M.I.A

Most of his friends called him Bubs but I'll always remember him as Rambo. We'd been friends through high school.   I think he wanted to be a hero - the army reservist who wore his camo everywhere.  One year he came up to my family’s annual camping trip at Pike Lake.  He got so hammered the first night that the rangers kicked him out but nobody wanted to drive him back to Milwaukee.  Instead we dropped him off in the woods with his sleeping bag.  Everyone took to calling him Rambo.  The next morning the rangers picked him up walking along the side of the road and told him to leave the park . . . again.  Instead we hid him behind the seat in Dave’s Fiero.  It seemed like a foolproof idea.  We made it past the ranger’s booth by the beach parking lot.  All we had to do was park the car then get out, keep an eye out and try to look inconspicuous.  The plan was working beautifully until Dave hit another car in the parking lot.

The year after I graduated from high school the two of us were in a car crash.  A bunch of us were smoking and drinking on a footbridge in the old neighborhood when the cops came.  We ran off in the other direction just as the rain came.  A friend of ours agreed to drive us both home.  Rambo was riding shotgun while I sat in the back seat.  One second we’re driving very fast and the next I'm trapped in a crushed car while Rambo’s trying to pry the car roof off of me with a jack handle as I lie semi conscious and bleeding in a pool of shattered glass.

By the following year I was belatedly working my way back to school.  We kept in touch for awhile but I eventually lost track of him. Rambo went missing in action for several years.  His tour of duty never came as far as I know and with no need to be heroic he drowned out his defeat in drugs and alcohol, DWIs and divorce.  He’d managed to find his own war after all.

A few months ago a mutual friend of ours called to tell me that he had a Rambo sighting.  Mark was driving east on Silver Spring when he saw someone who looked like our old friend so he turned back.  Sure enough it was Rambo. Panhandling.  Mark gave him five bucks.  They talked for a few minutes then parted ways, one off to work and the other? I honestly don't know.  Another soldier left behind in the drug war. . .