Running Barefoot (42 page)

“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 intoned 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 again, it would lay my heart open wide, 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 I was pulled 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.

“That’s beautiful, you know.” Samuel deftly sidestepped my entreaty.

“What?”

“When your cheeks flush. It’s like the soft pink of a sunset. It’s beautiful.”

I pulled myself from his arms, and 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.”

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. 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 I was 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.” 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.

20. 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.

On day 15, I made a chocolate cake worthy of the record books. It was disgustingly rich and fattening, teetering several stories high, weighing more than I did, laden with thick cream cheese frosting, and sprinkled liberally with chocolate shavings. I sat down to eat it with a big fork and no bib. I dug in with a gusto seen only at those highly competitive hotdog eating contests where the tiny Asian girl kicks all the fat boys’ butts.

“JOSIE JO JENSEN!” Louise and Tara stood at the kitchen door, shock and revulsion, and maybe just a little envy, in their faces. Brahms ‘Rhapsodie No. 2 in G Minor’ was making my little kitchen shake. Eating cake to Brahms was a new experience for me. I liked it. I dug back in, ignoring them.

“Well Mama,” I heard Tara say, “what should we do?!”

My Aunt Louise was a very practical woman. “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!” She quoted cheerfully.

Before I knew it, Tara and Louise both had forks, too. They didn’t seem to need bibs either. We ate, increasing our tempo as the music intensified.

“ENOUGH!” My dad stood in the doorway. He was good and mad, too. His sun-browned face was as ruddy as my favorite high heels.

“I sent you two in for an intervention! What is this?! Eater’s Anonymous Gone Wild?”

“Aww, Daddy. Get a fork,” I replied, barely
breaking rhythm.

My dad strode over, took the fork from my hand and threw it, tines first, right into the wall. It stuck there, embedded and twanging like a sword at a medieval tournament. He pulled out my chair and grabbed me under the arms, pushing me out of the kitchen. I tried to take one last swipe at my cake, but he let out this inhuman roar, and I abandoned all hope of making myself well and truly sick.

“Tara! Aunt Louise!” I shouted frantically. “I want you gone!!! That’s my cake! You can’t have any more without me!”

My dad pushed me through the front door and out onto the porch, the screen banging behind him. I sunk to the porch swing, sullenly wiping chocolate crumbs from my mouth. My dad stomped back inside the house and suddenly the music pouring from every nook and cranny stopped abruptly. I heard him tell Louise he’d call her later, and then the kitchen door banged, indicating my Aunt’s and Tara’s departure. Good. They would have eaten that whole cake. I saw the way they were shoveling it in.

My dad lumbered out the front door and sank into the swing beside me. We rocked in silence for a while, my feet tucked under me, his feet in his old boots pushing back and forth, back and forth. There was a briskness to the night air that hadn’t been there a week ago. The fall was in full thrust now; the leaves brilliant in their death throes. I felt the winter coming on. What had Samuel told me about
Changing Woman and spring being a time of rebirth? Changing Woman ushered in the seasons, brought new life. This season wouldn’t be ushering in a new life. My life would remain the same.

I suddenly felt very old and tired. And full. Shame and fatigue crashed over me, and I reached for my dad’s hand. His palms were chapped and worn, and they were almost as brown as Samuel’s. How I loved my father’s hands! How I loved him. I’d made my dad worry about me. I looked up into his face and saw the emotions I was feeling mirrored in his eyes. I brought his hand to my cheek and leaned my face into his palm. He cupped my face in that big palm, and his eyes filled with sadness.

“Josie Jo. What am I going to do without you?” His voice was gruff and tired.

“I’m not going anywhere, Dad.” I said softly, my voice cracking a little as I thought of Samuel.

“Yes, honey, you are,” Emotion shook in his voice. “You are going to go - I won’t let you stay here anymore.”

I felt the bottom drop out of my chest and my heart plummet, crashing in tiny pieces at my feet. My hand, still holding onto his, fell to my lap.

“Don’t you want me to stay with you, Dad?” My voice quavered, and I bit down on my bottom lip.

“Honey, it isn’t about what I want anymore. I’ve let you take care of me and your brothers since you were nine years old! I just can’t, in good
conscience, let you do it anymore.”

“Dad!” I cried out in denial, “You’ve taken care of all of us! I just did my part!”