I wanted to know every story on our trek to Machu Picchu. The American in his fifties had taken up hiking in honor of a late friend, and Peru was his first time overseas. We sprinted the Inca steps together, chomping coca leaves. There were the Star Wars prop makers I fawned over and our guide who called the orchids little dancers. Travis was elusive, taciturn. He and I finally sat down on stepped ruins in a valley, but a rainbow interrupted our conversation.
We arrived in Machu Picchu at the final sunrise exhausted and exhilarated. There’s really nothing to say but llamas. Beauty. Green.
On the other side, we descended at midday into tourists arriving by train or bus and in that swarm at the ticket stand I found Travis one last time. I realized he was the first U.S. soldier I had knowingly met in my travels. I asked if Iraq changed him.
“Oh yeah, for sure. I don’t know what people think about war and all, but fifty percent is just humanitarian, building infrastructure, building schools, so they can walk on their own feet after we leave. I think I gained a lot more empathy than I had prior. In one particular village, all the local kids would come around and ask for candy, you know, just assuming we had loads of that. And there was one little girl in particular that always came by my vehicle. She wasn’t too picky or anything about it. She always just stared. And a couple months into our deployment, you know we’re back in that town, and the kids are following as usual. I remember one of my buddies bought a bunch of candy bars and he started passing them out to the kids and I remember that we finished and we were walking back to the truck and as I’m leaving I feel this tug on the back of my jacket, so I turn around, and it’s that little girl. It’s the one that I gave the candy bar. She actually split it in half, and she was handing it to me you know so …” He cut off, overcome with emotion, could barely finish. “So that was pretty special.” And we just stood there crying.
