Crossroads

bobs his head at me, and I precede him into the kitchen.

John-John has climbed up into his chair at the kitchen table. He looks at us with sad, serious eyes. He holds out his arms to his father and Frey lifts him from the chair, hugging him to his chest.

“Can I fix you something to eat, John-John?” I ask.

He buries his face in his father’s shoulder in response.

Frey looks toward the refrigerator. “That would be nice, Anna. I think there’s a dish in the refrigerator. Sarah’s parents brought it for the communal meal last night.”

It’s the first time he’s made reference to her parents or what went on after the burial. This doesn’t seem the time to ask for details, though. Instead, I open the refrigerator and withdraw a covered dish. When I peel back the foil, the smel of beans and meat wafts up.

“Can I fix you some, too, Frey?”

He starts to shake his head but I shoot him a warning look.

“I’m sure John-John wil eat more if you eat with him.”

He concedes with a shrug of understanding. “Sure. Fix me a plate.”

I spoon two portions onto plates, slip them into the microwave. It’s an older model, big and clunky, and it takes me a few minutes to figure out the controls. At last I have the food cooking away.

I join the two at the table. “What would you men like to drink?”

John-John blinks up at me. “You cal ed me a man.”

“Wel, you are, aren’t you?”

He gives a shy smile. “Ama used to cal me a man.”

Frey looks at me over John-John’s head. “His mother.”

“Wel, she was right.”

The microwave chimes and I bring the plates to the table.

Frey puts John-John in his own chair and they both pick up forks.

“Don’t you want to eat?” John-John asks me, al wide-eyed innocence.

Was I ever that young?

I sit down opposite him. “I’ve already eaten,” I tel him. No wide-eyed innocence here.

John-John waits for Frey to take a first bite, then starts in slowly himself. Frey soon is doing nothing more than moving food around his plate, but John-John does manage to eat a fair amount of his. When John-John is finished, I take both plates away before he can notice his father barely touched his food.

Frey leans closer to his son. “I have to run an errand this morning. Anna wil stay with you. I won’t be gone too long.

Wil you be al right?”

John-John lets no emotion show. “Can I go with you?”

Frey touches his son’s shoulder. “Not this time, Shiye. I have business to attend to.”

“Maybe I could help.”

Frey sighs. “Not this time,” he says again. He looks over at me. “Anna wil play games with you, if you’d like.”I don’t miss a beat. “You can show me how to do finger weaving.”

A spark of interest. “I could show you how to make a butterfly.”

“Deal.”

Frey lifts John-John out of his chair. “Okay, then. Go brush your teeth and get dressed. I need to talk to Anna a minute.”

John-John heads off for the bedroom. Frey motions me outside and we step onto the porch. Before he starts to speak, he taps the side of his head with a finger. A warning to keep my thoughts cloaked.

“There are two hotels nearby. I’l check them out. I’l cal you as soon as I know anything.”

“Are you sure you want to do this on your own? I’m scared for you, Frey.”

“I have to do this on my own. You, of al people, should understand. My family has been attacked.”

I do understand. It’s why I’m afraid. “Check in with me.

Every hour. Promise?”

John-John joins us and Frey bends down to say his good-bye. John-John has changed into jeans and a T-shirt and scuffed boots. His hair is slicked back.

He’s is not projecting his thoughts, nor probing for ours that I can tel. Maybe he’s already forgotten that he can. He and his father exchange their good-byes in Navajo and he watches Frey head for the Jeep. I step closer and reach for his hand.

He looks up at me and places his own smal palm in my own.

“Before we start the lesson,” I say, “we should feed the horses, shouldn’t we?”

The Jeep rumbles out of sight. John-John sighs but tugs at my hand, leading me down the steps. I cast a last backward glance.

Come back safely, Frey.

CHAPTER 34

THE HORSES GREET JOHN-JOHN MUCH MORE EAGERLY than they greeted me. He climbs into the corral, petting necks and rumps and getting gentle head bumps that make him smile. I remain outside, safely out of range of those big teeth and restless hooves. After a few minutes he rejoins me and we manage to get the horses fed and fil their water trough with an old-fashioned hand pump before starting back for the house.

“Maybe we can go riding later,” John-John says.

“I’d like that, though you’d have to go slow. I’ve never been on a horse.”

His look is one of childish astonishment. “Never? But you’re old.”

“City girl.”

“Oh.” He nods with the solemnity of an old soul. “I’d put you on Cochise, then. He’s the gentlest.”

We climb the porch steps and enter the living room. John-John pauses once in the doorway, looking around and I wonder if it’s his mother that he’s looking for. He recovers, squares his shoulders and walks right over to Sarah’s loom in the corner. He reaches into a basket beside it and pul s out a skein of yarn. He cuts a length, cuts two, and plops himself on the couch, patting the seat beside him.

“Come on. I’l teach you how to make a butterfly.”

I join him, marveling at how composed he is. Even at four, if I’d lost my mother, I’d be an inconsolable messnt> He begins by tying a knot, making the length a loop. He starts it like a cat’s cradle. His fingers dip back and forth on the middle string, then manipulate the top and bottom until I’m looking at a creation with the rounded body and wings of a butterfly. By opening his fingers back and forth, the damn wings seem to flutter.

I clap my hands. “That’s wonderful. I don’t think I can do it, though, you go much too fast.”

He hands me the second piece of yarn. “Fol ow me. I’l go slow.”

And we do. I don’t succeed the first try. But soon we’re fluttering our butterfly wings at each other and laughing.

“How did you learn how to do this?”

John-John pul s his string loose and quickly makes another design, this time a worm that seems to be crawling over and under the two paral el strings. “My mother taught me. But the Spider Woman taught us, the Dine’e.”

Spider Woman? My thoughts turn immediately to a female cartoon character. “Who is she?”

“Spider Woman taught the Navajo weaving. We learn right thinking and beauty through her gift. She teaches us to concentrate on a task. It is said that if you think wel, you wil never get into trouble or get lost.”

His words belie his young age. Was this one of the lessons his mother taught him? A beautiful, simple fable marrying a child’s game with a life lesson? My admiration for Sarah grows.