When the Smoke Clears

I had to go away for a couple of days. When a friend calls for help, I will try to help. When one of a select few calls, I will hop on the next plane I can get even if it is only to move a chair. (To be honest, it also helps that another great friend, knowing the importance of the situation, gave me the skymiles to do it cheaply.)

One of my best friends, Butterbar, leaves for Iraq very shortly, and by that I mean measured in hours. He will be gone for a while most likely. He had a couple of favors to ask, including some help moving furniture into storage. The man has a party history and has a dozens of friends wherever he goes and yet he likes me and gave me a call. A deployment is a sobering experience, no matter how sure you are things are going to be fine.

“I was just hoping you could hang on to some stuff for me,” he asked on the phone a few days before.

“No problem, whatever you can’t get into storage, and it’ll all be back just before you get back.”

“Yeah well, my brother has most of my guns, but I have a few here I always keep with me. And I’d really appreciate it if you’d watch after my truck.”

“What about your parents.”

“I’d rather you’d watch after my truck.”

Understood.

A man’s guns and his truck (which, of course, had a bunch of country music CDs now that we have turned him from a Pennsylvania/New York boy into a Southern good ole boy). If he had a dog, we’d probably have a country song.

So after an evening of dinner, a bit of talking and gun cleaning… he wanted to be sure I could disassemble… we were off to our separate sleeping quarters only to awake again in a few short hours. He had PT, but I was up anyway.

We got in our goodbyes, our promises, our friendship for each other. This goodbye was easier than the good Major even though the Major was not headed to a war zone, probably because I already have a good idea how strong the bond between Butterbar and myself is,.

Then I hopped into his beast of a truck and headed out, hoping I passed on all my necessary statements. I didn’t of course, but recent events, especially the little medical scare made me realize a few things on those long, sleepless nights. If the diagnosis were the worst, I’d only have a few months and there are many things I would want to be sure I said. Then I saw that even without the medical problems, next week could be my last week, why wait anyway? I’m all too familiar with the finality of every moment with my friends.

For the time being, I am more likely to unhide a few things to a few people.

I’ll be thinking about him every day, the heat and dust he is in, the unbelievable gall of the reporters unfamiliar with anything going on in their beat as I try to piece the reality together from their stories like the Soviets had to do when reading Pravda. A huge black F-150 is now safely in my drive, to be uncovered every week or two for a trip into town and back over the next year or more, my friend off at war. The honor is all mine.

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