to cover him after he died. Once he was wrapped tight in the blanket, with an enormous knot in her throat, and the agony of her grief tightening her chest, she helped Cheveyo lift his body onto the mound. The tears flowed freely once he started the fire. She had watched a similar scene seven years before when she was nine. But her pa was on one side of her holding her tight next to his ribs and Cheveyo chanted on the other.
No one was there to hug her anymore to say she would be all right. Cheveyo chanted like he did years ago, but even he couldn't stop his tears. They cried standing in their own space side by side as the fire engulfed her pa's body, staying there as long as it took until there was nothing left but ash and a few bones. By then the sun had disappeared.
"Will you stay? Or can I go to your house?" Randy pleaded. Cheveyo hesitated until Randy took his hand in hers. "I'm scared to stay alone."
He nodded. "I will stay, but only one night. We need to collect the ash in the morning before the breeze starts and blows it away." He patted her hand.
Randy had hundreds of things racing through her mind, but nothing could dull the ache of her pa's absence as she ate dinner with Cheveyo at the table.
"What will you do?" Cheveyo asked
"I haven't decided. I don't wanna stay here. I wounded them. I'm afraid they'll come back."
"They might. Your pa knew this would happen someday. Did he tell you what to do?"
Randy hesitated to tell Cheveyo. She didn't want him to make her follow through. But he had spoken often about how he was a free spirit. He believed the world was a place to live without the restrictions that others tried to impose on him. Cheveyo might be the last person to tell her to obey her pa.
"He said I was to go to Miss Marla. But I can't do that. He has to have known that. She always wants me to learn how to do girly proper things and wear a dress all the time. I hate it. She would make me drink tea out of fancy cups. I don't like tea. She's already made me learn how to sew. But that came in handy hemming trousers to fit me." Randy ran her nail down the woodgrain ridges on the table. "I won't be able to breathe if I lived with her. I'm not sure what else I can do."
"You have time. You should sleep on it." Cheveyo picked up her plate and cleaned it for her.
Randy didn't sleep that night worrying over if the men would come back. She cried for her pa off and on. By the time the sun rose in the morning she had a plan. She wasn't going to stick around.
Randy and Cheveyo gathered the ashes. Cheveyo placed what they gathered in a small container with a lid. They were both covered in ash when they were finished.
"Your pa loved you. I know he taught you everything he could so you would survive. Whatever decision you make, think it through. Think of what he would want you to do."
"If I leave, will you watch the house?" Randy was afraid to look at him. She glanced up briefly. He didn't look surprised at all.
"As best I can, but send the animals elsewhere. They are too much burden for me. Except for maybe the chickens."
"You can have the chickens. I know no matter what, I can't stay here. I can't handle living with Miss Marla."
"I don't think I could either." He shook his head and smiled.
"Could I stay with you?" Randy eyes widened hopefully. She had never thought of that solution.
"No. I know your pa would have liked that. He did ask me once. It would not be right for a little white girl like you to live with an old rebel Navajo like me. My people and your people would cease to respect me even if I was honoring your pa's last wish."
"I think I understand." Randy's heart sank. She wrung her hands.
"I have always called you Little Hawk not just because of your sharp eye and wit, but because of your free spirit. You are strong and you will do well wherever you go." He rested his hand on her shoulder and pointed at her chest. "Your pa did not teach you the ways of man. Other men that are not your pa might try to take advantage of you. You have a virtue you must protect." Cheveyo's walking stick brushed against her leg to lift the side of her skirt. "How does that make you feel?"
Randy hopped away from the stick.
"That's right. Don't let any man take from you what you aren't willing to give. Some men will like you for more than just being a pretty girl. They will want something that you should only allow them to have once they are your husband and you love them. Some of them won't care how you feel when they want to take it from you. Don't be afraid to fight. I know you know how." He gave her a strong, reassuring hug. Cheveyo's earthy scent filled Randy's nose. Â "Someone is coming to visit later today. I must go. Will you be all right? Or should I come visit you again this evening?"
"I'll be fine. I might stay in town or somethin'." But she had no intention of that, only if her business ran long.