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The gopher community of the Veteran's Lodge had all gotten the word: on a particular cul-de-sac, there were 16 people about to be 17 people living, so if you had to dig holes in the ground on it, it was important for survival to be seen by the right people. Eight-year-old Gracie Trent on one side of the property line was not going to let her brother dig down and pull members of the community out, and on the other side, five-year-old R.E. Ludlow III, aka Lil' Robert, was going to get the understanding of certain things across to his head of household …
“But wait a minute, Grandpa, please just wait a minute,” Lil' Robert was saying to his custodial grandfather, Capt. R.E. Ludlow Sr. “Try to think about it like a gopher for a minute.”
Capt. Ludlow's impatience was nipped right there by his laughter.
“What?”
“Well, please think about it. You want the lawn to be right from our side. Ever think about what the lawn is like from their side?”
Capt. Ludlow thought about it, and then knew his whole project was finished before he even started. He was a 33-year-old military veteran and had mowed down plenty of human beings – but the military conditioned you to think about things a certain way in order to do that.
The problem for that mindset was that Robert Edward Ludlow III had come along, and had smashed all of that conditioning with his head full of blond hair, huge blue eyes, and intent little face close to tears.
“Just think about it. You're tall and so don't live close to the ground any more, but I'm little, and I hate the sound of the lawnmower. It scares me. So, think about how the gophers under the ground must feel every day – and they lived here before we got here, you know, like, like endangered people and stuff.”
“Indigenous, meaning native, instead of endangered, meaning rare and in danger of disappearing altogether,” the grandfather corrected, and then added as tears crawled up the back of his throat, “although in the light of the history of the nation since our family arrived from England, Lil' Robert, you are still right.”
“What?”
“You're right, Robert.”
Capt. Ludlow was not going to spoil his grandson's innocence with a fuller answer than he needed at that age, but he had answered as he had because he knew what the outcome would have been had he even at his grandson's age had even suggested to his father that animals and even people were not to be mowed down at will to serve their class of men … and then he had that flashback to when his uncles had done triple murder before his eyes to make the point, when he had just been a wee bit older than his grandson.
“Grandpa?”
Capt. Ludlow came out of his flashback to see Lil' Robert looking up at him with a worried face and holding onto his leg.
“Please don't fall over. You're really big and I don't know if I can hold up even your leg.”
“I'm not going to fall over,” Capt. Ludlow said. “I also am not going to kill the gophers, and I will be more thoughtful when I mow, Robert. Thank you for helping me think about the endangered, of all sizes.”
“Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!”
As Lil' Robert ran away rejoicing into a freedom of heart and mind his grandfather had not known after the age of five, Capt. Ludlow felt a flash of rage and grief for what had been taken from him by his uncles, and then a deep upwelling of gratitude to God that no one was going to desensitize his grandchildren to the gravity of taking life. The Ludlow family history was indeed going to be divided, right there.
Then, the captain figured out the connection: he was still on good terms with the last foster family of his eldest grandson Andrew. There had never been any prejudice between the households because the Bighearts had lived up to their name, and helped Andrew heal from much of the trauma of previous foster homes before his grandfather arrived to take custody.
That had formed the first time Robert Edward Ludlow Sr. had thought about the Native American *as people, just like him* – Mr. and Mrs. Bigheart's love and care for Andrew had smashed through all the racist programming necessary to excuse what had been done to the majority of their people.
Andrew at 10 years old still kept up with all things Native, and, obviously, Lil' Robert had been reading over his shoulder, or – because Lil' Robert was not reading on that level yet – at least having good conversations with his cousin.
Both boys had something else in common – both of them wanted to work with the rest of Creation, not against it.
“Grandpa, I have found a solution that doesn't require killing,” Andrew said as he sailed out of the house with a printout. “I mean, I know the lawn has to be kept together, but we can plant things that gophers don't really like to eat because they can eat all around us instead of on the lawn.”
“It won't hurt them, will it?” Lil' Robert said as he ran back.
“Oh, no, we don't have to do anything of that – see, Grandpa?”
“Let me put all this stuff away, *permanently,* and then we'll sit down and have a look at taking our front yard at least off the menu.”
“Permanently?” Lil' Robert said to Andrew as their grandfather put his equipment away.
“Permanent means for good,” Andrew said, “so permanently means for good ongoing. He's not going to kill the gophers.”
“We did it! Yaaaaaay!” Lil' Robert said.
Capt. Ludlow sat down with his eldest and youngest grandson and went with them to a place he had not been allowed to go for very nearly 53 years of his nearly 58 years of life: a place in which no one even considered killing as a solution to anything. Afterward, the 33-year military veteran who had seen a triple murder at just five years old went into his bedroom, got down on his knees, and wept for joy … healing, and peace, became just that much more of a reality.
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