Don't Look Back Read Online Free PDF

flesh over wet clothes, releasing suds to the current. A sinewy older man wearing nothing but his chones stood thigh-deep, eyeing the water and readying a sharpened car antenna as a harpoon. He paused to offer a single-toothed smile. Sue gasped with delight and fumbled for her waterproof camera. She had shapeless arms, bones loose in wattles of flesh, and a horseshoe of perspiration darkened the back of her shirt. It took steel for a woman of her shape and age to ride the river, and yet she manned her paddle without complaint.
    “These people here are Zapotecas,” Neto said, waving. “He is spearing chacales —freshwater … um, like the lobster?”
    “Crayfish,” Lulu said.
    They paddled over, and Neto negotiated with the man, trading pesos for a basket brimming with life.
    As they pushed off, Will said, “I could get used to that. Living by the rhythm of the day. Wake up, spear some chacales , wash out my underwear in the process.”
    The raft coasted around the next turn, and it was again as if they were the last seven people on earth. The river carried them on. Eve trailed her fingertips through the glassy surface, leaving tiny wakes. Five or fifteen feet below, black tadpoles sat on mossy brown rocks, tails oscillating in the invisible current.
    “I wish I’d done more of that when I was younger,” Harry said.
    “Spear chacales in my underwear?” Will said.
    Harry waved him off. “You know what I mean. To not be busy being busy. I remember putting my tax files up in the attic this April, realizing that another year had whipped by.” Sue reached across, took his hand, and Eve felt a twinge at the sweet, instinctive gesture. Harry smiled dryly. “It just goes faster, you know.”
    “Stupid march of time,” Jay said.
    “It’s good to get out here,” Sue said. “Try to find … I don’t know, focus. ”
    The passing shore showed a dense rise of jaw-dropping lushness. Strangler figs wormed through tree trunks, weaving them together. Lilac-crowned parrots sparred, flitting among branches, purple heads pronounced against vibrant green feathers. The sunlight pulsed, redolent of orchids.
    “I know what you mean,” Will said. “I took a trip to Prague last year, and I was going through the pictures on iPhoto. Turns into a chore, right? I realized I barely remember the trip itself ’cuz I was so busy recording it. It’s like we’re more interested in documenting our lives than living them. We run around archiving everything. For what?”
    “How ’bout in theaters now?” Sue said. “The instant a movie ends, you see everyone lighting up their smartphones. Have to be reachable every second. ”
    “I tried to fast-forward a live TV show last week,” Eve confessed.
    Will laughed. “I saw a commercial the other day, some guy invented a brush that sticks to the shower floor so you don’t have to bend over to wash your feet. Are we really that busy? That we can’t bend over to wash our own feet?”
    “It’s important to remember what matters,” Harry said. “To do what you want to do and not waste any time about it. You’ll be sitting here at my age in the blink of an eye.”
    “What I really want to do,” Jay said, “is dance. ”
    Will knocked him with the handle of a paddle, and Jay had to grab it to keep from going overboard. Everyone laughed except for Claire, who’d withdrawn into herself.
    “It’s good advice,” Will said. “Taking stock like that. Think back to when you were a kid. What were you gonna do when you grew up?”
    “Astronaut,” Jay said.
    “Big-league pitcher,” Harry said.
    Sue blushed. “Fashion designer.”
    Eve said, “Surgeon.”
    There was a moment of silence, and then Neto smiled over at them, dipped his paddle into the water, and swung them for shore. “I’m doing it,” he said.
    They sloshed onto a beachy shoal where a hand-dug fire pit indented the scorched sand. Lulu unearthed a cooler from beneath frond cover at the base of a tree and removed pots