Rosalita led them from the small brick building back to the bus. The picnicking family watched them this time. I stood by the open door like a poorly dressed chauffeur as the women, one by one, reboarded, not one looking at my face, each one saying, “Gracias.” Without the wind pushing through the windows, the bus had become extremely hot, but the women seemed less bothered or affected than I was. Maribel, now cleaned up, appeared slightly better, but when she tried to muster a smile for me as she boarded I saw through her.

I put the beast into first and pushed forward. Just as I did, a child’s ball rolled in front of me and I instinctively braked suddenly. I should not have done that. The bus stalled. We sat there on the asphalt, helpless. The women didn’t understand a lot of English, but I believed they caught the gist of my one-syllable, stage-whispered exclamation. To compound the intensity of the situation, sitting stranded in that crippled sauna, the white man of the picnicking family walked toward us. He picked up the ball and came to the door, and I opened it.

“Sorry about that,” he said.

“No worries,” I said. I looked at the rest of his family.

“Problem with the bus?” He was muscular, short, wore a badly kept blond beard, though his hair was red. He had a tattoo peeking out from his sleeve but I could not make it out.

“I guess.”

Before I could say anything else, he stepped aboard. My heart was beating crazily. He immediately spotted the tangle of wires hanging from beneath the dash. He looked at me and then back at the wires.

Rosalita left her seat and moved to stand behind me. Whether she intended the gesture to show that she was not afraid of me or not, that was the effect it had. Somehow the man, as he looked at the faces in the bus, at Rosalita, and at me, was able to ascertain something that appeared to make him soften.

“Church group?” he asked.

I nodded.

He looked over at the highway that was just visible, then down the aisle of the bus out the back window.

“I used to drive a school bus in Denver,” he said. “I was always losing the key. Mind if I help?”

“Please.” I started to leave my seat.

“You don’t have to get up.” He reached past me and grabbed the wires. I could see that his tattoo was of a cartoon character, one I had seen but could not name, sitting on an anchor.

“Were you in the navy?” I asked.

“Marines.”

“Same here.”

“Semper Fi,” he said. “I hated the corps.”

“Same here.”

“You leave those two twisted together like they are. You take this red one and this green one and just make a spark. Like this.” He tapped them together, caused a spark, and the engine turned over. “Rev it,” he said.