Running Barefoot (27 page)

“I’m trying to understand you.” He said it point blank.

I just shook my head in wonder. “Yes. I loved him. I miss him.” My breath huffed out in exasperation. “That’s why I’m here - to visit him, you know?”

“But he’s not here.” Samuel was emphatic. “He’s never been here. Not since his death, anyway.”

I desperately needed chocolate cake. Now. Or I was going to scream and pull my hair out. Or scream and pull Samuel’s hair out. The temptation to do just that had me gritting my teeth.

“Why are you here, Samuel?” I crossed my arms and thrust my chin at him defensively. “I mean…why did you come back to Levan after all this time? It’s been seven years…and here you are. I’m sure you and I could probably be friends again, but…what’s the point? You know? You’ll be gone soon.”

“My grandparents are getting old. I wanted to see them.” Samuel cocked his head to the side and narrowed his eyes at me. “Didn’t you think I’d ever come back?”

“Actually, yes. I just thought you would come back sooner. Where have you been? What have you been doing? I mean…you were gone so long!” Now where had that come from! I flushed and held my hands to my cheeks, mortified. Since I had seen Samuel in the rain I didn’t know myself. This was the second time I had acted completely out of character, speaking without thinking, reacting totally on emotion.

“I still have the letters you sent me,” Samuel offered softly.

“I wrote so many of them,” I blurted out and winced again. I didn’t seem to be able to curb my impulse to just tell him whatever came into my head. “But when you came back that Christmas and told me you’d outgrown me…well, I thought it was time I stopped making a fool of myself.” My voice faded off awkwardly, and I tucked my hair behind my ear nervously.

Samuel was looking off, almost as if he hadn’t been listening. “Even at boot camp, I didn’t feel right about writing to you, but I couldn’t help it, not then. I needed you too much.” His voice was low, and his eyes swung back to me, a brutal honesty in his expression. “But you were so young, and the feelings between us were too intense. I found myself thinking about you like you were my girl. Then I would remember how young you were, and I would be ashamed of myself. One of my buddies at sniper school asked me one day when I was going to show him a picture of you. I hadn’t talked about you, but you were the only one I ever got letters from and the only one I ever wrote to. I felt like a scum bag, nineteen years old, writing letters to a 14-year-old girl. I knew it couldn’t be good for you. You needed to grow up and so did I. I had things I had to do, and I did them.” His gaze narrowed. “I thought maybe it was time to come back.”

The way he said this made it sound like I was part of the reason he had returned, and my mouth grew dry. I cleared my throat, “And when you leave? What then?” I wasn’t sure what I wanted him to say, and I felt incredibly foolish all over again.

He looked at me wordlessly, considering, and I cursed myself silently. So what if he left? What was wrong with me! I felt like I was thirteen all over again and hated that he could make me feel so vulnerable. I picked up my bike, throwing my book in the basket. I climbed on the seat, twisting my skirt around my legs to keep it out of the spokes. He remained silent, watching me. I didn’t look back as I rode away.

15. Parody

The following morning I arose early as usual, pulling on my running shoes, slipping on my shorts and a t-shirt, and pulling my hair up in a ponytail. I took a forkful of chocolate cake, chugged down some orange juice, and walked out into the morning. Lying on the mat in front of the door was a thick manila envelope. Written across it in neat caps, someone had written ‘JOSIE’. I picked it up and turned it over. It was heavy, and I tested it in my hands curiously. I had ordered some piano books for some new students, but this wasn’t addressed or postmarked. Someone had set it on the mat early this morning, or maybe even late last night.

Curiously, I peeled the seal and pulled out the contents. Inside were stacks of sealed legal sized white envelopes, all with my name written across them in the same handwriting as the writing on the front of the manila envelope. I sank down on the porch swing and pulled one out. Turning it over, I saw a date written across the back: 8-19-1999. I pulled out another one. Another date was scrawled across the back. Swiftly, I pulled out all the letters, finding them ordered according to their date. Suddenly, I knew what they were. The first date was June 5, 1999, about a year after Samuel left Levan.

My heart pounded and my blood felt icy in my veins. Reverently, with shaking hands, I opened the one on the top of the pile. It picked up where his last letter, so long ago, had left off. He confessed his agony at not being able to respond to me, asking me over and over again to forgive him. Samuel had written me dozens of letters. Most of them were from the first year - maybe that was when he felt the most alone. But they continued on, though the following years. There was a letter written on 9-11-2001. I had thought of him when the towers were hit, wondering where he was, or if he would be sent somewhere. When the U.S. had invaded Iraq, I had watched the television - wondering if Samuel was among those first Marines sent in. Apparently he’d thought of me too.

I read several of Samuel’s letters, standing there on the front porch, and marveled at the places he’d been and the things he’d seen and done. He told me about the books he’d read. I noticed many of them were ones I had read, and some of them were books I hadn’t heard of. There was a definite loneliness in many of them, but a confidence and sense of purpose was present as well. I abandoned my run and went back upstairs to my room. Running could wait. I had some catching up to do.

I walked out into the front yard a few mornings later, the screen door banging behind me. It wouldn’t wake Dad - he was already up looking after the horses. I sniffed hopefully, trying to smell fall in the air, but sadly got a whiff of summer leftovers instead. I leaned down and re-tied my running shoes, wiggling my toes.

I meandered out to the road and faced my mountains wreathed in sunrise. I breathed and raised my arms high above my head, stretching and arching and working out my morning kinks.

“You look like Changing Woman greeting the Sun.” A voice spoke immediately to my left.

I was startled, and my arms dropped to my sides as I whirled around. “Oh! Samuel!” I cried out. “You scared me!”

“I’m a sneaky indian, what can I say?”

I looked into his face. It was the kind of thing he would have said at eighteen - but it would have been laced with bitterness. This time he just smiled a little and shrugged. He had on a pair of faded Levis and his worn cowboy boots again. His black t-shirt, with
Semper Fi
written in white print across the front, fit snugly across his powerful chest and shoulders. His dark hair, military short and spiky, was still wet like he’d just climbed out of the shower. He looked like my Samuel, but not. For many months after he left the first time, I had quietly cried myself to sleep, unwilling to admit to anyone how my youthful heart had ached in his absence. I had missed him terribly. I’d had so few friends, and I knew how rare he was, this friend who was truly a kindred spirit. When he’d left the second time, I had been hurt and angry and had done all I could not to think about him. My heart twisted painfully at the memory, and I swiftly redirected my attention to the man who stood before me, in the present.

“Changing Woman and the Sun ... is that a Navajo story?” I resumed my stretching, trying to portray a casualness I did not feel.

“It’s a Navajo legend. Changing Woman is thought to be the child of the Earth and the Sky. She is closely tied to the circle of life, the changing of the seasons, the order of the universe. She was created when First Man shook his medicine bag repeatedly at the holy mountain. Days later, Changing Woman was found on the top of the mountain. First Man and First Woman taught her and raised her.

“One day Changing Woman was out walking and she met a strange young man whose brilliance dazzled her so much she had to look away. When she turned back towards him he was gone. This happened two more times. She went home and told First Man and First Woman what had happened. They told her to make her bed outside that night with her head facing east. While she slept, the young man came and lay beside her. She awoke and asked him who he was. He said, “Don’t you know who I am? You see me every day. I am all around you. In my presence you were created.” She realizes he is the sun’s inner form. In order to see him each day, she went to live by the Pacific Ocean so that when the sun set on the water he could visit her.”

We were quiet for a moment. The birds started warbling, and I wished they would be still. The silence was silky without them.

“She must have been lonely waiting for him to come see her.” I hadn’t meant to speak out loud, and wondered where my sentiment had sprung from.

“She was.” Samuel eyed me quizzically. “According to legend, she was so lonely for companionship that she created the Navajo people from the flakes of her skin, rubbed off different parts of her body.”

The story was strangely sensual, the beautiful young woman, waiting each day for the Sun to come to her. I gazed up at the rising orb and closed my eyes as I lifted my face to its warmth.

“What do you listen to while you run?” Samuel nodded towards the ipod strapped to my bicep.

The memories of sharing my precious symphonies with him on that bumpy bus bombarded me. I remembered our heartfelt and intimate discussions of ‘God’s music,’ and I turned from him realizing I didn’t want him to know what I listened to when I ran. I stretched back and pulled my right foot up behind me, stretching my quad, pretending I hadn’t heard him. He reached over and took the phones from my ears, stuck one in his own, and pushed play on the iPod. After a moment he grimaced.

“This is electronic music. The kind you’d hear at a club or an aerobics class! Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom.” He pounded his foot for effect. “The same repeated phrases over and over again. Synthesizers!” He said in mock horror.

“I run with it to keep a steady pace,” I defended myself, chagrined, yanking the earbud out of his ear.

He stared at me thoughtfully, his head tilted, considering. “You run with it so that you don’t have to think,” he answered finally.

I glared at him, stung that he had so easily guessed the truth – at least partially. I listened to the electronic music so I didn’t have to
feel
.

I didn’t want to explain that to him. I resorted to walking away.

Samuel quickly caught up to me. I picked up my pace and started to jog. He started to jog with me. His cowboy boots clopped loudly as we ran. I sped up. So did he. I ran full out for a mile, stretching my legs, knowing he had to be dying in those boots. He didn’t complain, but ran with me, stride for stride. I ran another mile. Then two more. My lungs burned. I had never run this fast. He didn’t seem winded.

“What do you want, Samuel!” I turned on him suddenly, skidding to a halt. “You’re going to hurt yourself running in those boots!” He stopped and looked down into my flushed face. He put his hands on his hips, and I was gratified to see his chest rising and falling, indicating some exertion.

“I’m a Marine, Josie AND I am Navajo, an Earth-walker. I am Samuel of the Bitter Water People.” He grinned, his eyebrows wagging devilishly. He leaned into me and said slyly, “Therefore you can’t outrun me - even when I’m wearing shitkickers.” He used the Levan slang for cowboy boots, and it made me laugh despite myself. My laughter seemed to please him.

“Where is ‘Ode to Joy’, Josie?” He said, ever so softly.

My eyes flew to his, startled. He remembered the music that had once so moved me that I could not go a day without its company.

Again, I felt at a loss for words. When I’d seen Samuel last I was a girl and he was a man. He’d pretty much rejected me outright. I hadn’t written to him again. I had occasionally asked his grandma about him, wanting news, wanting to hear how he fared. The problem was nobody but Samuel and I truly knew of the bond we had struck. It was encapsulated inside those trips back and forth across the ridge, day after day, with kids talking, laughing, and arguing all around us. Nobody was ever aware of our conversations, our discoveries, our shared moments. His grandma had given me generalities, but never knew to share more with me, never knew how much I desperately wanted to know - and I had been unwilling and unable to explain my interest. Knowing how private and careful Samuel had been, I was pretty certain he hadn’t asked about me. Yesterday, he said Nettie had told him what she knew, but Nettie only knew what was on the surface, just details.

“The truth is Samuel, you and I don’t know each other at all anymore.” My voice came out a little more bitterly than I had intended, and the words stung my lips.

He studied me for a minute, but didn’t reply. Wordlessly we began walking back towards our neighboring houses. We had made a wide loop when we ran, and we weren’t very far from home. I walked alongside him, feeling raw and wrung out.