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‘“Jump on my shoulders.’ So she did that, and her hair reached down past his waist, and he started twirling, this way and that, so her hair was flung out from side to side. 

‘I always wondered what it was like to have long pretty hair,’ Henry says. Well we laughed. It was a funny sight, the way he did it.’”

Near the beginning of the story, Henry Junior frequently displays the carefree, comedic attitude of youthful innocence. Susy’s floor-length hair, previously hidden away in large buns, is revealed here to symbolize the innocence of youth. That Henry Junior decides to metaphorically wear her long hair in order to make Susy and Lyman laugh implies he is innocent at this moment in time. This scene lingers over the rest of the story as Henry Junior returns from Vietnam having had his innocence forcefully and violently taken from him. That he once laughed and joked around so easily is the heartbreaking reality of his loss of innocence.

“I went out to that car and I did a number on its underside. Whacked it up. Bent the tail pipe double. Ripped the muffler loose. By the time I was done with the car it looked worse than any typical Indian car that has been driven all its life on reservation roads…. It just about hurt me, I'll tell you that!”

At the middle point of the story, Lyman intentionally damages the red convertible, a symbol of his and Henry Junior’s youth and innocence. At this point in the story, Henry Junior’s innocence has been lost to the war. Lyman is desperate to believe that his brother, like the car, can be restored to his former self. The act of violently damaging the car parallels what has already been done to Henry Junior’s innocence during the war. However, the sad message here is that a person cannot be as easily repaired as a car. Henry Junior’s youth is already lost, and fixing the car will not bring it back.

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