Man in the Maze

The Man in the Maze is a sacred Tohono O’odham symbol that appears in a finely made basket in Brandon Walker’s home, where it becomes more than a decorative object: Emma Orozco fixes her attention on its curves as though they might help her find answers. The basket’s unusual red design, its history as the work of Rita Antone, and Emma’s repeated return to the image make the symbol a quiet center of the conversation that brings her to Brandon.

The Symbol and Its Material Form

The Man in the Maze is woven into a basket approximately two feet wide, shaped as a medallion. Brandon describes the design as the Tohono O’odham’s sacred symbol. The passage does not explain the maze’s full cultural meaning, but it establishes its importance through the care given to its making and the attention it commands from Emma.

The basket differs from the usual form of Rita Antone’s work. Ordinarily, the maze was woven onto a white yucca background with a tough black fiber harvested from devil’s-claw pods. In this particular basket, Rita used yucca root to create the maze itself. Because she used no dye, the root produced a rusty-red color that resembled dried blood. Brandon recalls that this material choice was what made the basket especially valuable and special, as Rita had explained to him.

Its appearance is therefore inseparable from how it was made. The red is not described as a painted addition or an applied ornament: it comes from the yucca root. The contrast with the customary black fiber makes this individual basket distinct within the household collection, while the craft decision gives its visual difference a history. Nana Dahd’s concise explanation to Brandon was, “For this basket, the yucca had to die.” The statement ties the basket’s particular beauty and value to the material required to produce it, without turning that explanation into a general account of the symbol.

A Basket in the Walker Home

The basket hangs among Diana Ladd’s collection of Native American baskets, many of them finely crafted, museum-quality pieces. Their arrangement in the living room is described as extravagant, yet Brandon has lived with them so long that he usually no longer notices them. In that familiar domestic setting, the Man in the Maze can recede into the background of a collection—until Emma looks up at it.

Brandon finds Emma staring at the medallion when he returns to the living room with a tray of iced tea. She accepts a glass without lemon or sugar, while Brandon adds both to his own. The ordinary exchange does not interrupt her attention to the basket. He understands that direct questions are considered impolite among the Tohono O’odham, and so he limits himself to a single observation rather than pressing her to explain what she has come to discuss.

The scene places two kinds of familiarity beside one another. For Brandon, the baskets have become part of the room’s furnishings; for Emma, this particular one holds her gaze. The difference does not establish exactly what she thinks the maze means, but the narration makes her attention purposeful: she looks into the blood-red curves as if hoping to find her own answers there. The symbol functions in the moment less as an explanation than as an image to which she can direct a question she has not yet put into words.

Craft, Memory, and Recognition

The basket also connects the encounter to Rita Antone, who made it. Brandon tells Emma that some of the baskets were made by Rita, who had once worked as a housekeeper and baby-sitter for his wife. Emma recognizes the name through Rita’s Tohono O’odham name, Hejel Wi i’thag, and says that the nephew who sent her to Brandon was Rita’s nephew. The exchange makes the object part of a continuing network of personal knowledge, not simply an artwork whose maker belongs to the past.

Rita had been dead for fifteen years, but Brandon reflects that she was still known on the reservation as Hejel Wi i’thag, “Left Alone.” He recalls that she had been orphaned as a little girl named Dancing Quail before receiving that name in the early twentieth century. Stories about her, including her unusual loyalty to an Anglo woman named Diana Ladd, had become part of reservation lore. These details give the basket’s presence in Brandon’s home a second history: it belongs to a collection he has grown accustomed to, but it also carries the work and remembered identity of someone whose name remains alive in the community.

Emma’s recognition of Rita’s name establishes a connection across that distance of time. The basket does not, by itself, explain why Emma has come or what she hopes to learn; instead, the object brings maker, community memory, and the present conversation into the same room. Its significance in the scene depends on both its material particularity and the relationships around it.

The Maze as a Point of Attention

After Brandon hands Emma his pen and notebook, she carefully puts them away in her purse, closes it, and waits without speaking. She looks again at the Man in the Maze. Only then does Brandon break the silence by inviting her to tell him about her daughter. The sequence gives the image a clear place in the encounter: Emma returns to it before she begins the account that will give her visit its purpose.

The passage does not claim that the symbol provides Emma with an answer, nor does it supply a definitive interpretation of its curves. Its narrative force lies in the contrast between that silence and the personal history about to be spoken. Set among domestic baskets, the sacred design becomes the scene’s visual focus; as a work by Rita Antone, it also bears a remembered connection that Emma recognizes. The Man in the Maze thus links the material life of the household to Tohono O’odham memory, while holding open the question Emma has come to Brandon to address.