by Amy Harmon
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 six-thirty 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 String Quartet 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 b
eam,
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 toward 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 you’re 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 toward 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.
The Leading Note
Samuel had been gone for two weeks, and I kept myself as busy as I could. I did all my regular duties—I cut hair, I taught piano lessons, and I ran several miles a day. In addition, I harvested what was left in my garden. Then I canned until the early morning hours, bottles of beets and tomatoes and green beans and pickles. I made lasagnas and casseroles and stuck them in the freezer in single serving sizes. When there was nothing left to bottle or freeze I alphabetized and reorganized my food storage. Then I decided the house was in need of a deep clean. I scrubbed blinds and washed curtains and steamed carpets. Then I started in on the yard. In other words…I was a mess.
I made myself listen to the music I loved as I worked. I would not be a coward anymore. If I acted like a lunatic, so be it! In my mind I raged and I vowed that Samuel’s leaving would not make me resort to musical holocaust. I was done with that nonsense! I played Grieg until my fingers were stiff, and I worked with the frenzy of Balakirev’s “Islamey” pounding out of the loud speakers. My dad came inside during that one and turned around and walked right back out again.