The Harder They Come Read Online Free PDF Page B

to give up hope because the electroshock machine, the defibrillator, was a real miracle and it had saved her husband, twice . “The guy’s gone, can’t you see that?” the man behind her put in, and a whole sotto voce debate started up. Stenignored it. He sat there with the rest of them, sweating, thirsty, wanting only to be back on the ship. The police would be coming now, he knew that. At the very least he’d be required to give a statement, they all would. But what then? Would they charge him? Would he and Carolee have to stay here in this reeking excuse for a city for days on end—weeks, even—while all the others climbed back aboard the ship and cruised away into the sunset?
    His eyes shot to the driver. The man had swung his legs out into the aisle to get comfortable. He had a cellphone to his ear now, speaking his whipcrack Spanish into the receiver, and who was he contacting if not the authorities? Sten looked to Carolee and she breathed his name, twice, in a kind of moan: “Oh, Sten, Sten.” She fidgeted in the seat, and whether consciously or not, she pulled her hand away from his and rubbed her palm, the moisture there, on her shorts. She spoke in a whisper: “You think they’ll let us go back now?”
    He shrugged. He wasn’t exactly in a talkative mood. All he felt was tired. Sleep, that was what he wanted, another realm, a way out of this. He watched dispassionately as the paramedic helped the attendant load the limp body onto the gurney and wheel it up the walk and into the yawning double doors of the clinic. Everybody saw it, the retreating feet, the wheels of the gurney, the doors snapping shut like a set of jaws, and as if at a signal, people began stirring. Here came Bill, the good Samaritan, to lead it off, mounting the steps of the bus and sliding into the front seat beside his wife. A man Sten couldn’t place stood and started sorting through the daypack he’d stowed overhead. There was a rustle of bags and papers, as if a stiff internal wind had started up to whip through the bus. Bottles of water appeared. Power bars. Cellphones. The unpleasantness was over now and it was as if nothing had happened: they were tourists deprived of a nature walk and thinking only to get back to the boat, to their cabins and staterooms, to privacy, air-conditioning, cocktails, dinner at thecaptain’s table. They’d had an experience, all right, something to text home about, but it was over now.
    “Driver?” It was Bill, the first Bill, the bald-headed one, who seemed to have become their spokesman. He was seated two rows up from Sten and Carolee, his shirt soaked through with sweat and a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. His wife was there beside him, her brittle hair set aflame by a shaft of sun slanting through the window.
    The driver was in no hurry to respond. He pursed his mouth. Tapped the cellphone at his ear. “Driver?” Bill repeated, and finally the man swiveled round in his seat and lifted his eyebrows as if to say What now?
    “We just wanted to know what the holdup is.”
    The driver said something into the phone, then pulled it away from his ear and held it up like an exhibit in a courtroom. “I am talking,” he said, “to la Fuerza Pública, the police. You will need to make a testimony for the facts of this”—he couldn’t find the word—“today. A la reserva . The crime. You must make a testimony of the crime.”
    “Yes, all right, fine,” Bill said, waving a hand in dismissal. “But can’t we do that back aboard ship? We’ve been through a lot here, I’m talking trauma, real trauma, and it’s not doing anybody any good to sit here sweltering for no reason . . .”
    “Take us back,” a voice boomed from the rear of the bus.
    “Yeah, let’s get this thing moving,” somebody else put in.
    As if awaiting her cue, Sheila cried out suddenly, her voice stretched to the breaking point: “We need a restroom. We haven’t—I mean, I haven’t—” She was two seats up,