Every day, I joined Lynn and Robin for milking and cleanup, then did manure management, scraping the aisles with the skid-steer, pushing poop soup into the grate that pumped it to the lagoon. I shoveled dirty bedding sawdust out of the stalls and replaced it, moved hay and corn silage to the feeding alley. Between daily chores, I plowed snow off the driveway and farmyard and raked it off the eaves of the house and chicken coop apartments, shadowed the vet on her occasional visits, kept track of supplies and drove to town on shopping runs—there was plenty to keep me occupied.
By the second week of December, Earnest still hadn’t returned from his southern swing, and I started to worry about him. I left messages on his cell answering service but didn’t get a call in return. I imagined run-ins with rednecks who objected to his skin color or police who weren’t as accommodating as Officer McGillicuddy. But then one day, his big stake-side rolled into the farmyard, and there he was, climbing out of the truck, that wonderful barrel-bear-shaped form, stretching and rolling his neck to work out the kinks, looking around to check on things.
“Everything okay here?” he asked when I went out to greet him.
“It is now,” I told him. “We were getting worried! I left half a dozen messages. Why didn’t you call?”
He fished in his jacket pocket and brought out his cell phone. It was broken nearly in half, shedding bits of screen and electronic guts. “Fell out of my pocket and I dropped a chunk of log on it, ka-smack. I kept it for a souvenir.”
I took his elbow and we headed for the house.
“Jim’s good?”
“Jim’s okay. Still gets pretty blue, but he’s surviving. He’s inside.”
“What about Will?”
“Seems fine.” In fact, since our dinner together I hadn’t seen that much of him. He had started another big project and usually came home too late to help with afternoon milking or even to join Brassard and me for dinner. Also, I suspected he’d stayed more embarrassed than necessary about the brucellosis video.
“And your brother? He’s good?”
“Erik’s not around that much, but he seems to be doing well.”
“Women,” Earnest stated.
“How’d you guess?”
We went into the mudroom, stomped off, hung up our jackets. Through the doorway, I saw Jim Brassard standing up from the kitchen table, smiling at the return of his friend.
“What’re you two chucklin about?” he asked as he shook Earnest’s hand.
“Erik,” I told him. “And women.”
“Well, maybe he’ll bring somebody home,” Brassard said. “We can always use the extra help.”
Chapter 43
A couple of weeks later, I was puzzled to see Earnest standing at the end of the driveway, inexplicably sending semaphore signals with his arms. As I headed toward him, I spotted a white car at the top of the hill, descending at a rate that suggested uncertainty. It sped up when Earnest stepped into the road and waved his arms more vehemently.
“Old friend,” he said. “Haven’t see him in quite a while. He’s not good with directions.”
The car pulled in and parked, and a man about Earnest’s age climbed out. From his copper skin and the planes of his face, I could see that he was an Indian, but he was Earnest’s physical opposite: tall, slim, narrow shoulders—the shape of a man used to an ergonomic office chair. He wore a blue nylon windbreaker insufficient for the weather.
The two men hugged and then turned to me.
“This my friend Larry Hoskie,” Earnest said, beaming.
“Lawrence,” corrected Lawrence. Bob the dog moseyed out to nose his crotch, and Lawrence scrubbed him around the ears.
“Hi, I’m Ann,” I said.
“Ann! The Ann? I’ve heard a lot about you!” We shook hands.
“Yes, Earnest has told me about you, too,” I lied. Earnest had never mentioned him, hadn’t even told us he’d be having a visitor.
“Larry is one of these high-tech nutcases,” Earnest explained. “Computer-programmer type.”
“Lawrence,” Lawrence said.
“See what I mean?” Earnest said.
“So,” I said, “you’re an Oneida, too?”
“Fuck no,” Lawrence said. “I’m Diné. Navajo. We were both in the army but didn’t cross paths over in ’Nam. We had the misfortune to serve on the same base back here in the States.”
“I was in mess and I saw this guy, the only one who had the same … complexion as me. But it turns out he’s Navajo.” Earnest said the tribal name with a disappointed and disapproving inflection. “You know what I mean?”
“Asshole,” Lawrence said to me. “You know what I mean?”
They were both grinning broadly, and I recognized this kind of reconnection. With deep friendships, years apart make no difference. You start up right where you left off. There may be plenty of new detail to relate—the life you’ve lived since you saw each other last—but the fundamentals remain unchanged.
Earnest swatted him on the rear to head him toward the house, and we went in to sit at the kitchen table. Earnest and I drank coffee; Lawrence wanted only tea. “I’m the high-strung type,” he explained. “That stuff makes me want to jump out of my skin.”
They spent some time catching up. Lawrence said he had come within two hundred miles of Earnest only because his company had secured a contract with a Boston firm and he had flown out to meet their people. He liked the gig because he could still live on the rez and do his work entirely via the internet.
“Navajos, they’ve got it knocked,” Earnest told me resentfully. “Reservation the size of New England. We ended up with a postage stamp in the middle of Wisconsin. And another token patch in New York.”
“I’m guilt-tripped, okay, Earn?”
“Earnest,” Earnest said. “With an ‘A’ in it.”
“I’ll try to
