We drank our hot beverages and I learned some of Lawrence’s story: After the army, he went back to Ganado, on the “Big Rez,” for lack of other great ideas. He attended Diné College, the Navajo community college up in Tsaile, got his associate’s degree, then moved on to Northern Arizona University for his bachelor’s. Computers were not a happening thing yet, so he studied electrical engineering. “I figured someday we’d get electricity on the rez,” he said drily, “and such skills might be needed.”
He met a girl at NAU, got married a couple of years later, and had three kids.
“My oldest daughter, she’s thirty. We had another daughter and a son, a few years apart. Out of the house now, but they kept me busy for twenty years.”
“Remind me, what’s your son’s name again?” Earnest asked, baiting him.
Lawrence sighed. “Earnest,” he told me reluctantly.
“With an ‘A’ in it?” Earnest asked.
Lawrence ignored him and showed me a family portrait that, from the age of the kids, had to be a decade or more out of date. They were posed in front of a smudged backdrop in a photographer’s studio, dressed up for the shot. His wife was a plain-faced woman, uncomfortable in front of the camera’s merciless eye, but the daughters had vivacious smiles and young Earnest struck me as a happy-looking knucklehead.
Earnest asked about reservation life. Lawrence said it was coming along.
“It’s not as poor as when I was a kid, not even as bad as when you were out last time, Earn. We got some of the mineral rights worked out in the last few years, collected some major back-due royalties. Lined the pockets of the politicians, even had some left over to build some new housing and water infrastructure. It says something that a guy like me can make a living out there now. There’s broadband in Window Rock!” He shrugged and his enthusiasm deflated. “Of course, along with came a heapin helpin of modern America’s problems.”
I suspected that the men wanted time together alone, and there were chores waiting, so after a few minutes I shook Lawrence’s hand and excused myself.
I was pleased to meet Lawrence and touched by their jive talking. But the encounter made me realize how little I knew Earnest. I didn’t know that he’d ever been out west or that he had friends there, including one to whom Earnest was so important that he’d name his son after him.
Later I saw the two men walking, Earnest pointing out features of the farm and landscape, Lawrence nodding, Bob tagging along behind. Neither of the men was smiling anymore; in fact, though I couldn’t see that well from my distance, Lawrence seemed downcast, almost in tears. Earnest had draped one of Brassard’s checked wool jackets over Lawrence’s nylon-clad shoulders. When I came out of the barn again an hour later, Lawrence’s car was gone.
Later, I went looking for Earnest and found him in the shed that he used as the farm’s repair shop. Coming in through the adjoining room, I could tell from the fluttering light and smell of hot steel that he was welding. I backed in, found an extra face shield, and put it on before I turned to face him. The faceplate was so dark that I could barely make out Earnest’s form hovering above the brilliant burn star. He gave me a signal to let me know he’d seen me.
At last he finished, snuffed the torch, and flipped up his visor. I did the same.
“How about taking a break? I’m making some sandwiches.”
He gave me a thumbs-up and started putting away his equipment.
We went to my apartment, where Earnest sat on a stool at the counter, shedding cold from his coveralls and giving off the smell of burnt gases and molten metal.
“What are you making in there? Or fixing?” I didn’t recognize the long, elaborate but decrepit machine he’d been working on.
“Just adapting an old conveyor that Jim doesn’t use anymore.”
“Adapting for what?”
He shook his head. “It’s a hops-related secret. On a need-to-know basis. Your brother got me going on it.”
Impatient, I slapped a plate down in front of him. “Lots of secrets. You haven’t caught me up on Larry Hoskie’s visit. Every time I learn something new about you, it just opens up a bunch of new mysteries.”
He looked offended. “Not so. My life is an open book.”
“Maybe so, but I can’t read it. Greek? Sanskrit?”
Ordinarily, Earnest would have at least smiled or offered a rejoinder, but now he seemed somber. I put two bologna-and-lettuce sandwiches on his plate, then sat at the counter with my own.
“Larry is a good guy,” he explained. “I love the man. He’s got a problem, wanted to talk with me about it in person. Came two hundred miles each way from Boston—that’s a sign of how serious it is.”
I didn’t want to offend by asking what that problem might be. “How did you two get so close?” I asked instead.
“If you’re thinking about battlefield heroics again, you’re wrong. I didn’t meet him till we were on base, back here.”
“Where you were an MP …”
“Right. And he ran the PX. PX is basically the store where the enlisted men can buy consumer crap—shaving cream, soda pop, cigarettes, stuff like that. He did the same in Vietnam. Never fought.”
“But somewhere in there, you earned his affection or loyalty to the extent that he named his son after you.”
My probing irritated him. He glanced impatiently around the kitchen, stalling. “You have any orange juice or something? Welding gives a man a powerful thirst.”
I brought out the carton and a glass and put them in front of him. I sat again and waited him out.
He poured, drained the glass in one long swallow, then frowned speculatively at me. “You white girls are pretty smart. Perceptive.”
“We like to think so, yes.”
“So I told you, I mainly broke up fights and hauled guys to the brig or to their superior officers, or put them back to bed or
