It’s so easy to let friends slip away.  Life happens.  But it’s never to late to begin again.

 

The Reunion

By

Jack Booth

 

 

      I stood with my wife inside the airport’s baggage claim area.  More than thirty years had passed since Julian and I served together with the Marine detachment aboard the USS Huntley.  I shipped out first, and our promises to keep in touch were soon lost to our youth.  How would I ever recognize him? 

      I constructed a cardboard sign with his name written in huge block letters and searched for the slightest hint of familiarity among weary travelers as they retrieved their luggage from the circling conveyor belt.  When new passengers arrived, I held up the sign and scrutinized their faces.  Some people returned my inquisitive smile, but most did not. 

      I waited…no Julian.  I consulted the arrival monitor and checked it against my handwritten flight number.  It confirmed Julian’s airplane had landed nearly twenty minutes ago.  Where could he be?  Had this been a cruel joke?  My shoulders slumped. 

      The crowds soon slowed to a few stragglers, and my wife slipped her arm around my waist.  She leaned in toward my ear.  “Don’t worry,” she whispered, “He’ll be here.”

      I thought back to the phone call I received a few weeks beforehand.  The voice on the other end asked, “Is this Jack Booth?” and before I could answer, “Were you in the Marines?” 

      “Julian?”  I had instantly recognized his soft Georgian drawl.  We talked for hours, and he quickly arranged a trip to visit. 

      I spotted Julian’s unmistakable elongated face, which still resembled the uninspired look of a sleeping basset hound.  “There he is,” I said. 

      Years of overindulgence and a sedimentary lifestyle had eroded the hard trim body the Marines had given him, but he looked basically the same as I remembered.  He walked towards us in no particular hurry while he talked into a cell phone held tightly between his cheek and shoulder; his busy hands flipped through a tattered notebook.  I laughed at his comical appearance.  I recalled his teenage rebellion against being a squared-away Marine, and even now, with wrinkled clothing and shirttail hanging out, Julian still looked like an unmade bed.

      His eyes twinkled with recognition when I stepped out in front of him, and two old men fell into each other’s arms as easily as blood brothers separated at birth.  His smell of Old Spice and talcum powder took me back to the cramped quarters we shared on the old submarine tender where we once lived and worked. 

      I drove us to a tavern where I slid an old dusty scrapbook across a table.  A frantic search ensued until Julian found his reading glasses parked atop his short-cropped gray hair.  His damp eyes focused on a faded photo that captured two young men dressed in green fatigues.  We were best friends then and never imagined life apart.  The snapshots and mementos brought mixed emotions as we reminisced throughout the day.  Thirty lost years melted away, and at that moment I loved him.  Our friendship rekindled and promises renewed, we were again best friends.