7

Wishing he’d worn his Sunday, go-to-meeting string bolo tie with the turquoise stone instead, Adam yanked the silk tie with its stranglehold around his neck. Another fine example of cultural imperialism, a bilágaana instrument of torture meant to civilize the Diné. “Stop trying to help us,” he muttered under his breath.

And what on earth had possessed him to offer to escort Erin to his uncle’s church?

From his seat on the pew two-thirds back from the platform, he watched as Erin gave directions to the pianist. He’d also not realized Erin was leading the worship at Cedar Canyon Community today, either. She had a pleasant voice, nice but nothing remarkable.

After a quick warm-up by Erin and the small rhythm band, at his startled look she had smiled, silver loops swaying, as she stashed her purse beside him in the pew. “MK Training 101.”

“What in the world is MK Training 101?”

She laughed. “Missionary Kid. MK’s should be able, and I quote my father, ‘to play, sing, or otherwise lead worship at the drop of a hat.’ I sing. Jill accompanied. Todd learned to play a mean percussion or bass guitar as the occasion or available electricity demanded.”

He scanned the people filing into the small sanctuary, a congregation established by his grandfather Silverhorn sixty years before. A congregation of thirty faithful made up mostly, despite the years of effort on his family’s behalf, of old ones and the very young.

Jesus was a hard sell among the People.

During the opening song, he fumbled through the words to a barely remembered hymn from his childhood, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”

Friend, huh? If he kept hanging around this Erin person, she’d have him BFF with Jesus before he knew what hit him.

Shooting Erin a suspicious glance over the top of the hymnal, she’d merely smiled as pleasantly remote as the Mona Lisa. She’d kept him at an irritating arm’s length ever since he picked her up at eight forty-five on the dot.

But she’d done as he asked. The Navajo bun neat as a pin on the back of her head. He had no clue what had prompted him to ask such a thing of her.

Clarence pounded out a beat on the drum. Doli blew on her flute, making doe eyes at Clarence while Erin led the congregation in a contemporary song of praise his aunt Iris had written about the Creator and Jesus, His Son. Sani and his grandmother, her kerchief knotted under her chin, waved to Adam as Thommy Tso wended his way to the platform to read a passage. Erin gave Adam another smile as she eased down beside him on the pew.

“. . . The Lamb of God.” Thommy’s tremulous voice quavered with nerves. “Who takes away the sin of the world.” He cleared his throat.

Adam hid a smile as Thommy’s mother gave her son a pointed nod.

“Oh, yeah. John 1:29.” Thommy gave a huge sigh of relief, leaping off the raised dais and scooting down the aisle toward his waiting mother in the pew. The congregation chuckled.

Johnny took Thommy’s place, gripping the sides of the podium with both hands. “Sheep mean life to our people,the Diné. Spring.” He quirked his head in the direction of the arched window along the wall. “Spring among the People is a time we await with great anticipation. Spring is the time of new birth, the lambing season.”

He cast a long look over the congregation. “Many of you of a certain age like myself,” more laughs, “can remember how on horseback we helped our grandparents herd the lambs during the summer months to water at the high country family hogans.”

Johnny winked at Clarence and Doli. “Or by ATV today, as the case may be.” Clarence ducked his head, a self-conscious grin on his face.

“Sheep mean everything to us. The wool for our clothes.” Johnny smiled at one of the old ones, renowned for her weaving. “Wool fibers for works of art sold at the trading post at the end of summer purchase new shoes for the grandchildren.” Many nodded at his words. “Mutton for our bellies.”

A stomach growled on cue. Sani clutched his abdomen. His grandmother, her face lined like a leather glove, poked him in the side.

Johnny held up a hand. “I promise. No more mention of food. I’m hungry for Sunday lunch, too.”

Amen, reflected Adam. Erin had promised lunch. His mouth already watered. He fidgeted, remembering her words about fried chicken, potato salad . . .

But he resisted the urge to check his wristwatch. Though she’d been dead fifteen years, Adam well remembered his Grandma Silverhorn seizing possession of his watch if he’d been too obvious about his grandfather’s long-winded preaching. Beside him, Erin shifted, a wave of vanilla teasing his nostrils.

“We, Diné,” Johnny continued, “know the shepherding life. Lambs in our fold represent a balanced, good life between the People and the earth. The Gospel of John also tells us that our Good Shepherd, Jesus, laid down His life for His sheep. He is also the Lamb, my friend Thommy read about, Who takes away our sin and gives instead abundant life.”

Something flickered in Adam’s heart. But he shifted his mind to his undercover work, refusing to acknowledge the long buried feelings his uncle’s words created deep in his soul.

He’d cut his evening short with Debra much to her displeasure. Boring him out of his mind with her inane chitchat, she appeared intent on trapping him into a physical relationship he had no intention of falling into. Strictly a job with her. Nothing more. And would he be glad when this case was over and he could go back to—to what?

Adam darted a look at Erin out of the corner of his eye. Nothing boring about that bilágaana. A conversation with Erin Dawson was more like first contact with a hitherto undiscovered species. Not like Debra with her appetites amounting to nothing more than a hankering, as Hershal would’ve said, for brown sugar.

Unfortunately, he was well acquainted through his university days with the type. A game with many of the sorority girls, hooking up with one of the People, trying to shock conservative parents by their rebellion or for the sheer thrill of bragging rights.

Not like Erin in the least. Not a girl for one-night stands. Not a girl for casual relationships.

He grimaced. Hershal was right. Not a girl for someone like him.

Actions from his past—university and Fort Bragg days—he’d undo and erase if he could. He thanked God—there was a first in a long while—he’d never actually run into Erin while in North Carolina. She’d have never given that Adam the time of day. And why should she?

He flushed, ashamed of the Adam Silverhorn he’d been. The Adam who tried to party and romance his way out of bitter memories of a broken childhood and absent father. He was still vaguely shocked a woman such as Erin chose to count him as her friend.

But was he so different now?

Sure, he was doing something important to help his people, but had he really changed on the inside? For someone as lacking in worldly sophistication as Erin, she’d pegged him right the first time she’d laid eyes on him. A good time, blonde-chasing guy who liked fast cars and fast girls, anything to keep from examining the emptiness that clawed at his heart. An emptiness he tried to drown out with neon lights and lots of noise.

Johnny’s eyes grew earnest, recapturing Adam’s attention. “For the Christian, Jesus Christ is life. Jesus is everything you will ever need. And I have spent my life proclaiming among you, the People, the incredible gift of our Creator Who sent His Son, the Lamb of God, as a sacrifice for your sin and mine. Jesus desires only for you to draw near to Him to receive this gift of eternal life He offers. Won’t you believe, my brothers and sisters? Today?”

His uncle, to give him credit, looked everywhere and at everyone in the sanctuary except for Adam. Never any overt pressure from his uncle to change his heathen ways. He was the son Iris and Johnny had never been able to have. The only pressure from the uncle he’d looked up to since childhood was the kind of pressure the strings of love bring.

Erin made a motion to slide past him out of the pew. His uncle called for Erin to join him on the platform to lead the closing song of worship. As she slipped into the aisle, she smoothed down her long-sleeved midnight blue dress.

He admired the way the fabric hugged her hips and how its V-neckline framed her face. Envisioned how the color of one of his mother’s turquoise squash blossom pendants lying against the hollow at the base of Erin’s throat would accentuate her fair complexion.

She lifted her face and closed her eyes. The rustling sounds quieted. Erin opened her mouth and Adam’s heart quickened as the pure, sweet notes of “Jesus Loves Me” poured from her lips.

“Jesus loves me, this I know . . .”

A loveliness emanated from her being.

“For the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong . . .” Luminosity surrounded her. Beauty and harmony.

When had he decided she was lovely? The beauty of her spirit shone in comparison to the squalor of Debra’s. And his own. Her loveliness stung his eyes and his heart ached for the sheer beauty of the Christ in her.

“Yes, Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so.”

She exited the platform and as the last note died away made her way to the bottom level. Lacing her fingers together, she sent Adam a timid look, took a deep breath and then sang, enunciating each syllable carefully, “Jesus ayoo’asho’ní.”

Jesus loves me.

His head jerked.

Smiles spread across many of the old ones’ faces. With a sudden clarity of memory, he remembered echoes of this song in the voices of his grandparents soon after his mother had taken him and Lydia away from their father. He’d hunkered down on his Uncle Johnny’s lap, Lydia on Aunt Iris’s. Their grown, never-seen-her-cry mother slumped in her own mother’s lap,her face pressed against Grandma’s bosom, his mother’s frame wracked by sobs.

Adam’s grandfather had wrapped his arms around them both. Iris and Johnny had taken hold of each of his mother’s hands and in that circle of love, his family had sung Jesus ayoo’asho’ní until his mother had lifted her tear-streaked face and joined them in song.

How had he forgotten his mother’s grief over her broken marriage? How could he have forgotten the healing they’d found in their family’s heritage of faith?

Tears winked in his eyes.

“Binaaltsoos yee shit halne’.” Through His Word He tells me.

Did her Creator take as much pleasure from the sound of Erin’s voice as he did?

“Álchíníigi ánísht’é,” Like a child I am—

“Doo . . .” Erin stopped, a frantic look crossing her face. She bit her lip to keep it from trembling.

Her cheeks pinked. She’d forgotten the rest of the song in Navajo.

Adam gripped the back of the pew in front of him. He wouldn’t let her fall flat on her face in front of the People. Without stopping to think, he surged to his feet.

“Doo sidziil da, Ei bidziil,” his rusty baritone rang out.

I’m not strong. Him. He’s strong.

Gratitude welling in those lovely eyes, she seized onto his prompt, wrinkling her forehead in an effort to commit the words to the memory of that big scholar brain of hers.

“Jesus ayóó’ashó’ní,” He loves me. Adam blended his voice to her contralto.

Across the aisle, an old one, Sani’s grandmother, creaked to her feet. “Jesus ayóó’ashó’ní.” Sani rose, weaving his small fingers through his grandmother’s hand. Doli and Clarence stood, linking hands, lifting their young faces to the ceiling.

Jesus ayóó’ashó’ní. He loves me.

Iris joined Johnny on the platform. The look Johnny sent Adam’s way—of love and pride and joy—pierced Adam’s heart. One by one the members of Cedar Canyon Community—bilágaana and Diné—joined their voices.

Jesus ayóó’ashó’ní. He loves me.

Adam, too?

For one crazy moment as the song rose heavenward, he imagined the laughing, happy faces of his Grandma and Grandpa Silverhorn smiling down upon them.

“Bizaad yee shi halne’.” Through His Word He tells me.

The smile on Erin’s face stretched as wide as the distance between Carolina and his homeland. To his surprise, he found tears making a silent trek down his face.

Quiet rang out as the last words of the refrain dissipated into the rafters. A holy stillness settled over the sanctuary.

“Amen,” boomed his uncle’s voice.

“Amen,” thundered the People of Cedar Canyon Community Church.

Erin clutched the armrest of Adam’s truck as it lurched and bumped up Cedar Mesa Road to her home. Gripping the steering wheel with eyes fixed straight ahead, Adam wore a funny expression on his face, chagrin, and something she couldn’t pinpoint. The smile on her own face could’ve powered a nuclear generator.

Her cheeks were starting to hurt. Maybe one day both her friends, Jesus and Adam Silverhorn, would be on a first-name basis with each other.

“Don’t want to talk about what happened at church,” he growled.

Erin’s smile dimmed.

He swerved to the left to avoid a kamikaze prairie dog in the middle of the road. “Not ever gonna be an apple.”

“A what?”

“Like Uncle Johnny. Like Lydia living in Houston.”

“An apple?”

He shot her a look. “Red on the outside. White on the inside.”

Erin frowned. “You told me Lydia married one of the People.”

“She did. But then they moved to Houston. She’s a town Indian now living the bilágaana suburban dream of shopping malls and minivans.”

Erin blew out her cheeks in exasperation. “She married an oil rig worker. Of course they live in Houston.”

Adam stuck out his chin. “She teaches a Bible study, too.”

Like it made her some sort of evil Nazi propagandist?

She stiffened, curling her fingers into a tight ball on the armrest. That kind of talk about her friend, Jesus, from someone who ought to know better always got to her. “News flash, Silverhorn. Jesus wasn’t a bilágaana. He was the Son of God and a Jew. Not a drop of white in those veins He shed for my sins and yours.”

As soon as she’d said it, she wished she hadn’t. No way to win friends or influence people for Jesus by getting defensive and antagonistic.

But to her surprise, Adam hooted with laughter. “You sound like my Grandpa.” He licked his lips around his grin. “Fine. I won’t badmouth your friends if you don’t badmouth mine.” Taking one hand off the wheel, he stuck out the other. “Truce?”

She uncurled her fist and shook his hand. The warmth of his fingers sent a jolt through her spine. Apparently, something jolted Adam as well. The grin disappeared. His black eyes stared out the windshield as they rounded the last hill toward her house.

“Pray for me, though?” he whispered, refusing to meet her gaze again.

“Have been and will continue to do so.” To lighten the mood, she gave him a mock salute.

The corners of his full lips tilted up once more. “What’s this I hear about you starting an exercise class at the community center? Don’t go imposing your perverted, anorexic-thin bilágaana notions of beauty on my people.” He steered into the driveway.

She arched an eyebrow at him. “It’s a nutrition and fitness class for new moms. In case you haven’t noticed, the rates of obesity and diabetes on the Rez are horrific.”

He shifted the truck to Park, cut the engine, and twisted in the seat. “Healthy is good. But—”

She pushed open the door and slid out. Slowly pirouetting, the hem of her dress billowed. “I’m hardly a poster child for the bilágaana’s obsession with weight. Though I’ve wished most of my life for a few more inches and a little less . . .” She fluttered her hands.

“In the Diné culture, we like love handles on our women.”

“Well, no wonder I like living here. I go over big and beautiful.”

He stepped out of the truck and meandered around to join her. “You certainly don’t qualify as big. And as for the beautiful part . . .” He gave her that lopsided smile of his. “I’m glad you like living here. The People also don’t mind a little junk in the trunk.”

She planted her hands on her hips. “Did you just say I have a big butt?”

Laughing, he held up both hands in surrender. “No, I did not. You are curvy, Erin Dawson. Not big. Just right.”

“And what business do you have looking at my butt in the first place?”

A flush started from the edge of his blazer collar. His eyes darted toward the house. “I like your—” The color drained from his face. He reached behind and under his jacket, extracting a gun.

Her eyes went huge. “You carried a gun to church? What are you—?”

“You got your cell phone?” he hissed.

His eyes had gone as opaque and bottomless as a black hole at the bottom of a canyon.

“Yes, but what—?”

“Get in the truck and lock the door. Call 911. The dispatcher will put you through to Tulley Singer. He’s on duty today. Tell him I need him to get out here pronto.”

“Adam? What’s going on?”

He started up the drive. “Get in the truck, I told you,” he called over his shoulder. “Someone’s broken into your house.”

Only then did she notice the front door standing ajar, a strange symbol spray painted red across its surface. Under the carport, the windshield of the Camry smashed.

She gasped. “You’re not going in there alone? The intruder could still be in there. You need to wait for your backup.”

Adam pivoted. “If he’s in there, I mean to catch him.”

She extended a hand. “Give me a gun. I’ll help.”

His eyes widened in disbelief.

“My daddy—”

“This is not MK Training 101, Erin. The thought of my Glock in your inexperienced hands . . .” He shuddered. “You are wasting my time and the opportunity to catch this perp. For once in your life,” he said between clenched teeth, “do what you are told to do and Get. In. The. Truck.”

Erin stamped her foot. Pebbles flew. No need for this suicidal Lone Ranger act. But she had the sense not to say it out loud noting the I’m-spoiling-for-a-fight look on his face.

She flung open the door and hurled herself into the seat. Refusing to take her eyes off him, she rooted around in her purse until her fingers located her cell phone. Holding it up for him to see, she returned his glare and hit 9-1-1.

Relaying his message, she gave him a curt nod to let him know she’d done as he asked. His lips tightened and he jerked his head toward the truck cab. He mouthed, “Lock the door now.”

Frowning, she did as he asked. Inhaling sharply, he placed both hands around his weapon and extended his arms. The cold steel gleamed in the afternoon sun. Sidling to the corner of the house, he dropped to a squatting position and skedaddled in a sideways crablike maneuver under the picture window until he reached the edge of the porch steps.

“Jesus,” she whispered, her hands clasped together under her chin.

With a suddenness that took her breath, he vaulted from the bottom to the top step in a single bound. Shoving open the door with his shoulder, he shouted, “Police Officer,” before disappearing out of her sight into the confines of the house.

She tolerated the silence about ten seconds. Catching sight of a tire iron wedged under the seat, she made a grab for it and sprang out of the truck. This was her house and Adam was her . . .

Friend?

Right.

Licking her suddenly dry lips, she advanced up the steps before she could change her mind.

Adam, whether he admitted it or not, needed her help. Despite his inflated opinion of himself, no man was an island. Even the Lone Ranger had Tonto. And whether Adam Silverhorn liked it or not, she was going to help him if it killed her.

She swallowed, pausing at the door, her knuckles turning white around the tire iron.

Metaphorically speaking, of course.