Running Barefoot (39 page)

Samuel breathed out in frustration, dropping his hand from my face and running it through his hair. “Don’t even get me started, Josie.” He paused and then confronted me again. “So you think I should live here with my grandma in her hogan? Is that what you’re saying, Josie? Live here and herd sheep? Do you think my grandma would think I loved her more if I did?”

I felt like the lowest of life forms, and I shook my head miserably. “No, Samuel, I don’t. I’m sorry. I’m not really sure what I meant.”

The silence around us was broken only by the occasional distant laughter floating up from the hogan below and an orchestra of happy crickets united in their evening song. Several long moments passed before Samuel supplied gently, “Maybe we aren’t really talking about me, Josie.”

Samuel waited patiently for an answer, but after significant time passed without a response, he silently rose to his feet. He reached his hand down, and I took it, letting him pull me up beside him.

“We’ve got an early morning tomorrow, Josie. Let’s go back and see if they’ve saved us any goat gut ice cream.”

“Ugh!” I cried out, totally falling for it.

“Just kidding, sweetheart. Goat eyeballs are actually quite tasty, though. They’re considered a delicacy among my people.”

“Samuel!”

His laughter eased the churning in my heart, and I followed him down the steep path back to the dim light of Grandma Yazzie’s hogan.

There were no tears when Samuel and his grandmother said their goodbyes the next morning. The sun was just peeking her way over the eastern mountains as they spoke in low tones, their cheeks pressed together, Samuel’s forehead resting on her shoulder, his back bowed to accommodate their embrace. I turned from them, embarrassed to find my own eyes were moist when theirs were not. I guess I just didn’t like goodbyes.

I felt a gentle touch on my sleeve, and turned to see Grandma Yazzie standing close beside me. Her eyes searched mine, noting, I’m sure, the wet that was threatening to overcome them. She reached up and patted my cheek with her warm, rough palm. When she spoke, her English was almost perfect.

“Thank you for coming. Samuel loves you. You love Samuel. Go and be happy.”

I put my hand over hers and held it for a moment. Then she stepped away from me, and my eyes overflowed. I turned from her quickly, stepping into the cab of the truck. Samuel must have heard what she’d said; he was only a few feet away. Our small bags and the two bedrolls were already stowed in the truck bed ready to go, so it was only a minute before he climbed in beside me and started the truck.

As we pulled away, I found myself gulping as I tried to stem the flow of tears that would not be calmed. I jabbed at the jockey box, seeking reinforcements, and grabbed a handful of brown Taco Bell napkins and scrubbed at my face, desperately trying to dam the stream of my unruly emotions.

“Oh Josie,” Samuel sighed gently. “Your heart is too tender for your own good.”

“I don’t usually cry like this, Samuel. Geez, it’s been
years
since I’ve cried like this. Since you’ve been back I can’t seem to stop. It’s like a cloud has burst inside me, and I’m caught in a constant downpour.”

“Come here, Josie,” Samuel said, and when I slid over next to him he kissed me gently on the forehead and smoothed my hair from my damp cheeks. “Well then, maybe you should go ahead and just let it rain for a while.”

And so I did. I cried until I was all wrung out, and I didn’t think I would cry again for a good many more years. Then I laid my head down on Samuel’s right thigh and fell asleep with his hand in my hair and Conway Twitty singing “Don’t Take it Away” on the radio.

We made good time on the way home. Apparently, all those tears I’d cried had been heavy, because I felt strangely weightless and empty for most of the drive. Samuel and I talked of this and that, but the conversation was light and roaming. We got caught in a downpour, of the natural variety this time, and when the rain cleared a huge rainbow traversed the sky. This prompted another Navajo legend about Changing Woman’s sons trying to reach the Turquoise House of Sun-God across the Great Water. The story told how, when they reached the Great Water, they followed Spider Woman’s directions and with songs and prayers, put their hands into the Great Waters and a huge Rainbow Bridge appeared to take them to the Sun-God. The story also involved the sons meeting a little red headed man who resembled a sand-scorpion and spitting four times into their hands, but it was a good story regardless.

The peculiarities in the story made me wonder if many of the Native American legends had started out as truths long ago, and had gotten warped in the telling from one generation to the next, like that game children played at parties where everyone sits in a circle and one person whispers something in the ear of the person sitting next to them, and that person repeats what he heard to the person sitting next to him and so on, until it travels around the entire circle. If the circle is big enough the phrase at the end rarely even resembles the original phrase. I asked Samuel what he thought of my theory.

“Most likely some of that has happened,” Samuel acquiesced. “There was no way to accurately record the stories because we didn’t have a written language. Many of our legends and our history have been recorded now, however, and I guess you could say that is one bright spot in the assimilation of the Navajo children into American schools. We can speak and write in English and can preserve our culture in that way.

“I think many of the legends weren’t ever truths to begin with, though. Not in the way you mean, at least. Many of the legends were stories the native people used to teach their children and to create a code of conduct in which to live by. They didn’t have a bible to teach their children about a loving Savior, His atonement, and a life after this one. I think many of our legends are an attempt to explain what they didn’t understand – including where they came from and why they existed. They wanted to know what we all want to know. Who am I? Why am I here?”

I pondered what Samuel had said and wondered about my own desperate questions after Kasey had died. It hadn’t been until he died that I really questioned God’s plan for me. I hadn’t really questioned who I was and why I was here until I could no longer look at my future with any kind of joy or anticipation, until I needed help finding a reason to continue. It was then that I had needed answers most of all, and the only answer I had found, my only reason for being, had become my father’s need. Then Sonja had needed me, and I had found a measure of joy in service, and it had sustained me. Until now. Now I had questions again.

We rolled into Levan at about 6:30 that night. I felt haggard and filthy, but was loath to part with Samuel for any length of time. I suggested that we rendezvous back at my place for dinner in an hour, giving each of us a chance to freshen up after several days of showering with a bucket and a hand towel.

I greeted my happy dog with a hug and a kiss and stumbled into the bathroom avoiding the mirror entirely, deciding that what I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me. I scrubbed and lathered and moisturized and came out of the shower feeling almost new again. I threw all the clothes from the five day trip into the wash and pulled on a skirt, a light weight pink top, and enjoyed putting on make up with a full mirror for the first time in days. My nose was a little sunburned and my cheeks had a few more freckles, but when I was done I looked refreshed, and my hair gleamed around my shoulders.

I started some pasta on the stove and defrosted some sausage in the microwave. I fried it up and poured some homemade tomato sauce over it that I had canned a few weeks previous and decided it would suffice for an easy meal. I ran out to my garden on a whim, craving fresh vegetables in a salad and was just straightening up with my basket full of produce when Samuel surprised me, walking around the corner of the house towards me. My heart performed a series of flips, and I caught my breath before it left me senseless. How, after only an hour apart, could I be so desperately happy to see him? His black hair shone, and his warm skin glowed as he shot me a smile that sent a jolt from my stomach to my now wobbly knees. I curled my bare feet in the cool dirt pushing up between my toes and smiled back at him, waiting for him to reach me.

He stopped in front of me, and without missing a beat, he took the basket from my hand, set it down beside my feet, and wrapped his arms around me. He smelled wonderful – like juniper trees, Ivory soap and temptation all mixed together. My eyelids fluttered closed as his lips found mine and didn’t retreat for several long minutes.

“I missed you,” he breathed, and there was a rueful expression on his face as my eyelids lifted heavily to meet his gaze. He dropped another kiss on my needy lips as he leaned down and picked up the basket of vegetables, looping his free arm around my waist as we made our way into the house.

We ate with Yazzie sleeping at our feet, and the sound of a distant lawn mower humming through the open kitchen window. Beethoven softly serenaded us from the living room stereo, and I had been lost in the music and the meal for quite some time when I realized that Samuel had stopped eating and was listening intently.

I watched him, waiting for him to tell me what was wrong.

“What is that called?”

“The piece?”

“No…..not the name of the piece. The musical term. You explained it to me once. I just remembered it as I was listening to the music continually return to that one sound….what is it called?

“Do you mean the tonic note?” I asked, surprised.

“Yeah, I think that’s what you called it.”

“Your ear has become very sharp. You’re hearing the tonic note, even when it isn’t being played. It’s more subtle in this piece than in some other works.”

“Explain it to me again,” he demanded, his expression one of deep concentration.

“Well…..a tonic note is the first note of a scale, which serves as the home base around which all the other pitches revolve and to which they ultimately gravitate. If a song has a strong tonic base you can hum the tonic note throughout the song, and it will blend with every note and chord.”

“That’s right. I remember now.” Samuel seemed to be pondering this bit of musical theory very seriously, and I kept stealing looks at his frowning countenance. I cleared the dishes, and we washed and dried side by side, Beethoven’s 13
^th
winding down behind us. He walked in to the living room and switched it off as I put the last dish in the cupboard. He moved to the piano and lifted the lid over the keys.

“I haven’t heard you play for so long, Josie. Will you play for me tonight? His voice was wistful as his fingers ran over the piano keys.

“I don’t know. You never did sing me the Irish Lament,” I teased gently, reminding him of our agreement at Burraston’s Pond.

“Hmm. That’s true. We had a deal. Okay…I’ll
tell
you the Irish Lament; I won’t sing it. But you have to promise me something first.”

I waited, looking at him.

“You have to promise you won’t run away.”

Samuel moved from the bench, tall and straight, and looked down at me. “I don’t want the poem to make you feel uncomfortable. It’s a poem about lovers. It might scare you and make you run away, or it might make you fall in love with me.” I blushed and snorted as if his suggestion was ludicrous.