Running Barefoot (37 page)

“
Hozho
,” I remembered aloud.

Samuel gaped at me and then nodded his head. “Yeah,
hozho.
How did you know that word?”

“I remember talking about harmony with you a long time ago. I’ve thought about it many times since. I even wrote
hozho
on my Wall of Words.

“Imagine that - a little girl from Levan, Utah with a Navajo word written on her wall.”

“Imagine that,” I agreed. “So Samuel?”

“Yeah?”

“Have you found it?”

“What?”

“Harmony, balance, hozho….whatever you want to call it. Since you’ve been gone all these years, have you found it?’

Samuel looked at me for a moment and then returned his gaze to the road. “It’s an ongoing thing, Josie. You don’t just find it and keep it. Just like maintaining balance on a bike – one little thing can start you wobbling. But I learned that a big part of harmony for me is having a purpose. I also had to let go of a lot of anger and sadness. When I met you all those years ago, I was filled with anger. I started changing when my heart started to soften.”

“What softened your heart?” I asked softly.

“Good music and a friend.”

I felt my eyes burn a little and turned from him, blinking quickly to lap up the sting of tears. “Music has incredible power.”

“So does friendship,” he supplied frankly.

“You were every bit as good a friend to me,” I responded quickly.

“No I wasn’t. Not even close. But as nasty and mean as I often was, you never held a grudge. I could never figure you out. You just seemed to love me no matter what. I didn’t understand that kind of love. Then I had an experience that taught me. You know I took my dad’s scriptures with me when I left for the Marine corp. I’d read them a little. I’d flipped through them, reading this and that, starting and stopping. I don’t think I ever told you about the experience I had. It might be in one of those letters I brought over.

“I was in the middle of Afghanistan in an area where we believed a large group of Taliban fighters had hunkered down. There was one guy in particular that we really wanted bad. Rumors of Osama himself were rampant. I’d been sent on ahead with another sniper – we’re always sent out in pairs – to scout out an area thought to overlook a possible opening to a series of caves the terrorists were supposedly using as a hidey hole. I’d been battened down on my belly, looking through my scope for hours on end for three days. I was exhausted and irritable, and I wanted to blow up the whole God-forsaken country and just go home.”

“It sounds terrible,” I commiserated.

“It was,” Samuel laughed without much humor and shook his head. “Before I’d been sent out on this little scouting trip, I’d been reading the parable about the prodigal son. It’d made me a little bit mad. I felt angry for the son who stuck around and was faithful and then got pushed aside by his dad. I thought I understood what Jesus was trying to teach with that parable. I thought it was all about that Jesus loves the sinner not the sin, and that he will forgive us if we will just return to him and allow him to heal us. And I knew all that was true, but I just kept thinking about how it wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair, and the ‘good son’ didn’t deserve to be taken for granted. I was even thinking that Jesus’ parable wasn’t the best example of welcoming the sinner back into the fold – that he could have used a better story to illustrate his point.

“So here I am, tired, ticked-off, and I’ve got this story of the prodigal son running through my mind. Just about this time, I see what looks to be the target approaching this entrance with two other men. I get excited because I’m thinking – finally someone’s going to get what they deserve. Can you imagine it? I’m critiquing the master teacher in my head, and I’m getting ready to blow another guy’s head to kingdom come. I’m all excited, I’ve got the orders to shoot to kill, and suddenly my partner says - “It isn’t him.”

“It’s him! I’m saying. It’s him! It’s a go! I’m insisting that I shoot even as I’m realizing it isn’t our guy, but I don’t stand down.” Samuel’s voice and body were tense as he retold the story, and he shook his head adamantly, transported back to the craggy overlook in a country far away.

“I’m actually getting ready to pull the trigger and suddenly, out of nowhere, a voice speaks to me, as clearly as if my buddy were talking directly into my ear.”

Samuel paused, and all at once his face was drenched in emotion. “But it wasn’t my partner. He’s still whispering frantically – insisting it isn’t our guy. The voice I heard wasn’t audible to anyone but me. The voice said ‘How much owest thou unto my Lord?’”

The silence in the cab was thick with something akin to anguish – and although I didn’t quite understand what the question implied, I knew Samuel had understood, and waited for him to master his emotions enough to share his insight. He breathed deeply a few times and continued hoarsely, his voice cracking a little.

“The story of the prodigal son isn’t just about the sins of the son that left and came back. It’s about the sins of the faithful son as well.” Samuel looked at me, and I stared back waiting for him to continue.

“That day, in a rocky corner of Afghanistan, I was so wrapped up in everyone getting what they deserved, that I almost killed a guy that I knew was not a target. He could have been looking for his lost goat for all I know. The thing is, what do any of us really
deserve
, Josie? What are we entitled to? The words that I heard that day were words from the very next parable Jesus teaches in the book of Luke about the unjust steward. I’d read it right after I’d read the parable of the prodigal son – but I’d been so wrapped up in what I had perceived as injustice in the one parable, that I hadn’t really read the words in the next. ‘How much owest thou unto my Lord?’ How much? How much do I owe? The truth is I can’t ever pay my debt. Ever. We ALL owe everything to God. There is no level of debtedness. I am no less in debt than that man who almost lost his life at my hand. The more faithful son is no less in debt that his prodigal brother. We all owe Jesus Christ everything. Yet at the end of the parable the father says lovingly to his angry son, ‘Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.’ Now that is love. Two sons that were undeserving, both of them loved and embraced. That day, with a gentle reminder, a merciful father showed me how undeserving I was – and saved me in spite of it. That’s the day I really started to understand.”

I unhooked my seatbelt and slid over next to Samuel on the wide bench seat. I laid my head on his shoulder and wrapped his right hand in both of mine. We sat with tears in our eyes, hands clasped, beyond words for many miles.

We arrived in Dilcon just before sundown. It looked a lot like any other small town. The landscape was a little different, and its signs boasted Navajo rugs and jewelry – but it didn’t seem that different from Levan, truth be told. We wound through the town and out again, traveling down roads without signs or markings, occasionally passing a herd of sheep or an occasional double wide trailer. I counted a few abandoned pick-up trucks. I saw a hogan standing forlornly in the middle of nothing and pointed it out to Samuel.

“When the owner of a hogan dies it is not lived in anymore. Do you remember
chidi?
How the bad spirit remains? Whether you believe in
chidi
or not, respect for tradition just dictates that the hogan be left uninhabited to return to Mother Earth. You’ll see abandoned hogans here and there. Fewer and fewer Navajo live in hogans these days. It’s just more comfortable to have running water and electricity and temperature controls. We’ve got some hold-outs, though. Grandma Yazzie is definitely one of them.”

I didn’t know how Samuel found his way, turning down this road and up another until finally he bounced his way over uneven earth to a lonely hogan with an old pick-up truck that looked like Old Brown’s older brother parked out front. A huge corral made of juniper logs was knit together in seemingly haphazard fashion to the north of the hogan. At least a hundred sheep were confined within the enclosure. The hogan faced east. The door was open, and the deepening shadows of the setting sun created shade in the front where a little old woman sat combing what looked to be wool around a large wooden spool. She didn’t move or rise as we slowed to a stop, and the truck heaved a grateful sigh of arrival as Samuel turned the key. We stepped stiffly out our respective doors, and I held back as Samuel strode forward and picked the little woman up off her stool holding her tightly in his arms. Her wool and spools fell unheeded to her feet as she clasped him to her, her small hands running up his arms and strong back, patting his cheeks and muttering something I could not understand.

Samuel eventually let her down and turned toward me, reaching back his hand, and with the Navajo language bouncing off his tongue introduced me to his beloved Shima Yazzie.

Grandma Yazzie was beautiful in the way old wood is beautiful. Warm and deep brown with a depth of wisdom that had me searching the lines in her face for the answers to life’s biggest questions. Her hair was white and thick and pulled back and looped in the traditional Navajo bun. Her shirt was a faded purple, the sleeves long, and her skirt was full and layered and dusty blue. She wore ancient lace-up cowboy boots on her feet and large turquoise and silver rings on the ring finger of each wrinkled hand. She wasn’t very tall, maybe five feet, but she was sturdy and compact – a stiff wind wouldn’t blow her over; in fact, I had the distinct impression that very little would blow her over.

She nodded to me almost regally, and then turned her attention back to her grandson. She gestured toward her hogan and bid us come inside. The hogan was more spacious than I expected. A huge loom took up almost one whole side; a pallet lay against an adjacent wall with a small chest of drawers and a small wood burning stove. A large table with two chairs made up what consisted of the kitchen area.

“Grandma is worried that you will be uncomfortable here.” Samuel spoke softly to me. “I’ve told her you’ve never had anyone fuss over you, so she shouldn’t fuss over you either. I told her you will only be uncomfortable if she is uncomfortable. I think that made her feel better.”

I marveled briefly how well Samuel understood me.

We ate a simple meal of fry bread and mutton stew. I felt my eyes getting heavy as I sat outside on one of the chairs from the kitchen and listened to the gentle cadence of Samuel and his grandmother conversing. Grandmother Yazzie’s hands were always busy. She had shown me, with Samuel interpreting, the rug she was working on at her loom. The rug had only the natural colors of the wool woven into the complex design. She said she mixed some of her own dye from different plants, but she would use no dyes on this rug. The red, brown, black and grey in the design were the colors of the wool taken from her sheep. I asked her if she planned the pattern before-hand. Samuel answered for her, before he even translated what I’d said.

“The pattern will emerge on its own. The wool lets you know what the pattern will be. There are traditional patterns – I forget what they all mean. But each pattern tells a story. Some stories are complicated and involve very intricate detailed patterns. Grandma says this is a ceremonial rug.”

This made sense to me, and I mused aloud, “Weaving is kind of like writing music. The song almost writes itself; you just have to start playing.” Samuel immediately launched into Navajo, telling his grandmother what I’d said and what he’d told me. She nodded her head as he spoke, agreeing with his explanation, smiling a little at me as he must have told her what I’d said about music.

That night, Samuel slept outside in his truck bed and I slept in a bedroll in the hogan, with Samuel’s grandmother lying silently beside me. That night I dreamed that I sat at the loom, weaving a rug patterned with ears of corn in red, yellow, blue, and white. A mockingbird sat at my shoulder and told me to choose my destiny. Every time I would reach for the yellow corn the mockingbird would peck my hand and chirp “not for you! Not for you!” in a squawky parrot voice.

We spent the following day on horseback, herding sheep down the canyon to grassier climes. Winter set in early in the higher elevations, and in another month the sheep would stay pastured near Grandma Yazzie’s hogan. We’d gotten up before the sun, and I did my best to look pretty, even without much to work with. I knew my days with Samuel were numbered, and I wanted to make them count. I hadn’t examined my feelings for him beyond the pleasure of having him back. I knew my avoidance of any deep contemplation on the subject was self deception, but I just couldn’t make myself consider what came next. It’d been a long time since I’d spent any real time in the saddle, and I knew I’d be feeling it the next day. I’d never herded sheep before, and I knew Grandma Yazzie didn’t necessarily need my help so I hung back, waiting for direction, and mostly just enjoying the quiet companionship of Samuel and his grandmother.