We were slowly being rocked towards the shore, and I scissored my legs downward, finding that I could stand, the water reaching just below my shoulders. The water felt comparatively warm to the air, and I was in no hurry to get out. Samuel remained on his back, staring up into the heavens. I thought of him, in the middle of the ocean, searching the firmament, comforting himself with thoughts of the only home he’d really known. My heart ached for him then.
“I like being alone, but I hate being lonely. That sounds pretty lonely. At times like those did you ever regret becoming a Marine?” I ventured, studying Samuel’s chiseled profile.
“No. I never did.” Samuel’s voice was low and sincere. “I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. I had nowhere else to go. I found purpose, discovered I was of use, made some damn good friends, lost my self-pity. I did my best to be a man you could be proud of.”
I forgot to breathe. Samuel never gave me time to shore up my defenses; he just said the darndest things right out of the blue.
“Me?” My tone reflected my own feelings of inadequacy. I didn’t want to be the yardstick of righteousness; I was too lacking.
Samuel dropped his legs and stood, the water lapping around his torso.
“Yes you.” Samuel’s reply was contemplative, and he kept his face turned away from me. “You were the bar I measured everything by.” Samuel paused, caught between what he’d said and what he was about to say. His voice was low and solemn when he spoke his next words. “I wasn’t sure what you would think the first time I actually had to pull the trigger and take someone’s life, and how you would feel if you knew about all the lives I’ve ended since.”
His words were so unexpected that I gasped, and his eyes flew to mine, glittering with sudden intensity. He didn’t speak for a moment, his jaw working, clenching, as if he were swallowing the words that he still needed to say.
He turned and waded to the shore, water sluicing off his powerful back and thighs as he climbed out. He shook himself violently, and then picked up his clothes, pulling his shirt over his head and shoving his legs into his jeans.
His back was to me, and I rose up out of the water behind him, uncertain of what he needed from me, but certain he needed something other than my censure, although censure was never what I had intended to communicate. He had just caught me by surprise.
I climbed out of the pond, dripping and shaking, and ran my hands down my legs, removing the excess water, wringing out my hair and my tank top as I pulled my skirt on over my shivering body. I wrapped my arms around myself, both for modesty and for warmth. Samuel picked up the abandoned picnic, stacking everything in the cooler and picking up the blanket. He handed the blanket to me and turned from me again as I wrapped it gratefully around my shoulders. He walked back towards the shore, squatting down beside the shallow pool, and trailing his hand across the silvery water.
My voice sounded uncertain as I spoke. “Samuel. It’s war. I wouldn’t condemn you for defending yourself.” I didn’t approach him, but waited.
He was silent for several seconds before he answered. “I’ve killed some men in firefights.....but many of the men I’ve killed, Josie…they didn’t even know I was there. That’s when pulling the trigger is the hardest. I would watch them through my rifle scope, sometimes for days on end, and when the moment was right and I got the order.....I would shoot.” He made no excuses, and there wasn’t sorrow or regret in his voice. But there was vulnerability. He wanted me to know.
I walked to the water’s edge and knelt next to him, reaching my hand out as he had, feeling the cold silk of the water kiss my palms. I brushed the tips of my fingers against his hand, wondering if he’d pull away. In the bruised dark my skin shone pale against the starlit surface. I laid my hand on top of his, twining my fingers through his fingers, light on dark. I watched him as he turned his face towards me, his expression full of question. I leaned into him, my eyes on his, and answered in the only way I knew he would really hear me.
I brushed my lips gently across his, the way he had done after he’d washed my hair the night before. Only this time, I stared into his eyes, black pools reflecting the water we knelt beside. I heard his swift intake of breath, but other then the clenching of his hand in mine, he held himself completely still as my lips played softly over his. Still, I didn’t close my eyes but watched him, silently soothing him.
“Do you really believe what you do in the service of your country, for the men you fight beside, is something you need to explain to me?” My voice was just above a whisper, my face a breath from his.
“You think you have to justify yourself to me? Me? Someone who’s never had to march umpteen miles with 150 pounds on her back, or been shot at, or gone days on little to no sleep? Someone who hasn’t spent the last ten years in harsh conditions, with few comforts, someone who’s never been asked to do incredibly difficult things to keep people safe?” I kissed him again, the tips of my wet fingers resting lightly on his jaw. “Where would we all be without people like you?”
Samuel’s eyes shone down at me, emotion tightening the corners of his mouth. And still he made no move to kiss me in return.
“Do you remember what God told David? How He said David had too much blood on his hands?” Samuel’s voice was a hoarse whisper.
“No. Remind me.” I remembered the story of David, of his lust for Bathsheba, his plot to murder her husband, and subsequently the death of their child. The bible was full of such stories. Anyone who said it was boring hadn’t read past Genesis.
“God told David he couldn’t build the temple because he had too much blood on his hands. He allowed him to gather the materials for the temple, but God commands David’s son Solomon to actually build it.”
“I don’t understand what you are trying to say to me, Samuel. Do you think you have too much blood on your hands? That you’ve fallen from grace?”
Samuel simply stared down at me.
I floundered, not following his line of thinking at all. “David caused the death of Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, because Bathsheba was pregnant with David’s child, and David wanted her for himself. Maybe
that
is the blood that is referred to, the blood God couldn’t overlook. Not the blood of those that David had commanded in war, or killed in battle.”
“Am I really so different?”
“Samuel! I don’t understand how you can equate yourself with David. Even so, David died in God’s good graces. He had repented for his sins, and we have the book of Psalms to prove he was favored by God.” I was truly befuddled. Samuel’s silence lasted several minutes this time. I was getting better at waiting him out. When he spoke the subject had seemingly changed, and I mentally cart-wheeled to catch up.
“I got a letter from my Grandma Nettie when you got engaged, Josie. She thought I would remember you; she mentioned it kind of in passing, kind of ‘Oh by the way.’” Samuel paused.
“I remember where I was when I read that letter, where I was sitting, what I had been doing in the moments leading up to it. I was completely leveled by the news, to say the least. I’d been gone for almost five years; I hadn’t seen you for more than two. You were still so young, and I thought I had time. You see, in my mind, I always kept track. I would mark time with your birthdays. Josie is sixteen - but I’m 21. Josie is 17, still too young. Then out of the blue this kid came in and snatched you up, and you were suddenly taken.”
I stared at Samuel, my mouth hanging open, completely undone by what he had revealed. Samuel expelled a short, harsh laugh at my stunned reaction, and suddenly his wet hands gripped my shoulders, and he rose to his feet, pulling me with him.
“I didn’t know who Kasey was; my grandma mentioned his name and said that he was a nice local kid. I just remember how angry I was and how much I wanted to hunt him down. I had another two years on my contract with the Marines, but all I wanted to do was come to Levan and kill him and plead my case to you. I wanted to beg you not to marry him. I even wrote a letter to you telling you to wait for me.”
“I never got a letter.” My lungs were burning. I realized I was holding my breath.
“I never sent it. I couldn’t. I had absolutely no right.”
Samuel suddenly held my face in his hands. They were cold and still a little wet from the water. I shivered as his eyes burned holes down into mine. “A few months after that, my grandma sent me a letter telling me Kasey had been killed. I felt sick, because in my heart of hearts I had wished it. I had wanted him gone. So am I really so different than David?”
I couldn’t answer immediately; my head was spinning with the passion in his voice and the intensity in his eyes. He interpreted my stunned silence as censure once more, and he dropped his hands from my face. “I’m sorry, Josie. I had no intention of telling you any of this. But I just couldn’t let you kiss me and comfort me, and let you tell me what a good man I am, without telling you everything. And the worse part is…I’m
glad
he’s gone. I’m not glad he’s dead, I don’t wish that. But yes, I’m glad he’s gone. And I don’t know what kind of man that makes me.”
“I guess it makes you an honest one,” I whispered, finally finding my voice, unsure of what to say beyond that. He stared at me intently, and I met his gaze without blinking. “I never would have guessed you would have reacted like that…that you even thought of me after you left. I didn’t know you…you cared.” I finished ineptly, unable to communicate the awe I was feeling at his confession.
“I did, and I do,” Samuel responded flatly. His mouth was drawn into a tight line, his eyes on mine. I exhaled slowly, feeling faint. The water from my dripping hair found its way down my back, and I shivered violently. Samuel reached down and took my hand, and we walked back towards the truck, the blanket trailing behind me. He stooped and picked up the cooler and set it in the back as he opened my door and helped me in.
With the heater on full blast, we drove back towards Levan. Music tinkled softly from the speakers, and I heard a hint of Rachmaninoff’s
Elegie
. I had always loved this piece. Rachmaninoff was considered one of the finest pianists of his day. Sonja had a live recording of him playing
Elegie
, and it had brought me to tears when I had first heard it. It had been many years since I had enjoyed the expressive breadth and the rich lyricism in his piece. Hesitantly, I reached up and slid the volume louder, allowing the music to fill the cab and reverberate off the glass.
“This is my favorite piece of music, by my favorite composer.” Samuel’s voice broke through as the music slowed and sighed.
“You always did love Rachmaninoff.” I remembered the first time he had heard Rachmaninoff on the bus and his reaction to the power and the intensity of Prelude in C Sharp Minor. “Rachmaninoff was the last of the great Romanticists in classical music. He was often discouraged by the modernist music that was becoming popular. Once, in an interview, he said that the modern music of the new composers was written more in the head than the heart. Their music contained too much thought and no feeling. He said the modern composers ‘think and reason and analyze and brood, but they do not exalt.’” I held up two fingers on each hand and wiggled them to indicate quotation marks. “I looked up the word ‘exalt’ in the dictionary when Sonja made me memorize his quote. The meaning I liked best was to “make sublime’, to magnify, to praise, to extol. Rachmaninoff’s music raises us up, it elevates.”
“I love
Elegie
because it is what yearning sounds like.” Samuel stared ahead as he spoke.
I stared at Samuel for a moment, moved by the simplicity of his description. “I think
Elegie
actually means lament. Some say Rachmaninoff was depressed when he wrote it, but there’s such pronounced hope woven throughout the piece that I tend to think, in spite of his suggested moroseness,
Elegie
wasn’t an expression of defeat - he was just.....yearning.” I smiled at him slightly as I echoed his simple synopsis. “He considered quitting early on in his career. His philosophy was one rooted in spiritualism - he wanted to create beauty and truth in his music, and he felt like his music didn’t belong. It’s ironic that he gave his last major interview in 1941, when the world was at war. The world needed truth and beauty then more than ever.”
We drove through Nephi and out on to the long ridge connecting the small towns. Soon, the lights of Levan twinkled before us, and we pulled into the sleepy little town, turning on to a pot-holed side street, driving past the bar and the old church before heading up the dimly-lit street towards home.
We crunched over the gravel in front of my house. It was dark and empty, my dad long gone on his way to Moab and the beckoning Book Cliffs.
“Would you like to come in for a minute? You could check the house for bad guys, and I could make us something yummy to eat. I think I have ice cream in the freezer and I could make us some hot fudge topping to put on top?” I waggled my eyebrows at him in the dim interior of the truck, and he smiled a little.
“Bad guys?”
“Oh you know, I’m here all alone, the house is dark. Just look under the beds and make sure no one is hiding in my closet.”
“Are you afraid to be alone at night?” His brows were lowered with concern over his black eyes.
“Nope. I just wanted to give you a reason to come inside.”
His expression cleared, and his voice lowered even further. “Aren’t you reason enough?”
I felt the heat rise in my face. “Hmmm,” was all I said.
“Josie.”
“Yes?”
“I would love to come in.”
We climbed out and walked inside. I flipped on the lights and excused myself for a minute. I ran upstairs to my little attic room and pulled off my wet clothes. I ran around looking for something to wear – sweats? No. Pajamas? No! I settled on a loose pink sundress and ran my fingers through my damp ringlets - my hair smelled a little like pond water . . . ugh! I spritzed myself with lavender and pulled my hair up into a clip, not wanting to look like I was trying too hard. I left my feet bare and ran back downstairs. My feet got a little tangled up, and I came hurtling off the last stair into the washroom like a bat out of hell. I steadied myself on the dryer and took a deep breath. “Geez! Calm down, woman!” I told myself sternly. When Samuel was around I seemed to be one frazzled bundle of gooseflesh and hormones. “That’s just what we need, fall down the stairs and spend the rest of the time Samuel has in Levan on crutches,” I muttered.