Sharon Sala - Rider on Fire & When You Call My Name

“Come tomorrow,” Franklin said. “I’ll make breakfast.”

Adam arched an eyebrow. Franklin’s fry bread was famous on the mountain.

“Fry bread, too?”

Franklin smiled. “Sure.”

“What’s fry bread?” Sonora asked.

Both men looked at her and then shook their heads.

“It won’t look good if word gets out that Franklin Blue Cat’s daughter has never had fry bread,” Adam said.

Franklin smiled. “You are right,” he said. “So…my first duty as a father will be to introduce her to it.”

Sonora caught herself smiling back. “Am I being the butt of a big joke?”

“Oh, no,” they said in unison. Then Adam added. “Your father often makes fry bread at the stomp dances.”

“Stomp dances?”

They looked at her and then smiled again.

“You have a lot to learn about your people,” Franklin said, then his smile went sideways. “I will teach you what I can with the time I have left.”

Sonora nodded, then looked away. “Maybe you could tell me where you want me to sleep. I would like to wash off some of the dust before we talk any more.”

“I’ll be going now,” Adam said. “See you for breakfast.”

Sonora picked up her bag as Franklin led the way down a hall.

“These rooms are cool and catch plenty of breeze. However, there is an air-conditioning unit if you wish to be cooler. The medicine I take makes me cold, so I don’t often use the main one in the house anymore.”

“This is beautiful,” Sonora said, overwhelmed by the subdued elegance. There were royal-blue sheers at the windows, as well as vertical blinds. A matching blue-and-gold tapestry covered a king-size bed and there was a large Navajo rug on the floor in front of it. But it was the carving of a small kitten that caught her eye. It was lying on its back with its feet up in the air, batting at a dragonfly that had landed on its nose.

She moved toward it, touched it lightly, then picked it up. “I can’t believe this is wood. It looks real.”

Franklin smiled. It was praise of the highest kind. “Thank you. It would honor me if you would accept it as a gift.”

Sonora’s eyes widened. “Oh. I didn’t mean to suggest… I couldn’t possibly…”

Franklin put a hand on her shoulder. “Please. You’re my daughter. Of course you must have this.”

Sonora ran a thumb along one of the paws, tracing each tiny cut that gave the appearance of fine hair.

“This is magnificent,” she whispered.

“I call the piece Friends,” Franklin said.

“It’s perfect,” Sonora said, and then held it close as she looked up into his face—a face so like her own. “Today has been overwhelming,” she said. “There is so much I don’t understand—so much I don’t know how to explain. I’ve never had family of my own, so if I do something wrong, I beg your forgiveness ahead of time.”

“You can do no wrong,” Franklin said. “You’re the one who’s been wronged. I don’t understand how this happened, but if I’d known about you, I would have moved heaven and earth to bring you home.”

Threatened by overwhelming emotions, Sonora shuddered. “If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up.”

Franklin shook his head. “It is no dream. Now, I have one request to ask of you.”

“If I can. What do you need?”

“To hold my daughter.”

Sonora hesitated long enough to put down the sculpture, then turned and walked into his arms.

Franklin stifled a sob as she laid her cheek against his chest. For the first time since he’d received the news of his death sentence, he was angry all over again. This wasn’t fair. Why should they be reunited like this only to know it would soon come to an end?

* * *

It was almost dark by the time Adam got home. He finished his chores in the dark and then hurried inside, reaching shelter only moments before the heavens turned loose of the rain.

Wind blew. Thunder rumbled. Lightning flashed.

He ate a lonely meal and thought of the breakfast tomorrow, knowing that, for a short time, he would be with Sonora again.

He didn’t know what was going to happen between them, but he didn’t want the relationship to end before they had a chance to know one another.

He thought of Franklin, wondering how he was going to take finding a daughter and losing his life.

Rain blew against the kitchen window as he washed the dishes from his evening meal. Lightning flashed, momentarily revealing the wildly thrashing trees and limbs and the flow of rainfall funneling through the yard to the creek below his house.

Then another, more sinister thought reared its head.

Sonora had said she was in danger.

He feared she was understating the issue. The soldier in him wanted to take her to a place of safety and guard her against the world. But the healer in him knew there was another way.

His eyes narrowed as he dried his hands and moved from the kitchen to the medicine room.

He paused in the doorway, thinking of a stranger on Sonora’s trail, and then moved with purpose to the shelves. Without hesitation, he chose the items he needed, then carried them outside onto the porch. Sheltered from the rain, he lit a swatch of dried sweetgrass, then purified the air with the smoke.

He fell into the old language as easily as he breathed, turned to the north and began to chant, telling the Old Ones of the danger to one of their own, beseeching them to protect her when he could not. Then he repeated the request to the east, then the south and finally the west.

A wild crack of lightning hit the ground only yards away from his house. Adam staggered backward from the force of the strike. The scent of sulfur was heavy in the air. As he stood, the wind suddenly changed and blew rain up under the eaves of the porch and into Adam’s face.

He took it as a sign that they’d heard.

It was done.

Sonora spent the rest of the evening in a daze. It was difficult to wrap her mind around the fact that she not only had a father, but that she was actually in his house. While the premise was far-fetched and almost too good to be true, whatever doubts she might have had about being his daughter ended the moment she’d seen her grandmother’s picture.

Thinking about how she got here could make her crazy if she dwelled on it, so she didn’t. For a woman who’d spent all of her adult life dealing in truth and facts, accepting the notion of being guided by what amounted to ghosts seemed ridiculous. Still, however it had happened, she was grateful to be here.

And Franklin, who was normally shy and reticent toward strangers, was struggling to give her space. The last thing he wanted was to scare her off, but he felt a constant need to be with her. With his life span already limited, he was resentful that their time together was destined to be short.

So, while they wrestled to find comfort with each other, the thunderstorm that threatened earlier had come full force. Sonora and Franklin ate their evening meal with an accompaniment of thunder and lightning, then washed dishes with rain splattering against the windows. After that, Franklin had taken her on a tour of the house, only to have it interrupted by a power failure. Sonora had embarrassed herself by panicking when the lights had gone out. By the time Franklin found flashlights and lit a few candles, the power was on.

Now they sat in front of a television without paying any attention to the programming, trying to find points of connection between their separate lives.

Sonora was fascinated with his artistic skills and was going through a photo album that represented a complete set of his work once he’d turned a hobby into a profession. She was in awe of where he’d been, and the heads of states he’d met in faraway countries.