Names are very relevant

         Thomas Build-the-Fire is Victor's cousin that helps him go get his father's ashes from Phoenix, Arizona. It's curious that Thomas' last name is Build-the-Fire, that Victor's dad was cremated and turned into ashes, and the ashes are in a place called Phoenix, right? Also, during this journey we see that Victor's friendship toward Thomas is "reborn", and he realizes that the only thing that's keeping them from being good friends is Victor's concern about what the other Indians in the reservation might think about him. To finish, Thomas states that Victor's father "will rise"(74). Victor also rises as he begins to see the world with a different perspective, starting with his father and how understands that despite his relationship wit his father wasn't the best, he still "searched his mind for memories of his father, found the good ones, found a few bad ones, added it all up, and smiled"(69).