Moonlight Water by Win Blevins

a little.
    Zahnie asked herself, Did Grandfather Winsonfred fill Red with stories of Ed last night, make him wonder if he was under a buzzard’s watchful eye?
    â€œWhat’re you thinking about?” she asked.
    â€œHosteen Winsonfred. The Ancient One told me to breathe this country and feel it. I’m trying.” She saw him let his eyes roam the skies again.
    He’s thinking about Ed, all right.
    She turned the boat fast, the current picked up, the roar started, and big waves rocked the boat. “Sand waves,” she called out. A whole row of them lined up. She hit them head-on.
    â€œRide ’em, cowboy,” Red hooted.
    They both got soaked.
    She slewed sideways and splashed him. They laughed and laughed more. Then the boat shooshed out into easy water.
    â€œWhy don’t you take a swim? Just float along in your life jacket?”
    Up, a quick cannonball, a big splash, and she was alone. She rowed hard, picked up the thrust of the current, got ahead of him, beached on a sandbar, got out a couple of sandwiches and two bottles of frozen water, and took a seat under a big cottonwood.
    He dripped his way toward her and they ate in silence, a good-enough silence.
    â€œOkay, enough. Time to get back on the water and find those nieces of mine. We can only go as fast as the river flows.”
    *   *   *
    When he pushed them off and clambered from the river into the boat, he took a risk. “You mind if I ask you some personal questions? I don’t want to get in the way of finding the girls.”
    â€œDepends on the questions. Talk won’t slow us down.”
    â€œWinsonfred is a traditional Navajo, right? Clarita is Navajo and Mormon. Are you a traditional Navajo?”
    He watched her hesitate, but her words were firm. “My people don’t consider me traditional. I think some of the old stuff is just superstition. Watch out for the river—Water Boy is down there and will get you. Don’t go near a dead body, or a place of death, or say a dead person’s name—their spirits may be hanging around and jump inside you. That one would keep me from going into the Anasazi ruins, which is part of my job, and I like it. I don’t like the traditional white stuff either.
    â€œThere’s a lot about Anglo culture that I’m not crazy about, mainly the rush, the push, the greed, not caring about other people, forgetting about your relatives. Sure, I’ve adjusted to it—I operate on the Anglo system of time, which Navajos don’t take to at all—but I don’t get swept up in it.”
    She took three big pulls on the oars. He waited.
    â€œNavajo tradition for me is believing in Nizhoni. Harmony. I like the inner beauty of the path better than Anglo technology.”
    She studied the current a moment and took one stroke across.
    â€œRelatives,” he went on, pushing. “You mentioned your son. I met Winsonfred and Clarita. We’re going after your nieces.” His eyebrows made question marks.
    â€œLots more. Other sisters, other nieces and nephews, my whole clan—”
    She interrupted herself. “Look!” Red followed her eyes.
    At the bottom of the sheer red face of the cliff, in white rock, stood what looked like an apartment building that had been pushed forward or backward in time from some other world.
    â€œWhoa!”
    â€œLeaning Bird Ruin,” she said.
    â€œRuin? I’d give a million bucks for that place.”
    â€œExcept you no longer have big bucks.”
    â€œIt’s probably not for sale, anyway.” He laughed.
    It made a long, curving line against the cliff wall. In some places the ancient architecture stood twice the height of a man’s head, and in others the stone walls had crumbled to knee-high. The sun lit the stone bright and made deep shadows inside, shadows where human beings once made their lives.
    He made a strange sound in his chest, and he felt as if the