She punched off the power. “Your stations never play anything good, Frankie.”

“So you’ve told me.”

“I guess you never got this CD player fixed?”

That was a question? “I’m saving my money for something else,” I said.

“So you’ve told me,” she shot back. “You were going to teach those poor kids on the reservation, so they could afford to buy their families bathrooms. And it’s my fault you didn’t go!”

“Can’t argue with that,” I muttered. That spring, I’d taken a cultural anthropology course at Colorado State University, where I was a freshman. It was taught by Dr. Thomas Begay, a Navajo (Towering House clan) and visiting professor from Northern Arizona University. Now, for me, learning the historical significance of Navajo fry bread was interesting enough. But when Dr. Begay told us about life on the reservation, describing the riches of his culture—the beauty of its dance, jewelry and painting, and its traditional values of respect for the land, the elders and oneself—I started planning my summer vacation.

Then he talked about the poverty: homes without electricity or running water, families separated as parents looked for work off the reservation, the wisdom of the past dying with the elders. After a prayerful spring break, I started planning something else. I asked Dr. Begay if he knew of any missions trips to the Navajo Nation. He told me about a group that came every July. He also gave me tips on Navajo etiquette and told me to look him up when I got to Flagstaff, Ariz.

A warmth and excitement grew that I’d never felt before. I started looking into transferring to Northern Arizona University, near the reservation and the people I wanted to serve—maybe as a teacher, maybe a soil conservationist. Maybe a sheep rancher. Whatever God wanted.

Change of Plans
Then Casey derailed my missionary express. Her mom, my Aunt Liz, and stepdad, Roger, packed her off from Denver to live with my folks and me for the month while they tried (again) to patch up their marriage. Some 15-year-olds are OK on their own. Not my cousin. So instead of tutoring kids on the reservation, I ended up watching kids at the church preschool—and Casey the rest of the day.

I tried to console myself: There would be other missions, and Casey did help with the kids. They loved her. Sure, she was like a child herself. Take the way she swallowed the stories the church’s maintenance man told the preschoolers about being a dogsled musher in Alaska after his job testing Indy racecars.

“I think he stretches the truth a little,” I said, hoping she would take the hint.

Or the time she gave me some raffle tickets for a charity fundraiser that she’d bought from someone going door to door. I checked the date for the drawing: They were from last year. I said that was sweet of her and hoped she never found out she’d been scammed.

Then there was that call from the manager at Ruby’s Chicken. Casey was out in front, passing out leaflets on the inhumane conditions at chicken farms and urging customers to go to Harry’s Fish House instead. I took the call, so neither of our folks found out.

“You have a good heart, Casey,” I told her—if only she had the common sense to match.

Feeling Resentment
But one month dragged into six weeks, and then eight, as Aunt Liz and Roger asked for more time to work things out. Maybe they just need a break from Casey, I thought. The closer I came to going back to Colorado State, the more I resented her, and the harder it was to hide.

Casey was souring on the arrangement, too. She was spending more time in her room, listening to her CDs or phoning her friends.

By that weekend, we were on each other’s last nerve. Mom and Dad were out of town at a wedding, leaving no one to run interference. I’d hoped this trip to Save-U-More for school supplies would help us forget how miserable we were. I remembered too late that Casey’s first year in high school hadn’t been a rousing success. (I couldn’t imagine why. A clueless freshman who wore a T-shirt with a chubby bluebird chirping the caption “Sing a new song unto the Lord!”? Sounds like cool-crowd material to me.)

Now my fingers drummed a new refrain: two more weeks, two more weeks. That’s when Casey had to be home for sophomore year, leaving one blessed week for myself.

Suddenly she murmured, “Look at the dog.”

He stood on the sidewalk in front of the store, a smallish dog with a silky black coat and a white collar and front paws, ears pricked and tail tipping.

“He looks like a waiter in a fancy restaurant,” Casey said.

I smiled. “He does. I think it’s a border collie. Like we saw at the Renaissance Faire.”

“Oh, yeah.” Her voice brightened, and we both remembered that Saturday in June (ages ago) at the park, when we ate a spit-roasted chicken quarter with our hands and watched knights jousting and collies herding sheep. They bounded into the woods, then reappeared, driving the flock from beside and behind, rounding them into a wooden-rail pen. They were so eager they practically wriggled out of their skin.

Those were happy dogs.

Going Home
The collie singled out the Jeep ahead of us. He hovered at its bumper as it chugged toward the street.

“Is he theirs?” Casey asked.

I shrugged. “He likes their car.”

He was in love with it, in fact. When it moved, he trotted alongside. When it stopped, he patrolled the passenger side. We followed the Jeep as it turned onto the street and braked at a stop sign. The collie circled behind, from passenger to driver side and back, barking until it started up again.

I said, “He acts like he’s herding it.”

“That’s silly!” Casey giggled. “Doesn’t he know a sheep from a Jeep?”

We trailed the Jeep and its furry shadow along the narrow side street. It was funny, at first. The collie was so serious, so intent. But after a half-mile, we could see he was getting leg-weary. The Jeep slowed at a yield sign, crossed the intersection and passed two houses before the collie took off after, sprinting hard to catch up.

Casey started to fret. “He’ll give himself a heart attack.”

“No. Border collies are smarter than that,” I assured her. “And we’re not going that fast.”

“We’re going fast for a dog. With all that hair, he’ll get hot . . . Why don’t they pick him up?” she demanded.

She was getting shrill—and annoying. “If he’s their dog, I’m sure they would,” I reasoned. “And if he isn’t, what are they going to do with him? Maybe they hope he’ll give up and go home.”

Pointless arguments to Casey. She shrieked: “They’re killing him!”

I was about to snap at her when the collie bolted across the road. He raced ahead to the house at the next corner. He dropped in the lawn, wracked with panting.

The Jeep turned once, then again, into the driveway of the same house. Two kids got out, swinging Save-U-More bags. One bent and scratched the grinning head.

“Huh.” Casey broke our silence. “He was just having fun.”

I gazed at the dog. The white splash down his nose and tongue flopping sideways from his mouth gave him a sly look. “Like I said, border collies are smart.”

Deep Thinking
When we got home, Casey disappeared into her room, as usual. I started pulling things out of the kitchen cabinets. Mom had hinted that if I ran out of things to do, the shelves needed wiping down. A boring, brainless job—good for thinking. Good for the soul.

After a while, a soft voice interrupted. “I can help, if you want.”

I dropped the sponge into the bucket of water. “No. You can’t help. Because I’m quitting.”

I smiled at her confused expression. “Casey, how dumb can we be? Two teenage girls on our own for the weekend, and we buy school stuff and clean cabinets. What do you say we go out for pizza or a movie or something? I’m buying.”

She looked doubtful. “I thought you were saving your money.”

“I was—I am, but . . . You remember that border collie? How he acted? Like he absolutely had to get that car home. It was just a game, but he really believed . . .”

Casey brightened. “I get it! He was having fun without spending any money.”

That wasn’t what I meant. It didn’t even make sense. But Casey sounded excited, and that was a start.

“Exactly. He made his own fun, right where he was. We’re at least as smart as he is. So what can we—what would you like to do for fun?”

“Well, it probably sounds dumb, but . . . I saw this picture in one of your books. These Navajo women cooking in that little cave like?”

“A horno,” I supplied. “That’s a traditional Navajo oven.”

“Isn’t that what you have by the garden?”

I remembered my mom’s outdoor clay fireplace. “You mean the chiminea? Uh—you’re right. That’s basically the same thing.”

Like a Jeep was basically a sheep.

And that’s why we spent the rest of the afternoon building a fire in the chiminea and scraping corn off cobs and making a mush with added flour and eggs and sandwiching it between the husks.

Casey grimaced as we sealed the oozing mass in tin foil. “What did Dr. Begay call this?”

“Gritted corn bread.”

“The Navajo went through a lot of work for one loaf of bread.”

“That’s part of cultural anthropology,” I explained. “To understand how other people experience life so you can understand your own life better. Part of missionary work, too, when you think about it.”

That’s when it hit me. Between school and her parents and a summer away from friends, Casey must have felt like the world was exploding. Helping her hold it together—that had been my mission. It had been staring me in the face, just like this horno here, for the last two months.

And I’d almost blown it.

I nestled the packet in the smoldering ashes to bake. “I’m sorry I didn’t think of more stuff like this for us to do.” Sorrier than I could say.

She shrugged. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t plan on getting stuck with me. You planned to do something important.”

From the mouths of babes . . .

I smiled. “You have a good heart, Casey.”