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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Inspirational
- Subject: Character Based
- Published: 09/20/2025
C01-Angel Candidate Susie
Born 1950, U, from Arlington, TX, United States.jpeg)
White Fox pulled Little Dove’s left pigtail for what must have been the hundredth time. The left one, always the left one for some reason.
Little Dove let out a squeal, which caused the 5th grade class in the Window Rock Independent Navajo school to erupt in response. She turned, but too slow to catch the offending hand. White Fox was a master of 12 year old aggravation in the flesh. He skipped away from the grasp of the furious girl with practiced ease.
Susie Creighton stood up from her desk and raised her hands to either side saying evenly, but firmly, “Class! Class! We need to calm down now!”
The teacher was not physically imposing with her 5’3” slightly portly frame and straight brown hair which was just starting to turn gray pulled back into a bun. To her students, she towered above them with the authority that most children afforded a teacher.
Most did not include White Fox. He was as sly as his name implied. He complied for now, his goal of heckling Little Dove accomplished and noticed by his peers. To confirm his obstinacy, he sat at one of the chairs in the adjoining reading module, rather than his own assigned desk, idly flipping the pages of a random book without even looking at them.
Susie eyed the obdurate little boy but said nothing. She was used to some of the Navajo students, especially the boys, blowing off some steam in her class. Most of the teachers that had started at the school when she had were already gone, unable to handle the stress the children generated due to their poverty and broken home life. She decided to pick her battles and let White Fox slide for now.
*. *. *
That evening, Susie was relaxing in her small living room. The space was only 14x18 feet, but it did not seem too crowded because she did not have much furniture.
As she sat on the couch, she took a moment to glance around. Her 18” flat screen television was displaying a romantic comedy from the Hallmark channel. Almost every flat space around her, which included the parts of the couch that she was not sitting on, the other chair, the coffee table and the end table, were all covered with piles of papers from today’s lessons, which she was slowly working through grading.
The room met her needs. She was comfortable and happy living in her little one bedroom house and working on the reservation.
What she was not aware of was the presence of an invisible, ethereal being standing behind her. The man, who if he could have been seen, appeared to be Navajo, would occasionally bend down and whisper in Susie's ear.
'White Fox and his mother need your help,' the man whispered. 'He has great potential, which you can help to release.'
Not only was the TV show and the papers occupying her thoughts, but Susie was also replaying today’s incident with White Fox in the back of her mind. She could not shake the feeling that there was more for her to do in that area.
'The mother is not well and the boy fears for his future,' the invisible man added.
Susie laid down the paper that she was grading and stared unseeing at the television screen for a moment, her mind whirling. She decided that she just had to do something. She got up from the couch and reached for her purse.
Messenger Hashkeh Naabah, for that is who the invisible Navajo was, nodded his head in approval. His mission was complete and he could return to the ethereal realm where other tasks awaited him.
On the way to the front door, Susie stopped and reconsidered. No need to bother the boy at home. She would have a talk with him tomorrow after class. That would be less intrusive.
The following day did not go as planned. White Fox was absent, so Susie could not have the talk that she had prepared. She made up her mind to stop by his house on her way home after school, ostensibly to take him his assignments for the day, but actually to see if anything in his home life was amiss.
*. *. *
The address on file for White Fox led to a run down house, smaller than the little one in which she lived alone. It was sorely in need of nails to fasten numerous boards which were askew around the windows and doors, and a coat of paint would not hurt.
Susie walked resolutely up to the front door and tapped on the dry, weathered, loose frame. She could hear movements inside but minutes passed before finally White Fox pulled the door open a crack and peered out.
“Hello, White Fox,” Susie said. “We missed you at school today.”
“I didn’t feel well,” the boy answered glumly. “Why are you here?”
“I was on the way home and thought that I would just stop and make sure that everything was all right for you,” the teacher replied.
“But you haven’t come before.”
“True, but I had your assignments with me and it was not out of the way. Is your mother home?”
“Yes.”
“Very good! Are you going to invite me in.”
Confused, the young boy looked behind him and could apparently think of no way around it. He backed up saying nothing but looking down.
Susie took this for the requested invitation and pushed the door further open, stepping into the gloomy interior. Looking around at the unkempt room within she did not see anyone else.
“Where is your mother?” She asked. “I don’t see her.”
“She’s in her room. She don’t feel good neither.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Perhaps I will be able to meet her next time.”
At that moment a very disheveled woman came into the room from the rear of the house. She was paper thin, very pale and not clean.
“Fox, what is all the racket? You know I’m not doing well,” the woman said as she brushed oily hair out of her eyes. “Who’s this?”
“This is my teacher, mom. She brought my homework cause I missed today.”
His mother wiped her hand across her mouth, leaving a red smear of blood. “Okay. Y’all get that done and then she gotta go. I need my sleep.” The woman turned and shambled back out of the room.
“Your mother really does look unwell,” Susie said. “Has she seen a doctor?”
“Won’t go see a doctor. Says costs too much.”
Susie just nodded. “As she said, I should probably go. I hope we see you at class tomorrow.”
*. *. *
The next morning, before classes were due to start, Susie was in the office of her friend Kathleen, the school nurse.
“I really don’t think that his mother is well. I tell you that she was very pale, and thin, and she had blood in her mouth and on her lips,” Susie was telling the nurse.
“That does sound concerning,” Kathleen said. “Let me do some research and we can talk at lunch.”
The two separated to attend to their duties, and met again in the teacher’s lounge over lunch.
“What did you find out,” Susie asked as Kathleen came into the room. “White Fox was absent again today.”
“I can’t say without seeing her for myself. You said that she would not go to the doctor. Do you think that we could stop by the house again today.” Kathleen asked.
They agreed to meet in the nurse’s office right after class let out and go immediately. That being agreed to, they once more returned to their duties.
*. *. *
White Fox did not seem at all surprised to see the two women at his door.
“Can we come in, dear,” Susie said. “We are really concerned about both you and your mother.”
Once again, he signaled agreement by stepping back and allowing the women to enter but without saying anything.
Once inside, Susie knelt in front of White Fox, and taking his hand and pressing it between hers, she said, “Is there anything you need to tell us. Something that you are worrying about?”
The boy’s face crumbled and tears started down his cheeks.
“She’s gonna die!” He said. “She can hardly get out of bed and she spits blood all the time!”
Having divulged this, he moved forward and buried his face into the concerned teacher, who shared a long, silent look with her friend.
“I’m trying to help her, but she’s gonna die and I’ll be an orphan!”
Apparently hearing the boy’s cries his mother shuffled into the room, obviously disoriented.
Kathleen stepped over and taking her arm, guided her to the couch, cleaning away some of the items strewn across it to make a place for her to sit. The nurse stared intently at the weak woman, felt her wrist for her pulse and noticed the drip of blood at the edge of her mouth.
“How long have you been so weak?” She asked.
“Don’t know. Weeks.”
“Can I see into your mouth?”
White Fox’s mother first covered her mouth with her hand in embarrassment and then dropped it opening her mouth so the nurse could see that the interior was covered with thin streams of blood.
“Do you ever get to eat much fruit?”
“No. Can’t afford much food. Only enough for the boy.”
Opening her bag, she withdrew two large oranges. “Here, I want you to eat these. Not White Fox but you. I want you to get dressed and we are going down to the clinic.”
“I can’t afford that.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Susie insisted. “We can take care of that. You get your clothes on. White Fox needs you to go with us.”
“Yes mom, please!”
The four of them drove to the local clinic where the staff agreed to examine the sick woman.
While she was in the screening room and White Fox waited anxiously with the two ladies, Kathleen touched him on the shoulder. When he looked up, she said, “I’m just a nurse, so I’m not allowed to make diagnoses, but I feel sure that your mother will be Okay.”
It was only a few more minutes before the doctor came out and confirmed the nurse’s suspicions.
“It’s a good thing that you got her down here. Scurvy is very treatable but can cause real damage if not corrected. It’s not as common these days on the reservation as it used to be. Fortunately your nurse recognized the heavily bleeding gums.”
White Fox’s mother was cleaned up, treated and released to go home with a supply of vitamin C.
*. *. *
The transformation in White Fox’s attitude and behavior was amazing. He stopped disrupting the class with his antics and even became a class leader, setting the bar high for his fellow students. In the years to come, he would graduate from Harvard and go on to become one of the U.S.Senators from Arizona, introducing bills which not only improved the lot of Native Americans; Navajo, Hopi, Apache and other smaller tribes, but all citizens in the state.
Susie sat in the classroom one day, a month later, thinking about how much the boy had changed and how that one seemingly small decision, to check up on him that day and to then enlist the aid of her friend Kathleen, had resulted in so much good.
She was pleased, but not the only one. Somewhere across the ethos a note was made. Angel Candidate Susie’s heart was still true.
*****
Author's Note:==============================
Angel Candidates walk among us every day. You have most likely run into one or more in your daily lives. They are normal seeming people of every gender, ethnicity, religion, education, or any other grouping with which you might define people. They share one trait in common, the desire to be of help to others.
If you open your mind to the possibility of their existence, your eyes will likely notice more than one. It could be that some of them are prodded by whispers from a passing Messenger, but I believe that many, if not most, get inspiration from a kind heart.
==========================================
Little Dove let out a squeal, which caused the 5th grade class in the Window Rock Independent Navajo school to erupt in response. She turned, but too slow to catch the offending hand. White Fox was a master of 12 year old aggravation in the flesh. He skipped away from the grasp of the furious girl with practiced ease.
Susie Creighton stood up from her desk and raised her hands to either side saying evenly, but firmly, “Class! Class! We need to calm down now!”
The teacher was not physically imposing with her 5’3” slightly portly frame and straight brown hair which was just starting to turn gray pulled back into a bun. To her students, she towered above them with the authority that most children afforded a teacher.
Most did not include White Fox. He was as sly as his name implied. He complied for now, his goal of heckling Little Dove accomplished and noticed by his peers. To confirm his obstinacy, he sat at one of the chairs in the adjoining reading module, rather than his own assigned desk, idly flipping the pages of a random book without even looking at them.
Susie eyed the obdurate little boy but said nothing. She was used to some of the Navajo students, especially the boys, blowing off some steam in her class. Most of the teachers that had started at the school when she had were already gone, unable to handle the stress the children generated due to their poverty and broken home life. She decided to pick her battles and let White Fox slide for now.
*. *. *
That evening, Susie was relaxing in her small living room. The space was only 14x18 feet, but it did not seem too crowded because she did not have much furniture.
As she sat on the couch, she took a moment to glance around. Her 18” flat screen television was displaying a romantic comedy from the Hallmark channel. Almost every flat space around her, which included the parts of the couch that she was not sitting on, the other chair, the coffee table and the end table, were all covered with piles of papers from today’s lessons, which she was slowly working through grading.
The room met her needs. She was comfortable and happy living in her little one bedroom house and working on the reservation.
What she was not aware of was the presence of an invisible, ethereal being standing behind her. The man, who if he could have been seen, appeared to be Navajo, would occasionally bend down and whisper in Susie's ear.
'White Fox and his mother need your help,' the man whispered. 'He has great potential, which you can help to release.'
Not only was the TV show and the papers occupying her thoughts, but Susie was also replaying today’s incident with White Fox in the back of her mind. She could not shake the feeling that there was more for her to do in that area.
'The mother is not well and the boy fears for his future,' the invisible man added.
Susie laid down the paper that she was grading and stared unseeing at the television screen for a moment, her mind whirling. She decided that she just had to do something. She got up from the couch and reached for her purse.
Messenger Hashkeh Naabah, for that is who the invisible Navajo was, nodded his head in approval. His mission was complete and he could return to the ethereal realm where other tasks awaited him.
On the way to the front door, Susie stopped and reconsidered. No need to bother the boy at home. She would have a talk with him tomorrow after class. That would be less intrusive.
The following day did not go as planned. White Fox was absent, so Susie could not have the talk that she had prepared. She made up her mind to stop by his house on her way home after school, ostensibly to take him his assignments for the day, but actually to see if anything in his home life was amiss.
*. *. *
The address on file for White Fox led to a run down house, smaller than the little one in which she lived alone. It was sorely in need of nails to fasten numerous boards which were askew around the windows and doors, and a coat of paint would not hurt.
Susie walked resolutely up to the front door and tapped on the dry, weathered, loose frame. She could hear movements inside but minutes passed before finally White Fox pulled the door open a crack and peered out.
“Hello, White Fox,” Susie said. “We missed you at school today.”
“I didn’t feel well,” the boy answered glumly. “Why are you here?”
“I was on the way home and thought that I would just stop and make sure that everything was all right for you,” the teacher replied.
“But you haven’t come before.”
“True, but I had your assignments with me and it was not out of the way. Is your mother home?”
“Yes.”
“Very good! Are you going to invite me in.”
Confused, the young boy looked behind him and could apparently think of no way around it. He backed up saying nothing but looking down.
Susie took this for the requested invitation and pushed the door further open, stepping into the gloomy interior. Looking around at the unkempt room within she did not see anyone else.
“Where is your mother?” She asked. “I don’t see her.”
“She’s in her room. She don’t feel good neither.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Perhaps I will be able to meet her next time.”
At that moment a very disheveled woman came into the room from the rear of the house. She was paper thin, very pale and not clean.
“Fox, what is all the racket? You know I’m not doing well,” the woman said as she brushed oily hair out of her eyes. “Who’s this?”
“This is my teacher, mom. She brought my homework cause I missed today.”
His mother wiped her hand across her mouth, leaving a red smear of blood. “Okay. Y’all get that done and then she gotta go. I need my sleep.” The woman turned and shambled back out of the room.
“Your mother really does look unwell,” Susie said. “Has she seen a doctor?”
“Won’t go see a doctor. Says costs too much.”
Susie just nodded. “As she said, I should probably go. I hope we see you at class tomorrow.”
*. *. *
The next morning, before classes were due to start, Susie was in the office of her friend Kathleen, the school nurse.
“I really don’t think that his mother is well. I tell you that she was very pale, and thin, and she had blood in her mouth and on her lips,” Susie was telling the nurse.
“That does sound concerning,” Kathleen said. “Let me do some research and we can talk at lunch.”
The two separated to attend to their duties, and met again in the teacher’s lounge over lunch.
“What did you find out,” Susie asked as Kathleen came into the room. “White Fox was absent again today.”
“I can’t say without seeing her for myself. You said that she would not go to the doctor. Do you think that we could stop by the house again today.” Kathleen asked.
They agreed to meet in the nurse’s office right after class let out and go immediately. That being agreed to, they once more returned to their duties.
*. *. *
White Fox did not seem at all surprised to see the two women at his door.
“Can we come in, dear,” Susie said. “We are really concerned about both you and your mother.”
Once again, he signaled agreement by stepping back and allowing the women to enter but without saying anything.
Once inside, Susie knelt in front of White Fox, and taking his hand and pressing it between hers, she said, “Is there anything you need to tell us. Something that you are worrying about?”
The boy’s face crumbled and tears started down his cheeks.
“She’s gonna die!” He said. “She can hardly get out of bed and she spits blood all the time!”
Having divulged this, he moved forward and buried his face into the concerned teacher, who shared a long, silent look with her friend.
“I’m trying to help her, but she’s gonna die and I’ll be an orphan!”
Apparently hearing the boy’s cries his mother shuffled into the room, obviously disoriented.
Kathleen stepped over and taking her arm, guided her to the couch, cleaning away some of the items strewn across it to make a place for her to sit. The nurse stared intently at the weak woman, felt her wrist for her pulse and noticed the drip of blood at the edge of her mouth.
“How long have you been so weak?” She asked.
“Don’t know. Weeks.”
“Can I see into your mouth?”
White Fox’s mother first covered her mouth with her hand in embarrassment and then dropped it opening her mouth so the nurse could see that the interior was covered with thin streams of blood.
“Do you ever get to eat much fruit?”
“No. Can’t afford much food. Only enough for the boy.”
Opening her bag, she withdrew two large oranges. “Here, I want you to eat these. Not White Fox but you. I want you to get dressed and we are going down to the clinic.”
“I can’t afford that.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Susie insisted. “We can take care of that. You get your clothes on. White Fox needs you to go with us.”
“Yes mom, please!”
The four of them drove to the local clinic where the staff agreed to examine the sick woman.
While she was in the screening room and White Fox waited anxiously with the two ladies, Kathleen touched him on the shoulder. When he looked up, she said, “I’m just a nurse, so I’m not allowed to make diagnoses, but I feel sure that your mother will be Okay.”
It was only a few more minutes before the doctor came out and confirmed the nurse’s suspicions.
“It’s a good thing that you got her down here. Scurvy is very treatable but can cause real damage if not corrected. It’s not as common these days on the reservation as it used to be. Fortunately your nurse recognized the heavily bleeding gums.”
White Fox’s mother was cleaned up, treated and released to go home with a supply of vitamin C.
*. *. *
The transformation in White Fox’s attitude and behavior was amazing. He stopped disrupting the class with his antics and even became a class leader, setting the bar high for his fellow students. In the years to come, he would graduate from Harvard and go on to become one of the U.S.Senators from Arizona, introducing bills which not only improved the lot of Native Americans; Navajo, Hopi, Apache and other smaller tribes, but all citizens in the state.
Susie sat in the classroom one day, a month later, thinking about how much the boy had changed and how that one seemingly small decision, to check up on him that day and to then enlist the aid of her friend Kathleen, had resulted in so much good.
She was pleased, but not the only one. Somewhere across the ethos a note was made. Angel Candidate Susie’s heart was still true.
*****
Author's Note:==============================
Angel Candidates walk among us every day. You have most likely run into one or more in your daily lives. They are normal seeming people of every gender, ethnicity, religion, education, or any other grouping with which you might define people. They share one trait in common, the desire to be of help to others.
If you open your mind to the possibility of their existence, your eyes will likely notice more than one. It could be that some of them are prodded by whispers from a passing Messenger, but I believe that many, if not most, get inspiration from a kind heart.
==========================================
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