It was the wintertime with snow on the ground and a kerosene lamp sat on a homemade table and lit the inside of a traditional Navajo home. A small stand stood by the door with a white enamel washbasin on top and by the stand was an old saddle leaning against the wall. A horse’s bridle hung from a peg on the wall above the saddle with an old rope. A Navajo man sat at the table drinking coffee and watched at his son sleep. His wife sat at the table looking at the red glow of the cast iron stove in the middle of the room with its stovepipe going straight up into a hole in the roof. Out side it was dark and it was morning before the sun came up.
“Get the boy up. It’s time to go,” the man said to his wife as he got up from the table.
The woman looked at her son and moved to the where he slept and gently called his name. The boy stirred and looked up at his mother and at the door where his father was standing and he sat up and cleared sleep from him eyes. His mother put the boy’s denim jacket that had a wool collar on a chair near the stove to warm it and placed a bowl of blue corn mush and coffee on the table for him.
“Eat, Sam. You have a long day and it will be cold,” the woman said in Navajo to the boy.
By the washstand the saddle leather cracked and the metal parts of the bridle jingled as the man pulled the saddle over his shoulder. Sam watched his father do this and saw him open the door. For a brief moment he could see the early morning darkness beyond the door and the snow that blew in and melted on the dirt floor and he felt the cold air on his face. Sam’s father went out and closed the door and he could hear his father’s footsteps crunching in the snow and fade away as he walked in the direction of the corral where his horse was.
Sam ate his blue corn mush and drank his coffee while his mother prepared a simple lunch for him and her husband. She placed the lunch into a cloth flour sack and tied it with a string. The door opened and Sam’s father called to him in Navajo, “Let’s go now.” Sam didn’t say anything and moved from the table and put on his warm jacket and grabbed the cloth sack of food from his mother. The sack contained tortillas, a small frying pan, and some canned meat. Before walking out the door, Sam looked at where he slept and he missed the warmth of his blankets. The cold morning air rushed in and he walked out into the darkness. Outside, the man pulled a wool cap over Sam’s head and over the cap an old straw cowboy hat that was too big for him and they walked to the corral.
Sam saw the horse was ready for the two-hour ride to the place where his father was building a new home. When they came near to the horse he saw the horse’s nostrils flare and he saw the condensation from its breath rise in great torrents of warm air in the cold morning. Sam’s father put one foot in the stirrup and lifted himself over the horse and he reached down for Sam’s small hand and in one quick movement Sam was sitting behind his father, his little legs fitting neatly into the space behind the saddle’s cantle. Next, Sam’s father tied a short rope around himself and Sam so the boy would not fall off if he fell asleep during the long ride.
After riding through flat lands, Sam and his father were now in the low hills that eventually gave way to towering white mesas in the distance. The land changed from dark to blue and now it was nearly sunrise and it was white from the snow. When they neared a place where other Navajo people lived they could smell wood smoke rising from stoves and they could hear dogs barking. It was hard to tell how far away the homes were because noise sounded much shaper in the cold air.
Riding behind his Father, Sam could hear him breathing and the saddle and the bridle creak and jingle with each step of the horse. He could also hear the horse’s steps crunching in the snow. They rode past the homes that were in the distance, across a wide arroyo, through cotton wood trees, and now up and through a draw in the mesa where the new home was being built.
At the new place the walls of the traditional house were built from straight pine logs stacked on top of one another and the roof was nearly finished. Sam’s father stopped the horse near the front door and let the boy down from the horse. He dismounted and tied the horse to an unused log and untied his tool bundle from the saddle’s pommel. Snow covered the land around the Hogan and the boy started clearing the place where the fire was and gathering wood to build the fire again. Nothing needed to be said. Sam took care of the fire and his father worked where he stopped the day before and after the fire was built Sam helped his father where he could keeping an eye on the fire. The day passed and near lunchtime the boy opened the cloth sack and took out the frying pan and the can opener and whatever canned food his mother put in the sack and he put these things together and Sam’s father smelled food cooking and came to the fire to eat. Sitting on a log placed near the fire, Sam ate quietly. His father, taking the coffee pot from the fire and pouring coffee into his cup asked Sam what he was thinking about.
The boy looked at the fire and said, “I have thoughts about why we’re building a Hogan when we already have one.”
After a moment, Sam’s father took a deep breath and threw out the coffee.
“Because I need someplace to go to,” he said.
“Why do you have to go?” Sam felt lonely when he asked his father this. His father would not be at home with his mother and he wondered where he would go to live. At either place he would be without one or the other and he felt something inside hurt and he too took a deep breath and poked at the fire with a stick.
A cold wind blew through the juniper trees and pushed the fire and smoke in a different direction. Sam’s father didn’t answer the question and walked back into the Hogan and in a moment the hammering started again and Sam started to wash the frying pan using snow and put the dishes and cups back into the cloth sack and he gathered wood to keep the fire going. As he walked into the draw among the juniper trees Sam thought about why his father had to leave. When he pulled on a dead branch for firewood the breaking sound startled him and shook snow from the tree. The breaking sound echoed only a little and he looked back at the Hogan and saw the fire was nearly out. After gathering a small arm full of wood he started back and the sound of his walking in the snow was close to him like the sound of his breathing. It was quiet.
When the sun cast shadows to the east side of the Hogan and these shadows were long, Sam’s father put his hammer and handsaw in a square sheet of canvas and rolled them up together and tied the tool bundle to the front of his saddle. Sam saw this and put the wood he gathered inside the Hogan to keep dry for tomorrow’s fire. Sam thought about the fire he would make tomorrow and he hoped his father would ask him to help build the Hogan. Today, Sam’s father worked alone and didn’t talk much and Sam sat near the fire most of the day. He watched his father hammer at the roof, walk in and out of the Hogan, carry lumber, and when he got cold he watched him stand near the fire and rub his hands together over the flames and they did not talk.
Now the horse was loaded up and hey started out for the other place. After two hours the horse came over the top of a small hill and in the distance Sam’s father could see his wife’s place. Smoke was rising from the stovepipe and Sam’s dog started barking and ran out to great them. Sam let his son off and took the horse to the corral where he removed the saddle and draped an old rug over the horse’s back here it was wet from the ride. This way the horse would be good in the morning. After doing this he took the saddle and lifted it over his right shoulder and walked toward the Hogan and he thought now about how things were and remembered when they were happy together. But now, they didn’t laugh and they rarely talked to each other. It was hard to live like this and it was hard to open the Hogan door.
Inside the Hogan he put the saddle near the washbasin facing it toward the stove so it would dry by morning. He hung the bridle on the wall and from a pot sitting on the stove he poured water collected from snow that was melted into the washbasin and washed his hands. Sam’s mother sat at the table. Sam lay near the wall and watched his mother and father. Before drying his hand on an old towel Sam’s mother asked her husband, “Is the Hogan completed?”
“It will be done tomorrow,” Sam’s father said.
“Then you will move out?”
“Yes.”
That is all they said before Sam’s father turned toward the door and opened it and walked outside to check on his horse. When night came Sam’s mother lit the kerosene lamp and turned the light down low. She put out Sam’s blankets and she got ready to sleep putting out her things on the north side of the Hogan near the table. Sam’s father came in the house and took off his jacket and hung it on a peg near his saddle and put out his blankets on the south side of the Hogan. Sam pretended to sleep but he watched his father. He saw how he removed his boots and placed them neatly by the saddle and he watched him lay down. Before he fell asleep he saw his father turn toward the wall.
The next day before the sun came up the man quietly lifted his saddle and bridle from the wall. He opened the door and he could see it was snowing. The air was cold and stung his lungs when he breathed in. Before he closed the door he looked back at Sam, hesitated a moment, and without looking at the woman, he closed the door gently. Standing outside the Hogan, he took a deep breath and walked toward the coral. His horse had light frost covering its mane and the old blanket draped over its back. He took the blanket off the horse and replaced it with a thick saddle blanket and the saddle. He ran the saddle’s leather belts under the horse’s belly and through the metal buckles and tightened the belts making sure the saddle would not move too much and he tied the tool bundle to the front of his saddle. Before mounting the horse he hung the small rope he used to tie his son to him on the corral’s gatepost and got on his horse and started out in a slow trot to the new place.
Later that morning Sam’s mother shook him by the shoulder waking him. He moved a little and then he opened his eyes and remembered his father and the new Hogan and started moving fast because he thought he had to get ready to go. Before he could throw off his blanket, Sam’s mother stopped him by placing her hand on his small chest and said for him to sleep a little longer because his father had already gone.
“Why didn’t he wake me up?” Sam said. He looked at the door.
“Because he doesn’t need your help anymore.”
Sam lay back down and looked up at the ceiling and into the small opening between the chimney and the chimney hole in the roof and he could see it was snowing. He thought about how it would be cold today at his father’s Hogan. How the snow would have covered the place where he built the fire. He lay there thinking that he wished the snow would cover the bad feelings between his mother and father, that if you looked where the snow had covered you would see nothing to cause his father to move out. He also thought about the wood he put inside the new Hogan and hoped that his father would find it and use it to build a new fire and be warm, but he knew he couldn’t ever forget where the old fire was built under the snow.
