by Johnny Rustywire

I can hear the music now,

The strings of a violin start slowly.
I hear the words...

"Guys come to you
with lines that aren't true
and you pass them by..."

I am standing in our old wooden house
I have just finished washing my face and hands from the wash basin.
My hair is combed.
I wear a simple shirt and clean blue levis.
A mirror hangs on the wall above the wash basin.
I think I look pretty good for a rez boy from this out of the way place.

KWYK radio out of Farmington is playing on the transistor radio...

"I don't wear a diamond ring...
I don't even know a song to sing...."

I am in our old house.
I close my eyes
and dance slowly around the wooden floor
and out past the screen door.
The old sheep dog laying by the door
watches me coolly
as I dance across the yard,
jump the fence,
and head through the juniper trees.

"Let me try,
I don't even wear a diamond ring...
la,la, la, loving you...."

She is back from the Mormon placement program,
a black long haired beauty
getting off the bus from Brigham City.
She lives down the road.
She is fair,
and I know she is from around here.

Mmmm, time to get to know this one
What is her name?

"Listen to me....
la la la la loving you....
come on and take my hand...."

We get to know each other from checking the mail.
She walks up to the trading post for her parents
and I just happen to be standing there each time she comes up.

We start to talk.
She is here just for the summer.
I am a plain rez boy,

I help her family with hauling hay and water.
Her mother invites me to eat with them.

"You will see the things I said are true....
the way I am saying them to you...
listen to me...
la..la..la..la..la..loving you."

Their place is simple.
They have no electricity or running water.

Some would call them poor,
but we are all that way.
I have nothing to offer but myself.

I know where she comes from.
I know I am not like the white boys she knows from Utah.
She is a Navajo Girl.
She gives me life
and brings some things I had never known
to this out of the way place.
Her roots are in this land,
Her home is a hogan and sagebrush,
and though she tries to forget it,
in time these things always return,
and she is mine...

"All I know these things are true....
I love you...
I never saw a girl I needed in this world...
you are the one for me,
let me hold you in my arms..."

We stand next to each other,
and with a knowing look, she comes close to me.
There is an aura about her,
and I am a part of it.
We stand there on a dusty plain,
in sand,
sagebrush moving softly in the breeze,
and dance to this song:

"la..la..la..la..la..loving you"

There is nothing like it.
She is my everything,
taking my breath and life and my heart forever.

The song ends.
I am driving down the highway.
My mirror shows my face a little older.

I go on down the road,
wishing her well where ever she may be.