Take Me to the River (3 page)

Chapter 6
Take Me to the River

B
EFORE NOON THE NEXT
day, Rio and I were on the road to adventure with Ariel at the wheel of her relic of a pickup. We were going to bite off even more of the river than we talked about at first. Not only were we going to run the Lower Canyons, we had tacked on three days upstream for a total of ten days.

Why three more days? That was Ariel's idea, and we were happy to oblige. On our first day we were going to drop some donated supplies at a Mexican village called Boquillas del Carmen. It was all good, according to Rio. After dropping the donations, we would run Boquillas Canyon, a spectacular section of the river I would have missed had we started our trip downriver, at the put-in for the Lower Canyons.

Our sixty-mile drive to the river skirted the Chisos Mountains on their north side, then dropped into a starker and starker landscape dominated by creosote bush and by ocotillo, which resembled buggy whips. We were going to intercept the Rio Grande at a place called Rio Grande Village, in a far corner of Big Bend National Park.

Ariel's old pickup didn't have AC. The heat was so intense, we had to keep the windows down and blast air through the cab by opening the fins on both sides. Conversation was impossible. As the miles rolled by I was left alone with my thoughts, which were up and down and all over the place.

I had a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, and it wasn't from something I ate. This wasn't anything like I'd been picturing this trip since forever, like my parents were picturing it right now, with my uncle along. I was in uncharted territory in more ways than one. I hadn't told my parents any lies, but I hadn't told them the truth, which pretty much amounted to the same thing. Would they have given me the green light, knowing it was going to be just me and Rio?

The chances of that were slim to none.

I hated the way this felt. It felt like I was starting down a slippery slope. To have come this far, though, only to turn back and go home—that would be totally unacceptable.

Before any river trip, you get the jitters. Man, did I have them now. I felt like asking Ariel to stop the truck so I could throw up on the side of the road.

Ariel picked up on my state of mind. “Nervous?” she asked me, almost shouting. I was right at her side, sandwiched between her and Rio.

“I always get some butterflies,” I admitted.

“That's good, that's normal. These canyons are something special. You guys are going to have an awesome trip.”

“Hope so,” I said.

A few miles on, and something new came into view. Between us and a soaring mountain range, a winding strip of bright green vegetation marked the course of a river. I let out a whoop when Rio confirmed it was the Rio Grande. I could feel my adrenaline jets beginning to fire. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that beats moving water.

As Ariel drove into Rio Grande Village, Rio explained that it wasn't much of a village. For the sake of the tourists, Big Bend National Park had a campground here, a visitors' center, and a general store that sold gas and groceries. At midsummer, with the temperature around a hundred every day and the price of gas having soared out of sight, we found it virtually deserted. There were only two RVs parked in the cottonwood-shaded campground.

I ran up a trail to a hilltop for my first look at the river. Rio was on my heels, and Ariel was following at a walk. Once I got to the overlook, I didn't know what to make of what I was seeing. This couldn't be the Rio Grande. It looked more like a drainage ditch. “Uh, where's the river?” I asked my cousin.

“You're looking at it,” he replied.

The riverbed was fifty yards wide, but mostly dry. The river itself was less than fifty feet wide and mostly ankle deep. At its deepest it might have come up to your knees. The water was pea green, not my favorite color, with no discernible current. “C'mon, you're kidding,” I said. “This is a side channel, right?”

“Afraid not. That's the Rio Grande.”

“I thought you said that the river runs highest in the summer.”

“When it rains. July and August are our rainy season, but the rains haven't started yet.”

By now Ariel had joined us on the hilltop. I wasn't going to say a thing more about the river. I could pretty well guess I'd already ruffled my cousin's pride. I knew the Rio Grande wasn't going to look like the rivers back home, but this was pathetic. How we were going to go a hundred and sixteen miles in ten days, I had no idea.

The low flow must have looked so normal to Ariel, she didn't even mention it. What she was keen to point out to me was the Mexican village where Rio and I were going to drop the donations. Even with my dark sunglasses cutting the glare, it was hard to spot. Finally I made it out, shimmering in the heat, a couple miles downriver. “Bo-KEY-us” was how she pronounced it. Boquillas sat at the foot of the soaring mountains called the Sierra del Carmen.

The stuff we were going to drop off included used laptops for the village school, some empty propane bottles that couldn't be filled on this side of the river for some reason, half a dozen small motors reclaimed from exercise treadmills, a secondhand solar cell, an old sewing machine, and half a dozen trash bags full of fabric scraps that the women of the village would turn into quilts. It was okay to take donations across the border without going through a customs station as long as they had hardly any resale value.

We had some work to do if we were going to reach the village before dark. We were about to start down the path to Ariel's truck when we heard the distant
chop-chop-chop
of helicopters.

“Border Patrol?” I wondered aloud.

The helicopters were getting ever louder. Rio had them spotted, but I hadn't yet. “Unreal!” he shouted. “Those are U.S. Army!”

Rio was pointing north of the Chisos Mountains. Now I saw them. The helicopters, half a dozen of them, were flying low, along the route of the road we had just traveled. They were coming fast, with a whirring thunder like a breaking storm. These were serious war machines—attack helicopters. “Black Hawks!” I shouted over the din. “I've seen them back home at Camp Lejeune!”

“They're heading for Rio Grande Village!” Rio shouted back.

They sure enough were. The Black Hawks circled the campground a couple of times. Twice, they passed within a hundred yards of our hilltop. The side doors of the choppers were open, with soldiers at their battle stations manning machine guns. We caught some heavy downdraft; the roar was deafening.

The gunships pulled back to allow even more helicopters to approach the river—three giant Chinooks, made for hauling troops and fuel and supplies.

The Chinooks hovered just short of the river as the Black Hawks circled them protectively. We watched the three Chinooks put down in the Park Service campground, in a clearing only a stone's throw from those two RVs.

The Black Hawks didn't follow them in. To our amazement, the gunships raced across the river and into Mexico.

“Mercy!” Ariel cried.

At first I wondered if they were heading for the village across the river, but within minutes, they were far beyond Boquillas and miles into Mexico.

The Black Hawks were gaining altitude rapidly, flying up and up, in the direction of the Sierra del Carmen. It looked for all the world like they were going to smack into the cliffs. It wasn't long before they crested the forest atop the range and blinked out of view.

It crossed my mind that maybe this wasn't such a good time to be spending ten days on the Mexican border.

Chapter 7
Good-bye, Good Luck!

A
RIEL DROVE TOWARD THE
visitors' center to find out what in the world was going on. We didn't get that far. The park ranger had jumped in his truck and raced to the campground where the big Chinooks had landed. He was already engaged in what looked like dead-serious conversation with an army officer. Behind them, three dozen soldiers were already at work unloading the helicopters.

We waited fifteen minutes before Ariel got her chance to speak with the park ranger. They knew each other by name; they were old friends. The ranger hadn't known the helicopters were coming. The army had chosen Rio Grande Village as a forward base for some kind of operation in Mexico that they weren't authorized to discuss, except to say it was in cooperation with the Mexican government and military. The ranger had been told to close the entrance and notify campers to leave ASAP.

“Can we still launch a river trip?” Ariel asked the ranger.

The answer was yes, as long as we did it “expeditiously.”

“What about the store?” was Ariel's next question. “Is the store still open?”

“You might run over there real quick. My guess is, it won't be for long.”

We piled back in the truck like our hair was on fire and raced for the store. What with a number of far-flung stops we'd made that morning to pick up the donations for Boquillas, the one-man grocery in Terlingua had closed for lunch hour before we got there. “No problem,” Rio had said. “We'll shop in Rio Grande Village. They can use the business.”

Those fifteen minutes we had just lost waiting to talk to the park ranger turned around and bit us. The parking lot in front of the store was plumb empty as we drove in. A sign on the door, hastily scrawled with a black marker, read,
CLOSED INDEFINITELY
.

Hmmm . . . , I thought.

We looked down the road that led out of Rio Grande Village. Dust was still hanging in the air from a vehicle leaving in a hurry.

“Just missed him,” Ariel said. “This summer has been a disaster for the concessionaires in the park. I guess he was thrilled to have an excuse to shut down. We could head home, boys, and try again tomorrow.”

“We could,” Rio allowed, “but the army wouldn't let us back in. Our only shot at dropping your donations and floating Boquillas Canyon is if we launch this afternoon. We've got enough groceries in the truck. It's not like we're going to starve.”

The groceries Rio was alluding to were the sum total of the canned goods and boxed food, spices, cooking oil, and so on that he had at home. To keep the grocery bill down, he brought it all along. “What do you think, Dylan? Think we can get by?”

I allowed that I figured we could. I felt a lot better when Ariel said we could have the emergency food stowed behind the front seat of her truck, which turned out to be three cans of Spam, three cans of tuna, and a twelve-pack of energy bars. A lot of the locals carried emergency rations, I learned, not so much for themselves as for the illegal crossers they sometimes encountered on the back roads.

“I brought some fishing gear along,” Rio added. “I'd say we're good to go.”

Ariel put her truck in gear and we headed for the put-in. There's nothing like nearly having something snatched away to make you want it all the more.

On our left, soldiers were unloading fuel drums out of the big Chinooks. Other soldiers were erecting sleeping tents. A much bigger tent was also going up—a mess hall, maybe? Ariel backed her truck close to the river at the launch site, a bulldozed cut in the riverbank.

Ariel retreated to the shade of a cottonwood as Rio and I fell to unloading the truck. We began by undoing the canoe's tie-downs and sliding it down from the carry racks. We tumbled the raft out of the back of the bed and rolled it aside. I couldn't help eyeing the raft like it was a rogue elephant. Since forever I had pictured Rio and me in canoes, paddling the Rio Grande side by side. I said as much that morning, back at the ghost town, when we were loading up.

“If we were only out for a few days, that would be the way to go,” my cousin agreed. “But for ten days, that's different. If it really gets to raining, the river could get too big for a canoe to handle.”

“How likely is that?” I insisted.

“You never know,” he answered with a shrug. “Safety first. It's what my dad would do. He's seen it happen.”

“If it did happen, we would both continue on in the raft?”

“Yep. Stash the canoe and come back for it later.”

Eyeballing the so-called river as we pumped up the raft, I had my doubts as to how far we would get before Rio had to jump out and drag it.

Once everything was off the truck, Ariel drove back to the visitors' center to get us a river permit to fill out.

Rio and I were putting the rowing frame together when a couple of soldiers headed our way. They were dressed in desert camo and were carrying automatic weapons. I was afraid they were going to put the kibosh on our trip.

The one with four stripes did the talking. The other, with two stripes, was along for the ride like me. The sergeant's mission was to find out how soon we could vacate the premises. Rio assured him we would be on the river shortly. “Good,” the sergeant said. “How long will you boys be out?”

“Ten days—how come?”

“There's a possibility that the Big Bend is in for a major weather event within that time frame.”

Rio's eyebrows knitted doubtfully. “Are you positive, sir? I checked the ten-day forecast yesterday, and it wasn't calling for a major weather event.”

“That forecast might be subject to change. There's a hurricane by the name of Dolly entering the Gulf of Mexico later today. This morning it was brushing the tip of the Yucatán. The computer models show landfall three days from now, most likely on the East Texas coast or western Louisiana. Here's a heads-up for you: There's a one in ten chance of Dolly coming ashore in the Brownsville area, at the mouth of the Rio Grande.”

“One in ten, that's not very likely.”

“If she does, and she happens to follow the river upstream, we might see some heavy precipitation.”

“Thanks for the heads-up. One more thing . . . Can you tell us anything about your mission, Sergeant? Why your unit's Black Hawks flew into Mexico?”

“Sorry, I'm not authorized.”

“Mexico is having a big battle with the drug cartels, and they needed our help?”

The faint suggestion of a smile crossed the sergeant's lips. “Have a good trip,” he said in parting.

“Think we might make the acquaintance of Dolly?” I asked Rio as we watched them go.

“We're in the eleventh year of a drought. I'd almost like to see a tropical storm come our way.”

We went back to rigging the raft. By the time Ariel returned with the permit we had it fully rigged, with our trip gear stowed either in the rowing compartment or in the back. The stuff for Boquillas we piled haphazardly in the front. Across the river, the forested crest of the Sierra del Carmen was turning dark. Rio said there was a good chance we were in for a thunderstorm this very day.

Rio sat down and filled out the permit with our names and addresses, description of boats, and itinerary. The Park Service managed the use of the river in the park and the “wild and scenic” corridor below. I was relieved that someone besides Ariel was going to know what we were up to in case we went missing.

It was time to say good-bye. We made sure we were in sync with Ariel about our rendezvous. We were going to spend nine nights on the river. At noon on the tenth day she would meet us at a place called Dryden Crossing at the end of a remote ranch road.

“You guys sure enough look like desert river rats,” Ariel said. And we did, with our sunglasses and wide-brimmed straw hats, our river knives deployed heart-high on our life jackets, our arms and legs protected with super-light long sleeves and trousers. Our feet were clad with sneakers rather than river flops on account of the hostile terrain.

We thanked Ariel for everything she had done for us. “Take care of each other, you guys,” she said, all misty-eyed, and gave us big hugs. We promised we would.

Rio waded into the river, hopped aboard the raft, and took the oars. I waded out with the canoe and stepped inside. I reached for the paddle and took my first stroke. “Good-bye, good luck!” Ariel called as we headed around the bend.