A week went by, and I read morning and afternoon as he sat quietly and listened. One afternoon as I was reading, I became engrossed in the story, and forgot to read out loud.
Samuel’s brown, long-fingered hand suddenly lay over the page my attention had been captured by. I realized I had been reading silently for at least several seconds.
“Whoops!” I giggled. “Sorry about that.”
He reached over and took the book from my hands. “My turn,” he said without rancor. He found the place where my imagination had quelled my voice and began reading out loud in his deep baritone. I had always been the one to read, so I was taken aback at his sudden willingness to be the reader.
He spoke English perfectly, but his voice had a different cadence, the words delivered almost in a rhythm - and his tone stayed constant and unvaried, without the rise and fall that a storyteller adopts to convey emotion. I found myself listening to his voice, being pulled into it as I had, just moments before, been pulled into the story.
“Josie? Are you going to look up that word?”
I shook myself out of my reverie, not wanting to admit I hadn’t the faintest idea which word I needed to look up.
“Spelling?” I said evasively, to cover my ignorance.
“Where are you today?” He said. “Your mind is everywhere.”
“I was listening to your voice,” I flushed at my confession and inwardly cursed the constant blushing that gave me no privacy.
“No you weren’t. You haven’t heard anything I’ve read.” He countered mildly.
“I was listening to your voice,” I insisted again. He lowered his eyebrows in a scowl, not understanding me.
I tried to explain to him how his voice didn’t seem to rise and fall in the same patterns as mine did. When he didn’t respond, I thought perhaps I had made him angry. Samuel was very sensitive about being different, flaunting his Navajo heritage one moment, growing angry if someone took notice of it in the next.
He seemed thoughtful as he spoke. He chose his words carefully, as if he’d never considered them before. “The Navajo language is one of the most complex languages on Earth. From ancient times, it was only a spoken language, not a written language. If you don’t learn it as a child, it is almost impossible to master. Every syllable means something different. We use four tones when we speak - high, low, rising, and falling. When the voice rises or falls, in Navajo, it can mean a completely different word. For instance, the words ‘mouth’ and ‘medicine’ are pronounced the same, but they are said with different tones. The same word, but…not the same word at all. Do you understand? Maybe that is why, when a Navajo speaks English he says each syllable with the same intonation, because no intonation is stressed.” He thought about what he’d said for a moment. Then he asked me, almost as if knowing the answer would cause him pain, “Do I sound strange to you when I speak?”
My heart twisted a little at his vulnerability. I shook my head emphatically. “It’s very slight…I don’t think most people would notice it at all. I guess I have an ear for music, and the rhythm of your voice sounds like music to me, that’s all.”
I smiled up at him, and for the first time, he smiled back.
There was a big crowd gathered after school on the wide open field that separated the junior high from the high school. I ignored the excited shouts and the kids rushing to get in on the action. I couldn’t see who the crowd had gathered around, but the bus had not arrived, so I found a spot next to the bus stop to wait, setting my backpack down on the patchy grass and sitting on it so I wouldn’t get my rear-end cold and wet. The early snowfall had melted during a stretch of warmer days, and tufts of grass stuck up here and there between icy patches. It was cold enough to be unpleasant, the wind was always worst at the mouth of the canyon where the two schools sat. Utah weather is the most sporadic, unpredictable weather in the country. Folks complain about how you can plant your crops in late spring, only to have to replant twice more because it keeps freezing and killing everything off. We’ve had snow in June and none in December in the same year. It was November now, and Mother Nature had teased us with snow in October, only to have November be sunny and dry, with icy winds shaking the bare trees and mocking the winter sun.
I had no desire to go wading into the manic fray, and sat shivering, wishing the bus would come. Tara, on the other hand, had wiggled her tiny self into the middle of the action, witnessing the fist fight firsthand.
“Mr. Bracken is coming!” A frantic shout went up across the field. Mr. Bracken was the principal of the high school and was a pretty genial and likeable sort, but no one doubted that anyone found fighting would be expelled upon discovery. The kids scattered immediately, not wanting to be questioned or reprimanded, and descended upon the bus stop in droves. The bus lumbered to a stop and a hasty lined formed, kids shoving and jostling for position. I was not aggressive enough to maintain my place in the line, and fell back to wait until the writhing mass thinned.
Tara came running towards me, backpack bobbing, hands hanging onto her thick shoulder straps to keep it in place.
“Oh my gosh!” Tara gushed when she was still several feet away. “That indian kid was fighting three different boys. Joby Jenkins and a couple of his friends were calling him half-breed and he went crazy. Joby’s friends tried to hold his arms but he just let loose, swinging at all of them. One guy has a chipped tooth and Joby has a bloody nose. The Indian kid must have caught his hand on the kid’s tooth because his hand was all bloody!”