Rambler's Return

Christmas Eve should have been a happy day.

Our house was decorated. Work was done at the small-town church where my wife, Ricki, and I are pastors. Our kids and their families were coming over the next morning. And best of all, Blake, my grandson, was coming with them.

Blake had just finished basic training in the Navy. We hadn’t found out till the last minute whether he’d be home for the holidays. It would be such a relief to see him.

Ricki and I were so shook up when he announced before he’d even graduated high school he planned to enlist. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. I served in the Navy during Vietnam, and Blake spent most of his growing up years asking me every which way about my aircraft carrier.

All day I wandered around the house feeling low. I couldn’t stop thinking how short Blake’s visit would be, how soon he’d be getting back on that
plane. When would we see him again? He’d enrolled to train as a medical corpsman. After that he could be posted anywhere and experience the horrors of war I’d seen in Vietnam.

I stared out the windows at our big, winter-brown lawn. We have 20 acres out here, about 40 miles from Little Rock. It was cold outside. My eyes went to the spot where I’d built a dog pen awhile back. Maybe that’s why I was so sad.

I’d built that pen for hunting dogs I’ve had over the years—and for one dog in particular, a redbone coonhound named Rambler. That was Blake’s coonhound, the one he’d gotten when he turned 15, when we decided he was grown up enough to join me out in the woods.

Rambler was a real escape artist. The pen didn’t hold him. Stakes couldn’t. He just hated being cooped up. He’d break free and trot right over to the house. Wanted to be with us.

Blake had boarded him with someone he knew in Little Rock during basic training. Not long after, Rambler had escaped. This time, though, he disappeared. He’d been gone a couple months. No trace. We’d done everything we could to find him.

I got real quiet thinking about Rambler. Those had been special times, those nights Blake and I spent hunting. The coons were the least part of it.

The point was being together, talking, tramping through the woods under a blanket of stars. We’d talk about any old thing, school, sports, church, the Navy. And, of course, girls. Blake was a teenager.

“How’d you and Nana meet?” he’d ask. “No, I mean how’d you ask her out? Weren’t you nervous?”

Now Rambler was gone. Those hunting trips were over. Blake was gone too. What would he be like tomorrow morning? I knew he’d be happy to see me and tell me all about basic training. But somehow it’d be different.