On our way back to Portobelo the bus was full again. Being an express bus between two towns, the extra passengers where told to sit down in the dark aisle. Most of the local buses, if not all, were discarded school buses from the USA. The heavy machinery was moaning and panting as the bus slowly gained speed. Then the bus driver turned on the music. I could really feel those bass rhythms vibrating through the bus. Nina was sitting in the aisle in front of me, and she turned around, smiling, as if she was a bit unsure of what to make of this. There was a TV hanging from the ceiling. To my surprise they started a splatter movie. I looked around me, nobody seemed to care. The sound was off, or it was on, but it didn't cut through the music blasting from the loudspeakers. The movie was very violent and I wondered how the kids would react. When the killer appeared it only took a few seconds before a new kill was made. He pushed a pencil slowly through a policeman's eye and it was about here that the story lost me. I looked at Nina in front of me. I felt hot air swirling around my head. The locals were all fat and I sat crouched on the aisle between enormous thighs. The bus drove too fast. We passed billboards with half naked women selling about every item possible. Asses and tits. They lit up in short intervals as the headlight was going through the curves. The landscape was covered in dark foliage and I sometimes saw the constellations, a flickering between the huge silhouettes.
Looking through the pictures I remembered the man in the rain. I saw him early the next morning, after a really bad night. I remembered how his boat seemed to be half filled with water.
I remembered the ruins on the slope behind him. I remembered his yellow raingear. I remembered how I suddenly realized that this scene was important. And then he was gone.
