I had to reschedule my flight. What was originally a 9:00 a.m. departure turned out to be a 7:30 p.m. departure. With many hours to spend in the airport, I hunkered down and completed the reading of a biography of Dickens.

I don’t remember precisely the author that hooked me initially, but it happened when I was raging with hormones in ninth grade or so, thought about little else but girls, Army culture, fantasies of nature-roving, and writers that captured me. One of those writers was Charles Dickens, especially his Great Expectations and David Copperfield.

I cannot explain adequately how much Great Expectations and David Copperfield meant to me–then and now. I read them first as a boy, and discovered in them an Englishman who delighted in the English tongue. He swam waves of language. He crested with repetitive clauses; his names manifested character–Pumblechook, Magwitch, Pip, Drood, Pickwick, Oliver Twist, Fagin, Uriah Heep, Scrooge, et al, and his heart and mind spilled over the lip of a pint of Newcastle.

I remember reading Philip Caputo and Tim O’Brien novels about Vietnam and then reading Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens right after. I devoured them all. Caputo and O’Brien wrote from experiences of serving in Vietnam. I remember listening to Jim Morrison’s haunting lyrics in “The End” and “Riders On the Storm” and other classic tunes, and reading Caputo and O’Brien’s memoirs and novels, and trying to convince myself I’d been in the SE Asian trenches, and smelled the flesh from napalm-burning bodies and the sound of Huey blades cutting the humidity. But my own times in uniform serving in hostile lands were still ahead for me, but they came. And Caputo and O’Brien were often proved correct. But it was Dickens and Hardy, different worldviews notwithstanding, whose literary fingers clutched me. Well, they didn’t have to clutch; I took to them as ships to Kent and Dover, as walks through Hardy’s Dorset.

But I had settled down in a chair in the terminal, reading another Dickens bio. I’d read so much and was so tired, that I got up from my chair, removed my reading glasses, rubbed my eyes, and walked towards the coffee kiosk. A man in his 50s, with a barrel chest, Columbia shirt, and grizzled beard, came up to me. He was smiling.

“Thanks for your service, Chap.”

“Thank you, sir. You prior service?” (I don’t have to explain it to fellow Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, or Marines. But we can spot one another from a click away.)

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I repaired turrets on a reconnaissance vehicle we don’t even use anymore. But I’d do it all over again. I was at Bragg my whole time, except when I was stationed in Germany.”

“That’s great, brother. How was Europe?”

“Loved it, Chap. Traveled everywhere. Brought my mom and sisters over from North Carolina. Took them to Rome, Venice, Switzerland, London, Paris, Austria, and even walked much of Spain and Morocco. It was amazing, Chap. We still talk about it,” he said.

“Understood, brother. It’s a beautiful continent to travel. Nothing teaches like travel.”

“Exactly!” he said.

“Where you headed?”

“To the Midwest to check on some Soldiers,” I answered.

“I appreciate you, Chap!”

“Thanks, brother; likewise.”

He shook my hand, stepped back a pace, then saluted and nodded at me. We’d become buddies. And he walked away.

In my imagination, I’d been in Dickens’ England in the 1800s in my mind for hours, and had been contemplating a large black coffee that I smelled brewing in the terminal’s coffee kiosk, but this brother had brought me back ’round to service, to my years abroad, to travel, to the importance of family, and the unparalleled education of travel, and I was a different person suddenly. I was lost in thought, trying to explain to myself how I could be with Dickens on foggy ships in Kent, and hear the clanking cryptic foreshadowings of Magwitch in the graveyard, and also be a chaplain, one thirsty for black coffee in Terminal C, and talking to a brother who knew more about turrets than I’d ever know.

Suddenly he reappeared. He stretched out his hand with a brown flat paper bag with a clear plastic front.

“Every chaplain needs a sugar cookie. Enjoy, Chap!” he said, and again he saluted. We shook hands and embraced.

All in all, it had lasted less than five minutes probably. But he changed my whole trip.

Wherever you are today, SGT Espinoza; I appreciate you. I don’t care for sugar cookies, and so I won’t tell you that I didn’t give it away to a young girl in a pink dress whose mother looked exhausted, but our time in the airport was nonetheless sweet for me, due in no small measure to your service, kindness, and conversation. Salute.