Short Story
THE SILVERSMITH
by Geoff Ward
Born up in Kaibito, he was a Navajo silversmith, raised on the reservation where the desert rolled away towards Marble Canyon. As a child his time had been measured there by the sedate flow of the Colorado River where big trout lurked, and he’d felt as free as the winds that swept over the plateau to Navajo Mountain away to the north.
His grandfather had been a silversmith. The youngster was allowed to work the bellows at the rough forge the aged man had made, and help pour the molten silver into sandcast moulds. It was among the oldest of Navajo ways of working with the bright and beamy metal they loved. Long, long ago, silver had been the gift of the star people. By the age of nine, the grandson was making his own jewellery, and as a young man he was already adept at his art and had begun his own trade in the venerated tradition.
He’d been to a convention in Gallup, and knowing the long drive home would take him until nightfall, he stopped early for breakfast at a crowded diner just off the interstate. Removing his wide-brimmed hat, he paused inside the door to glance around the place for a seat. Right now there was only one that he could see.
He sat down at her table, and his eyes met hers for a moment as he reached across for the menu. She was sipping coffee. He thought she had a hunted look. She thought he had compassionate eyes. She wished she had a dollar for every chance she took. She let the waitress go, then, “You headed west?” she asked him, straight out.
He studied her face for a quarter of a minute before he admitted that he was. He saw a heartache there, and a longing.
“Can I get a ride?”
“Where to?”
“Just west.”
“Maybe.”
There was a pause. She needed something else to say. She glanced away and back.
“Are you a . . . ?” she began.
“Navajo. Anyway, that’s the name they gave us. What’s a city girl doing all alone out here?”
She shrugged. She wasn’t about to give him her life history. She’d come all this way to find herself some peace. She’d had to get away, she was desperate, couldn’t stand the hurt any more. She’d gone down to the bus station with the last of her money that she’d kept hidden in the apartment, that she’d been saving for weeks. She’d pushed it over to the ticket clerk and said: “Get me as far away as you can.” That turned out to be Gallup, New Mexico. She’d hitched a ride out of town to I-40, found the diner.
“I’ve come 2,000 miles. I guess I’ll go another 2,000.”
“Running away?”
“Turning away.”
“You’re a long way from home.”
“Maybe I’m looking for a new home.”
She leaned back in her seat, staring through the glass, across the plaza towards the highway where the cars and trucks sped by. The yearning in her eyes focused on a distant solitude. Her voice was softer now: “Sometimes freedom seeks, sometimes it hides. It’s like I’m waking up from a long, dreamless sleep.”
Coffee came. He took it black. Her pale blue eyes turned slowly back to his. Now he saw a clear and steady earnestness in them. He remembered that he too had been trapped one time in a world of steel and smoke. Once he’d been to the sprawling city where it seemed to him there were shackles on every hand and madness in every eye. He’d felt like a hounded animal at bay.
He’d needed help back then, and had not forgotten kindness that was shown to him, that helped him make his way home. Afterwards he swore he would never stray from his homeland again. Why would he need to? He smiled to himself. He had a favourite line for the tourists who bought from his little store and workshop - it was that, sure, he came from the Badlands, but there were a lot of good people out there. . .
His breakfast arrived. He saw her gazing at it. “When was the last time you ate?”
“Day before yesterday.”
He called the waitress back, asked for another breakfast. “You look like you need it.”
Later, driving out of Gallup with her at his side: “You know, I shouldn’t really be doing this,” he murmured, half to himself, half to her.
“A saint needs a sinner,” she reassured him. “A wind needs to blow.”
He knew he was out of line, going against his own laws. But there was something in her eyes, and in the way she spoke. It was as if she was a riddle meant only for him to unravel. His conscience was meeting him half-way.
Soon he swung the truck west, picking up the Arizona red-top. Her eyes widened at an alien ubiquity, the rugged peaks and canyons, the rocks in tiers and spires, rusty orange, pink and yellow, a wild immensity. Ahead, the vanishing point shimmered in the heat haze under the high sun.
By the time they got to Keams Canyon, crossing the Hopi reservation, she couldn’t imagine anywhere further away from any place she knew. He drew up at a roadside restaurant where he ordered fry bread, lamb stew and blue corn pancakes for them both. Back behind the wheel, he took the truck up into the canyon.
“A little detour,” he said. “I want to show you something.”
A couple of miles further on, he pulled over, beckoned her out of the truck, and guided her to a rock where Kit Carson had cut his name nearly a century and a half before. The storybook character from out of the Wild West registered with her only dimly.
“The Rope Thrower,” said the silversmith. “We trusted him, but he turned against us. We lost nearly everything because of him back then. My great-great-grandfather escaped his clutches at the Canyon de Chelly. He saw his father shot by Carson’s men and watched him die among the rocks.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“You need to know.”
He fixed her with a lustrous gaze that welled up out of antiquity and poured into her deepest being. She felt his eyes were discovering, restoring, her soul - for her as well as for him. She was first to look away.
Polacca, Walpi, Oraibi. Passing the stone and adobe villages built on the high mesas, she found herself slipping deeper into a mysterious realm of revelation and slow time. From Tuba City, late afternoon, they turned west on 160, then north on 89. Near Cedar Ridge at sundown he stopped the pick-up on a bluff overlooking the Painted Desert, and pulled out a case from behind the seats. He snapped open the clasps, smiling at the puzzled frown she had on her face.
“I hope this is worth the risk,” he said, as he took out a heavy tufa-cast silver cuff bracelet with a natural turquoise gemstone embedded in it. “It seems I made this one for you,” he said, holding it out towards her. The bracelet gleamed as he placed it on her wrist. Her fingers gently traced the contours of the stone. She realised that a peacefulness had settled on her, such as she had never known.
They got out of the truck, drawn by the grandeur of the setting sun, a ruddled lantern sinking to the purple horizon beyond the Colorado. He knew well how sunset cast a sacred splendour on these lands.
“My home isn’t far,” he told her. “I can find you a place to stay tonight.”
They walked a little along the ridge, looking out over the glowing pastel colours of the windswept plain where lonely buttes rose up, half-lit, half in deep shadow. In the distance lay the Echo Cliffs with sandstone hues russet, pink and jacinth, patches of cottonwood and poplar high up. Flashes of fire danced along the rim on their way from the abode of light. To her it seemed she had entered a great temple and stood at the entranceway to heaven. The eternal moment filled her with an unexpected and overwhelming joy.
“I never thought any place could be so beautiful,” she whispered.
The silversmith’s dark eyes sparkled in the last, dying flush of the sun. Then he spoke again. “One person’s life might be like a river, it just has to flow, all the way to the ocean. The other person’s life might be like the valley the river flows through to get there, but where it most belongs, where its spirit dwells.”
“Each one a part of the other,” she responded. “The river will always find the valley, won’t it? Sometimes it will create it.” She turned to face him. “Which is my life, the river or the valley - which is yours?”
“Our hearts always tell us.”
The crystal stars began to glitter over the shifting dunes as night descended.
►Do you have a family history or another important story that needs to be written, could you do with sound advice on creative writing, do you have a manuscript or webpages that need editing or proofreading, or need help with English studies including essays, coursework and exams? Author and journalist Geoff Ward has a Masters degree and a BA (Hons) degree in English, a teaching qualification, and many years of valuable experience in the UK media. He’d be happy to help you at reasonable rates. You can get in touch with Geoff through the Contact page of this website.