I’d never seen anything like that. Any of it. I fought fatigue and overwhelm. Just wanted to close my eyes. But I had to take it all in. Because of Dad. And watch out. For Dad.
Our hotel crouched in the middle of the mattress shennanigans. Yellow façade. Tile-floored lobby with very high ceilings, comfy seating, all of it occupied by a motley crew of backpackers from everywhere, as in the accents ran Scottish to German to New York to local. Behind them, the hotel restaurant was setting up for lunch.
Juan checked us in. Then with a see-you-later, he vanished into the street.
Dad set his hands on his hips and his mouth thin-set and stared after the guy. Watched him fade into the crowd on the walk. Maybe willing him to come back. Understanding that he wouldn’t. At least, that was what I got from the exchange. I figured we were on our own.
Until we got to our room on the third floor—oh my God, the climbing. Two lousy flights of stairs. My lungs heaved and my heart did this staccato thing. The altitude.
I gulped air to calm it down and stepped on an envelope that had been slid under the door.
Before I had a chance to remove my foot, Dad had already bent to pick it up. No writing on the outside. No marks to indicate who had done the sliding.
A raucous laugh pierced the air. I thought
what
?—then realized the room had a huge window overlooking the lobby and that housekeeping had left it open. Dad remedied that in three long motions. One long step. A reach with each hand. It seemed like too much for him to be able to do in his condition. Hurculean, in fact.
“I just want some privacy,” he said.
“Are you okay?”
He rolled his eyes at me. Having a little fun. Only the fun didn’t extend to any other part of him. He looked like he might implode, actually.
The room had two beds with gray and scarlet wool blankets, a space heater, and a TV. I picked the bed farthest from the window and dropped my stuff at its foot while Dad opened the envelope.
The note inside said only
Meet you there
.
“Where’s there?” I asked.
“Aguas Caliente,” he said.
He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and put it down on the night table. Then he sat down on his bed. He didn’t move for a minute. In fact, he laid down. Which meant he wouldn’t be getting back up for a few hours. I wanted to ask him if he needed anything, but his breathing had slowed and the nap had already begun.
With the window closed, stuffiness started to set in. I didn’t feel right opening it again, though. And I didn’t want to stay in here and try to figure out the hotel WiFi. Or sit there helpless to do anything for him. Because I was in fact helpless. And I refused to fucking cry again.
I took the Visa out of Dad’s wallet and the room key and made my way down to the restaurant, which had a handful of tables with windows that looked out on the street and a dark fireplace. Bossa nova on the sound system. Waiters clustered behind the bar. I was the first, and at the moment, only customer.
I ordered fizzy water—agua con gas, I was informed—and a dish with beef and onions and chiles and tomatoes and French fries and rice. I could hardly taste it. I ordered a guide book, too, which one of the waiters borrowed from the front desk. I couldn’t concentrate enough to read.
Dad came downstairs well before I expected him. He sat down at the table. Or used the chair and table to hold himself upright. He ordered a cup of coca tea.
“No lunch?” I asked.
“No time. The taxi I called will be here in ten minutes. You finish, though.”
I forced down the rest of my food.
Dad had brought his and my backpacks with him. He drank fast, paid the bill, and stepped outside. Even if Dad pretended to be casually leaning against the wall and we both knew better.
We loaded backpacks in the taxi’s trunk. The driver bottomed out the car and almost ran over a wild dog with bad street crossing skills on the way out of Cusco.
The drive took two and a half hours. Down in altitude, but we had to go up to get down. Winding, climbing roads. Alternating drizzle and sunshine. Landslides, with fallen rocks neatly swept onto one half of the road and boulders left where they fell. Not picked up. Not carted away. Not like at home.
The valley opened up around us. Enormous terraces that had been built by the Incas stretched up mountainsides. Small villages huddled in the distance. At overlooks, a group of women with long braids sat on the gravel, selling weavings and jewelry. We didn’t stop to sample their wares.
We crossed the river on a temporary bridge that had been built to replace the one the water had washed away. It felt solid enough under the tires, but slick enough to freak me out. And the swollen water raced and roiled beneath us. I’d never seen rapids like that. Or heard them. The sound made me feel like I could come out of my skin.
The taxi dropped us off at the train station, near the ticket booth. Behind us, the river roared. Shops sold rain ponchos and corn and coffee.
Dad picked up tickets that someone had already bought and paid for. He steered us down the sidewalk, toward the gate to the train.
I swung my backpack over my shoulder and leaned close. “You want to tell me about Juan? He seemed scared.”
“He has a reason to be.”
Shootings. People missing. He sure did have a damned good reason. “Some people would say that bringing your teenager into this mess is dumb and dangerous.”
“Are you calling me dumb?”
“No.”
“Are you complaining?”
“No. I don’t know.”
He handed me my ticket. “I didn’t have anyone to leave you with.”
“I could’ve stayed with Amber.”
“Not with her mother sick.”
“So you’re saying I’d be a burden? Or that they couldn’t keep me for long? Because they would totally never say that.” They might think it, though. And it would probably be true. And then my only choice would be foster care, where I would rot because no healthy family would ever take me in. Hell, maybe I’d end up in one of those conspiracy theory internment camps.
He sighed. “I didn’t want to leave you.”
“Because if you did, I’d have never seen you again,” I said.
“It’s selfish. I know.”
“It’s human.”
He shifted the weight of his pack on his shoulders. Winced.
“Hand it over.” I reached out.
He made a face, but he gave it to me. “Anyway, I wanted you to see all this.”
“Broadening my education?”
“Ha ha. When else are you gonna have the opportunity to come here, Leah?”
There was something he wasn’t telling me. We both knew it. I let it go for now, mostly because we’d reached the gate and the train was boarding and if we didn’t move our butts, we were going to be left behind.
I threw the packs onto a luggage rack inside the door and got a load of the train car. Great big windows not only where I expected them, but also in the roof. Seats in groups of four, two on each side with tables in between. Which meant some people would be facing forward for the ride and some would be facing backward.
Like us, apparently. I settled in the seat beside Dad. There was nobody across the table from us. The doors closed. The brakes hissed and the car began to move. Canned announcements floated from speakers, first in Spanish, then English.
We left the town behind. Waiters dressed in smart outfits took drink orders and brought banana chips and chocolate. People made friends with their seatmates. Played cards.
Dad nudged my shoulder and pointed. Through the windows in the roof at the peaks of the Andes, wisps of clouds circling them like crowns. And through the side windows, at the river rapids surging over boulders and the bejeweled green of the rainforest. All of it so beautiful. I wished I could feel the beauty more.
The last of the blue faded from the sky. We arrived at Machu Picchu Station in the dark. The sound of the river and a crush of people welcomed us. The town of Aguas Caliente was built on a hill. We wove our way up, around market stalls and boticas, and found the hotel. Someone had made us a reservation for a room on the second floor. It was small and white, with two double beds. Even inside, the air felt damp and thick.
No notes on the floor.
We ate dinner at a restaurant at the bottom of the hill, on the other side of the train tracks. Dad ordered a kind of hot toddy made with Pisco and black tea and local honey and lemon zest. He let me have one, too. First time for everything.
A man grabbed a chair from an empty table and pulled it up to ours. Juan. In a fresh pair of jeans, hiking boots, and the same red thermal jacket. He ran a hand through his thick hair. He didn’t smile.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Taking a roundabout way to meet you.”
“All this mystery,” Dad said.
Juan met his gaze. “I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t necessary.”
“No, I guess you wouldn’t.”
I didn’t understand. I didn’t like it. I wouldn’t stand it. “What’s going on?”
“There’s people after a friend of your father’s and mine.”
“The shaman,” I said.
“Yes. The people are still looking for him.” He looked at my father. “You know what happened? With the guns?”
Dad nodded.
Our waiter stopped by. Juan ordered a bottle of Inka Kola. He waited until the waiter got well out of earshot before he continued in a lowered voice.
“Our friend is organizing resistance.”
I glanced from him to Dad and back again. “Against the mining company?”
The corner of Juan’s mouth quirked up. “What makes you think it’s a company?”
“I read some stuff.” Maybe the wrong stuff.
“The mining is illegal. It’s not a company. It’s a type of—how you say—mafia. The government has laws against this, but it happens anyway. The miners use industrial techniques. Machines. They pollute the water. Destroy the land. We are fighting for the land. And for what grows on the land. Do you know what that is?”
I shook my head.
Juan clasped his hands. “What if I told you there could be a cure in the rainforest that could help people like your father?”
I blinked at him. Remembered a movie in Dad’s collection. Something about finding a cure for cancer in the jungle.
“We are hiking tomorrow,” he said. “You will see. Six o’clock, yes?”
The waiter arrived with the bottle of Kola. Juan laid some coins on the table and took the bottle with him. He crossed the tracks and climbed the steps to the opposite sidewalk, weaving among the members of a band busy unpacking instruments. How anybody could play music at a time like this was completely beyond me. But then, maybe those people had normal lives.
Dad drained the last of his drink. He kept his eyes on the musicians.
I watched him for a minute. Wondered what he was thinking. “Is that guy for real?”
“Never been anything but.”
“And your shaman friend?”
“If your mother and I had asked anyone to be your godparents, it would’ve been him and his wife.”
They’d had another life. With friends and experiences. Before I came along. Before everything got so screwed up. This felt worse than Juan at the airport. Like I was a stranger in my own family.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. Which made me feel like I could scream. Not that he noticed. He just pointed to the band, who struck up some folk tune about someone named Pachamama.
“The earth mother,” Dad said.
That startled me so much I forgot to yell. “So they’re, like, hippies?”
That earned a laugh. He ruffled my hair.
He slept like the dead. I thought those exact words. I spent half the night mourning that I’d thought them, and the other half curled up in the fetal position like a candidate for a nervous breakdown.
Six in the morning arrived along with a not-so-Continental breakfast and a chill in the air. We met Juan in the dark on the street. I thought we’d be heading out immediately, but instead we went straight to a tiny corner botica whose walls were lined with toys and candy. A twenty-something girl in a pink sweater yawned behind the counter.
Juan told her how bad Dad felt. Described his symptoms. She sold us painkillers that would have required a doctor visit and a prescription back home. Dad bought a bottle of water, too, and swallowed his first dose as we walked down the street, past the soccer pitch and under the gray watchful eye of a shrouded mountain.
The restaurants in the main plaza were full of tourists trying to be the first to visit Machu Picchu. The smell of eggs and bread and coffee carried to me. My stomach had a ton to say about that. Juan steered us toward a particular place, one with tables out on the walk. Gestured for us to sit at an already occupied table. As in occupied by an old man with thick, black hair in long-sleeved red flannel over a black t-shirt, jeans, and sandals.
Dad hugged the guy the way he’d hugged Juan at the airport, only tighter.
“It’s okay.” The old man patted my father’s back.