Running Barefoot

19. Crescendo



There are supposed to be links between math, music, and astronomy – some of the greatest composers have been avid star-watchers. The connections between math and music made sense – although there is more to the connection than timing, counting, and notes on a line. In fact, there is something neurological that occurs in the brain when certain types of music are played. That neurological change is said to positively affect our mathematical abilities. I’d been fascinated by what some researchers have called the Mozart Effect, and have used the study to convince more than one mother to keep her struggling child in piano lessons.

But the only connection I’d ever made between astronomy and music was in the way each made me feel. When I looked up into the firmament, I felt the same reverence that moved in me when I listened to the swell of great music. I’d never had anyone teach me about the stars like Samuel’s grandmother had done for him. What I’d learned in school textbooks failed to inspire me, as if some vital piece was being omitted. The galaxy was a riddle that everyone pretended to know the answer to, but no one really did. At school, I’d often find myself growing impatient with facts and figures that seemed like paltry suggestions for something that was beyond words and explanations.

After dinner on our third day there, Samuel and I climbed a rocky rise near his grandmother’s hogan as the sun set. And as the purple dusk was overcome with black, we watched the stars blink and awaken above us. As the night deepened and the display became more dramatic, I felt that familiar, humble wonder that I always felt when I contemplated the heavens. My limbs were heavy and my belly was full, and I felt more content and relaxed than I could remember feeling in a very long time.

Samuel’s grandmother had killed a goat in honor of his visit, and she’d spent the last two days cooking and preparing dishes. I was not especially squeamish, but when Samuel had told me that his grandmother used literally everything from the goat, I had been a little doubtful about my ability to take part in the feast being prepared. I’d even watched her make blood cakes, and amazingly enough, in spite of the gruesome name, they weren’t bad. They were heavy and filling and when they were cooking they smelled delicious. Two of Grandma Yazzie’s friends came and helped her with her preparations, and I was struck by how similar they were to the women in my church, laughing and giggling and working side by side. I marveled at the ingenuity and resourcefulness of these people. They even used ash from the juniper trees to leaven and thicken their bread.

The goat feast had been a lighthearted gathering of Grandma Yazzie’s friends, all who seemed to know and hold affection for Samuel. His mother had come as well but seemed ill at ease and confrontational towards Grandma Yazzie. In some ways, she looked older than her mother, although she was probably only in her late forties. Deep lines and sunken eyes told a tale of a very sad woman. Samuel seemed glad to see her and embraced her warmly, but shrugged with acceptance when she left not long after she arrived.

Now, lying beside Samuel on the smooth surface of the sandstone rise, looking up into the endless expanse of the night sky, I asked him about the woman who was his mother.

“She still lives with my step-dad, although I haven’t seen him since I left that last time my senior year in high school. My shima’s hogan has been neutral ground for my mother and me to see each other over the years.

“She doesn’t seem to like to Grandma Yazzie very much,” I said truthfully.

“She can’t ever get a rise out of Grandma. I think she tries to provoke ill-treatment from her to justify her own bad feelings. But my Grandma just loves her and, from what I can see, offers peace whenever she comes around. Sadly, my mother has betrayed herself too many times, and she is turning into a bear.”

“A bear?” I questioned, confused.

“Another legend. When I was little, my grandmother told me a story about a woman who was captured by the bear-clan. At night they were bears, but in the day, human. The woman marries the chief of the bear clan and eventually, after living with the bear clan for many years, she starts to grow fur and becomes a bear.”

“And your mother is becoming like the bear she married?”

“Ahh, you catch on quick, Josie. Actually, in the legend, the bear is selfless and loving, and dies for his family in the end, but I was always struck by the idea that we become what we surround ourselves by.” Samuel sighed. “Or maybe it’s just easier to blame my step-dad for what my mother has become than to hold her accountable.”

“I think the legend is truer than you even realize. Have you ever noticed how old married couples start to resemble each other after many years of marriage?” I giggled at the thought of some of the very old couples in Levan, and how they could almost be brother and sister they looked so much alike.

“So if you marry me, in fifty years my hair will start to curl and my eyes will be a brilliant blue?” Samuel teased softly, not turning towards me, his eyes trained on the stars above us.

My heart stuttered, and the image of growing old with Samuel suddenly played through my mind in moving pictures. I sat up abruptly, wrapping my arms around my knees, and struggled to think of something, anything, to say that would take the pictures from my head and the longing from my heart.

If Samuel perceived my discomfort, he didn’t pursue it, and his voice was soft as he moved the conversation to less personal ground, but he stretched his hand out and ran his fingers gently through my curls as he spoke.

“I’ll be at Camp Pendleton in San Diego for the next couple of years, Josie. I accepted an assignment at the base with the sniper division. I will be an instructor, training and working with Marines who are expert riflemen. I won’t have to live on base, and I won’t be considered active for deployment with my unit. I’ve been accepted to law school at San Diego State, and I can attend classes in the afternoon and evenings.”

He had it all planned out. I guess he’d figured out what he’d wanted. When we’d stood in the kitchen the morning after our run, he’d claimed he hadn’t decided what came next. It seemed he now knew. I was proud of him and frustrated all at the same time.

“How do you do it, Samuel?” I asked, and I was surprised at the confrontational edge to my voice, “How do you come here and see your grandma, see her growing older, knowing one day she’ll be gone, not knowing if this time might be the last time you see her, and then leave again?”

“Do you think my shima needs me to stay, Josie?” Samuel sat up beside me, and the fingers that had been gently twined in my hair now slid to my chin, turning my face to his. “Do you really think she wants me to stay?”

I tried to jerk my face from his hand, but he leaned into me and answered his own question. “I accomplish nothing by staying here. My grandmother knows I love her, and she expects me to keep moving forward. Do you remember how, when I was born my grandmother buried my umbilical cord in her hogan so that I would know I always have a home?”

I nodded a brief yes.

“This place is in my heart, but it can’t be my home, not now, maybe not ever. Do you remember how Grandma knew it wasn’t right, so she dug up the cord and put it on the gun rack?”

Again, I nodded.

“There are many kinds of warriors, Josie. I’ve been one kind, and you know the saying goes, once a Marine always a Marine, but now I need to be a different kind of warrior for the Navajo people. I want to get my law degree so I can help native people retain their lands, and not just the Navajo people. Our government doesn’t need acres and acres of land. Do you know that the United States Government OWNS more than half of the land out west? As much as 60% of the land in some states. The government goes in and takes the land in the name of the people, but what it is doing is taking the land from the people. The founding fathers, as well as a few of the great chiefs, would be rolling in their graves if they knew about the land grab that has happened by our own government.”

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 13th 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.

“So I can’t run away but it’s okay if I fall in love with you?”

“That depends,” he retorted smoothly.

“On what?”

“On whether you run away.”

“You’re speaking in riddles.”

He shrugged. “Do we have a deal?”

“Deal.” I held out my hand, but my heart lurched a little in my chest.

Samuel closed his eyes for a minute, as if to pull the words from some recess in his mind, then he tilted his head toward me and began to recite softly:

Oh, a wan cloud was drawn o’er the dim weeping dawn

As to Josie’s side I returned at last,

And the heart in my breast for the girl I lov’d best

Was beating, ah, beating, how loud and fast!

While the doubts and the fears of the long aching years

Seem’d mingling their voices with the moaning flood:

Till full in my path, like a wild water wraith,

My true love’s shadow lamenting stood.

But the sudden sun kiss’d the cold, cruel mist

Into dancing show’rs of diamond dew,

And the dark flowing stream laugh’d back to his beam,

And the lark soared aloft in the blue:

While no phantom of night but a form of delight

Ran with arms outspread to her darling boy,

And the girl I love best on my wild throbbing breast

Hid her thousand treasures with cry of joy.

There was a giant lump in my throat, and we stared at each other. I breathed deeply, trying to halt the emotion rising over me. Samuel closed the final step between us.

“That’s exactly how it happened, too. You suddenly came out of nowhere in the middle of a rainstorm. And then you were in my arms.”

“Are you trying to seduce me, Samuel?” I’d meant to sound playful, but my voice came out in a low plea.

“No.” Samuel’s voice was warm and intense, and he shook his head as he spoke.

“Am I the ‘girl you love best’?” Again my striving for lightness fell short, as I was unable to clothe the words in jest. I didn’t want him to answer my question and quickly withdrew my gaze from his and walked to the piano. I slid onto the bench and launched into Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu, my fingers flying dizzily over the keys, the music as frenzied and frantic as my racing heart. The second movement smoothed into the lovely melody and I played for several minutes with Samuel standing behind me, unmoving. When the piece resumed the flying pace of the opening movement, he moved behind me and placed his hands on my shoulders, and I struggled to finish the number.

“You ran away. You said you wouldn’t.” Samuel sighed behind me.

“I’m right here.”

“Your fingers are flying, trying to escape.”

I put my hands in my lap and bowed my head. Music was too revealing. Chopin had just told Samuel exactly what I was feeling, despite my attempts to avoid him.

One of Samuel’s hands rose to my bowed head and he traced a loose curl that had been lying against the nape of my neck with his calloused fingers. I shivered. “Will you play something else?”

“You can’t touch me. I...I can’t concentrate when you do.” My voice was a whisper, and I cringed at the childlike breathiness.

Samuel’s hands fell away from my shoulders, and he moved away without response and leaned against the living room door, where he could see my face as I played. That wasn’t much better. I tried to close my eyes so I could concentrate. I knew what he wanted to hear. I knew what I wanted to play, but worried that once again, it would lay my heart open, revealing too much.

I let my fingers dance lightly across the keys, giving in to the vulnerability that I knew echoed in my very first composition. I hadn’t written any music for a very long time. I had composed feverishly until I met Kasey, and then I’d let myself be seventeen. I’d been young and in love, and I hadn’t felt the melancholy that induced my most creative moments, and I hadn’t wanted to write. I’d wanted to be seventeen. I had enjoyed acting my age for once in my life. Of course, since he’d died, melancholy hadn’t been a problem. But my gift had been strangely silent in the last five years.

Now Samuel’s Song rose lovingly from the keys and wound its way around us. I embellished as I played, remembering all the old feelings. A girl in love with someone she couldn’t have. My heart ached in my chest, but I let it. I wasn’t going to hide anymore. I kept my eyes closed, and my hands knew their way. The keys were cool against my fingertips, and I lost myself in the sweet agony of my song.

Suddenly, Samuel was next to me on the bench, his long body sliding next to mine, my hands falling discordantly from the keys as his arms wrapped around me and his lips captured mine anxiously. My arms rushed to embrace him, as my right hand rose to his face. My head was pressed into his shoulder, and he pulled me across his lap, his mouth moving feverishly over mine.

I heard myself say his name as he moved his lips from mine to rain kisses across my jaw and down the silky column of my throat. I shuddered deep down in my stomach, and my hand tightened on his face, pushing him from me to stare into his eyes. He looked down at me, and his breath was harsh, coming in pants like it never did when he ran. His eyes glittered and burned, and his lips were parted as he struggled to control his breathing.

“How am I going to keep my promise if you keep kissing me?” I whispered urgently.

“What promise?”

He hadn’t released his hold on me, and I was still grasped tightly in his arms.

“Not to fall in love with you,” I murmured emphatically. The heat from my belly defied gravity and rushed to my already flushed face.

He didn’t respond and I pulled myself from his arms; he let me go. I rose and stepped away from him.

He stood behind me, and I moved towards the door.

“Josie.”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t let me answer your question.”

“Which question was that?”

“You asked me if you were the girl I loved best.”

Now I didn’t respond.

“You’re not the girl I love best, Josie.” My shoulders tightened against rejection. “You’re the only girl I’ve ever loved,” he finished quietly. My breath caught, not quite believing what I was hearing. “I know I’m moving too fast. I just can’t seem to help myself. I watch you and listen to you and all I want to do is hold you and kiss you, and I…I’m sorry if I am pushing you....” His voice faded off. I didn’t know how to respond. My heart had resumed its gallop, and I laid a hand against my heart to ease its rhythm. His hands were gentle on my shoulders, and he turned me to face him. I looked up into his face and was lost in what I knew was coming.

“I want you to come with me to San Diego. I want you to marry me. Now, next week, next month, whenever you’re ready. You can go to school – or just play the piano all day. I don’t care as long as you’re happy and you’re with me.” Samuel’s hands framed my face and his eyes pled with mine.

“First you tell me not to fall in love with you and five minutes later you ask me to marry you!” I blurted out. I was reeling, euphoria threatening to bubble up and carry me away while the weight of my responsibilities clawed in my throat.

“Oh Josie! I’m making a mess of this, aren’t I? Please try to understand,” Samuel groaned out. “I do want you to love me, Josie, because I love you so much it makes me ache. But if you’re going to run away, loving me will just make you unhappy.”

“I’m not the one leaving, Samuel! Why can’t you stay here? Why do you have to leave?” I cried, sounding to my own ears like a very young child.

“For the same reasons I can’t live on the reservation. My future isn’t here. I have commitments that I have to keep to the Marines, to myself, even to my people. This isn’t where I’m needed.”

“I need you!” Again the child in me made her appeal.

“Then come with me.”

“I can’t go. I can’t leave. I’m needed here.”

“I need you,” Samuel implored softly, repeating my words. “I need you because I love you.”

I felt strangely detached, as if I was watching this scene play out in a Jane Austen novel. I felt grief, but it was a sympathetic grief, the kind of grief I often feel for someone else’s pain - almost the way I’d felt at my mom’s funeral - like it wasn’t real yet. I stepped back from Samuel.

“I can’t go with you, Samuel. I’m sorry.” My voice sounded funny, and it felt heavy on my lips, similar to those awful dreams where you try to speak but can’t because your mouth is suddenly unable to form the words.

Samuel’s face tightened briefly like he was angry with me, and then it softened as he gazed down at me. His black eyes lingered on me for a moment more.

“I was afraid of that. I realized something tonight when we were listening to Beethoven. You’re like the tonic note. You’re the note that all the other notes revolve around and gravitate to. You’re home. Without you, the song just might not be a song, your family might not be a family. That’s what your afraid of, isn’t it? Who will step in and be the home base, the tonic note, if you go?” Samuel’s eyes were bleak as he continued, his voice husky and low. “That’s what you’ve been for me ever since I met you. The note I could hear, even when it wasn’t being played. The one I’ve gravitated towards all these years.” He leaned into me and kissed the top of my head gently. His hand cupped my cheek briefly, and his thumb traced my trembling lower lip.

“I love you, Josie,” he said. Then he turned and walked out of my house.

The following morning his truck was gone, just as it had been the day after Daisy’s colt was born all those years ago.