Samuel wore clean Wranglers and a soft chambray shirt rolled to his elbows, exposing his strong forearms. He wore moccasins on his feet, and his short black hair was brushed back from his smooth forehead and prominent cheekbones. He carried a big jug and an even bigger wooden pail. He stopped in front of me, and his eyes swept over my bare toes and upswept hair appreciatively.
“We need music,” He said quietly. I could tell by the speculation in his eyes that he wasn’t certain how I would respond to his request.
“Alright,” I replied evenly.
“Debussy.”
“Debussy it is.”
“I’ll be out back.” He turned and walked around the house, not waiting to see if I would do as he said. Samuel had changed in many ways, but he was still a little bossy. I was glad. I walked in the house to find Debussy.
He was sitting in the back yard on the long bench just beneath the kitchen windows when I opened the screen and set the CD player up on the ledge above him. The light from the kitchen spilled out into the rapidly darkening evening and onto his broad shoulders and bowed head. He was cutting into something with a sharp knife, pulling the outer bark-like shell away, exposing a white fibrous root that looked slick and soapy. Leaning forward, he pulled a big silver bowl from the large wooden pail he’d been carrying. He put the white root into the bowl, picked up the enormous pewter jug he’d been carrying, and poured steamy water over the root. Samuel rubbed the root as if it was a bar of soap, and little bubbles began to form. As the bubbles changed into suds he kept rubbing until the silver bowl was full of thick white lather. Setting the bowl down, he pulled a hand towel and a fat white bath towel out of the wooden pail. He stood from the bench, put the hand towel over his shoulder and laid the bath towel over the bench. Then he turned to me and patted the bench.
“Lie down.”
I had been watching him in fascination, wondering what he was up to. I thought maybe he was going to soak my feet when I saw the big bowl of soapy stuff. I was curious, but I didn’t question him. I arranged my skirt and laid back on the bench. He reached up then and pushed play on the music, flipping through the tracks until he found what he was looking for. He turned the wooden pail over, placed it near my head, and sat on it, using it for a stool. Then, pulling on the towel underneath me, he slid me towards him until my head hung over the edge of the bench and settled in his lap. One by one he pulled the pins out of my hair. His strong fingers ran through my curls, smoothing them over his hands. I belatedly realized that the music that was playing was Debussy’s ‘Girl with the Flaxen Hair.’
“How very appropriate,” I said softly, the smile apparent in my voice.
“I like it,” he answered easily. “I can’t listen to it without thinking of you.”
“Do you listen to it often?” I asked a little breathlessly.
“Almost every day for ten years,” he replied evenly.
My heart stuttered and stopped, my breath shallow.
He continued quietly as if he hadn’t just confessed something wondrous. “You washed my hair. Now I’m going to wash yours. My Navajo grandmother taught me how to do this. She makes soap from the root of the yucca plant. The root from a young yucca makes the best soap, but the yucca in my Grandma Nettie’s yard was planted many years ago by my father. It’s not indigenous to this area, but when he returned home from his two years on the reservation, he wanted to bring something back with him. I dug up a piece of the root. You have to peel off the outer shell. Then you kind of grind up the white part inside - that is the soap. I wasn’t sure it would lather up, but it did.”
Gently holding my head in the palm of one hand, he reached down and picked up the bowl, setting it in his lap that was now covered with the hand towel. He lowered my head into the soapy water, holding it all the while. His other hand smoothed the suds through my hair, the heat seeping into my scalp, his hand sliding back and forth, pulling my hair through his fist, sinking his fingers deep down to the base of my skull and sliding them back up again. My eyes drifted closed, and my nerve endings tightened. I pulled my knees upward, sliding the soles of my sensitive feet along the rough wooden bench, my toes curling in response to the sweet agony of his hands in my hair.
Samuel continued, the music of his voice as soothing as the warm water. “My grandmother uses the yucca soap to wash the sheep’s wool after she shears it every spring. She says it works better than anything else. Your hair won’t smell like lavender or roses when I’m done - but it’ll be clean. My grandmother says it will give you new energy, too.”
“Your wise grandmother…I think about her every time I feed my chickens.”
“Why?” There was a smile in his voice.
“Well, you told me once how she had names for all her sheep, and she had so many! I named the chickens when I was a little girl, after my mother died. Somehow it made it easier to take care of them if I named them. I gave them names like Peter, Lucy, Edmund, and Susan after the characters in the Chronicles of Narnia. But your grandmother named her sheep names like ‘Bushy Rump’ and ‘Face like a Fish,’ and it always made me laugh when I thought about it.”
“Hmm. The names do sound a little more poetic in Navajo,” Samuel replied, chuckling softly. “Sadly, I think ‘Bushy Rump’ and ‘Face like a Fish’ have died, but she has a new one named ‘Face like a Rump’ in honor of both.”
I let out a long peel of laughter, and Samuel’s finger’s tightened in my hair.