Take Me to the River (5 page)

Chapter 10
The Wax Makers

W
E WOULD HAVE SLEPT
in, but the heat drove us out of the tent by eight. The river was up and running. The rain had run off the desert like it was an iron skillet.

By nine we were back on the water. Swallows by the hundreds knifed this way and that, working the river for bugs. A few miles down the river we passed under a formation called Lizard Rock. With a stretch of the imagination I was able to make out the two-hundred-foot iguana climbing the cliffs.

It was a good thing Rio wasn't going to have to drag the raft through Boquillas Canyon. The heat was blistering. It was so hot that the turtles wouldn't leave the water to bask on the rocks. From time to time they poked up their heads. It was easy enough to see how the temperatures made summer the off-season for river running.

I made sure to drink lots of water. My guide guaranteed smashing headaches if I didn't. To cool off, we swam alongside our boats every so often. Back on the boats we stayed comfortable as long as our clothes stayed wet.

The surface of the river was mirror calm, reflecting the cathedral-like walls of Boquillas Canyon. The aura of tranquility didn't last long. We heard the sound of an approaching helicopter, unbelievably loud in the confines of the canyon. Here it was, one of those Black Hawks, flying low with a gunner at the side door. He waved; apparently it wasn't us they were after. Before long the gunship had chopped its way out of sight downriver.

Needless to say, our mood pivoted in its wake. We had a lot to chew on that seemed more than a little ominous. Apparently the manhunt was still on, and we were inside the search area.

Forty minutes later the gunship returned, headed upstream, and forty minutes after that, here it came again, patrolling downstream. This time we were having lunch on the shore, on a rock shelf on the Mexican side. The Black Hawk slowed down, and it hovered above us. The gunner dropped a small sack of something just down the beach. He waved, we waved back, and they took off.

“What do you suppose it is?” I asked my cousin.

“No idea,” he said, running to pick it up.

A message is what it was, weighted in a bag of pebbles.
BEWARE OF SUSPICIOUS PERSONS
, it said.
CAMPING ON MEXICO SIDE BETWEEN RIO GRANDE VILLAGE AND HALLIE STILLWELL BRIDGE NOT RECOMMENDED.

I fetched the mile-by-mile guide for Boquillas Canyon from the canoe. From our present position, the Hallie Stillwell Bridge was twenty miles downstream. The army was figuring that the river downstream of the bridge was beyond the reach of anyone fleeing the scene of the crime in the Sierra del Carmen. Twenty more miles, and we could breathe easy.

I asked Rio if he thought the killers would head toward the river.

“Unlikely,” he replied. “This direction, everything would be practically straight down, and rugged beyond belief. The safest way for them to ransom their victim would be from inside a Mexican city. If the army thought they were headed for the river, we would be seeing more than this one helicopter.”

“I wonder what the getaway plan was.”

“My guess is, they had a vehicle stashed a few miles away.”

“In a vehicle, wouldn't they run into roadblocks like the one we ran into last night?”

“Not if they were quick enough, not if they had a small plane waiting not very far away. Remote ranches have airstrips, and so do abandoned mines. Who knows where they are by now.”

“Something could have gone wrong with their plan. Maybe they bailed out on this side of the mountains, just running for their lives.”

“I guess the army isn't ruling that out. That possibility would explain why the army assigned one of their Black Hawks to patrol the river, and why they warned us about ‘suspicious persons.'”

We put back on the river, anxious to put the miles and the nerve-racking Black Hawk behind us. In the afternoon the clouds boiled up and dumped buckets of rain, which cooled things off and raised the river some more. We kept going.

After an hour the rain let up. The Black Hawk was back, and so was the heat. Overhead, vultures were circling. Our goal for the day was to float the entire length of Boquillas Canyon—sixteen miles. Tomorrow we would put the bridge behind us.

I had the guidebook in the canoe and kept referring to it. Ahead, a tower of stone with a peculiar top rose from the Texas side. For obvious reasons, the formation was called the
Oídos del Conejo
—Ears of the Rabbit. Opposite the Rabbit Ears was the last marked campsite in the canyon, but it was on the Mexican shore. Rio knew of an unmarked campsite on some ledges a few miles farther on, at the very end of the canyon. He knew this stretch like the back of his hand.

Half an hour later I was eager to call it a day, get out of the canoe, and ease my aching back. I kept scanning the Texas shore in search of those ledges Rio had talked about, but saw only cliffs and rockslides.

Rio wasn't looking left. His eyes were on the right, on the Mexican side.

I paddled close to the raft to see what he had in mind. “That ledges camp you're thinking about . . . it isn't on the Mexican side, is it?”

“No campsites on the Texas side,” he replied tersely. “None on public land, anyway, that we could reach before dark. After the canyon, the river goes through a floodplain where the banks are solid cane, both sides. The camp I'm shooting for has some nifty sleeping shelters under an overhang, which will be handy if the weather comes up during the night. We'll be fine.”

My cousin was feeling lucky about not running into any bad guys. Me, not so much. Side by side, we drifted on. The very end of the canyon came in sight. So did some people, on the ledges on the Mexican side. “Hey, Rio, there's some men down there.”

“I see 'em. They're right where I wanted to camp.”

We were out of the main current and drifting slowly. Another minute, and there was a lot more to see. Three men were working at a large metal vat erected over a fire pit that was open on the side facing the river. One of the men was stoking the fire while the other two, with long sticks, poked or stirred whatever they were boiling. Weeds, apparently: four huge mounds of bundled weeds lay close at hand. Some burros were grazing the grass at the edge of the cane.

The men stirring the vat suddenly noticed us. One dropped his stirring stick and ran along the bank, beckoning for us to come to shore. “Beware of suspicious persons,” I reminded Rio.

“Those guys don't look suspicious,” my cousin replied.

“Are you out of your mind? See those machetes at their waists? They look like
bandidos
out of central casting.”

“I agree, but do they look like killers and kidnappers?”

“To me, I guess—yeah. I'll say yeah. They look exactly like killers and kidnappers.”

Rio put the oar handles under his knees, leaned back and laughed. “You're way wrong. They look exactly like
candelilleros
.”

“Candle-ee-AIR-os . . .?”

“Wax makers. They're making wax from a weed called
candelilla
. This used to be a wax camp years ago . . . the wax plants have grown back, and they've come back to harvest them.”

“Wax? Wax for what?”

“Candles, match heads, chewing gum—you name it.”

By now we were within a hundred yards of the wax camp. The one trying to call us in was beckoning more urgently than ever. “They need help, or they want to talk,” Rio said.

“Let's not and say we did,” I pleaded.

“I guarantee you, Dylan. These are the nicest, most generous people you're ever going to meet.”

“You mean, you know them?”

“Not personally.”

Hmmm . . . , I thought.

Rio kept rowing toward the Mexicans. I couldn't believe it. My cousin waved and smiled as he drew close.

They caught his boat and held it against the shore. They were beside themselves saying thank you, and smiling, and adding more thank yous.

I hung back in the canoe, ready to back-paddle fast as I could.

Rio motioned me to come to shore.

I did, without taking my eyes off those machetes.

Now they had ahold of my boat, too. Their beards were unkempt and their clothes were badly soiled. On their gnarled feet they wore tire-tread sandals. “They lost their rowboat,” Rio told me. “They think
mojados
took it—people trying to cross to the U.S. to find work.”

“Did they see them take it?”

“No, they were asleep.”

The wax makers wanted us to look for their rowboat—downstream, on the Texas side. They were pretty sure we would find it pulled up in the cane grass. Behind the cane, Rio told me, there was a dirt road that led to a paved road and eventually to Marathon. From Marathon the crossers could jump a train to either San Antonio or El Paso.

Rio promised them we would bring their rowboat back across if we found it. We said good-bye and angled across the river. On the way, Rio explained that without their rowboat, they wouldn't be able to sell their wax. They had a Texas buyer all lined up, but now they wouldn't be able to smuggle their product across.

“Smuggle? Those guys are smugglers?”

“Only as far as Mexico is concerned. It's illegal for them to take it out of the country. But they make more money if they can sell it across the border, so they do it whenever they can. It isn't illegal for the American buyers because the U.S. doesn't charge a duty on candelilla wax. Unlike those quilts from Boquillas, it doesn't have to go through customs.”

“When they cross to our side, how come they don't get picked up as illegals?”

“They would if they got caught. Check out where we are. Nobody's looking.”

On the Texas side, we hugged the shore, keeping our eyes peeled for their rowboat or the slightest indication of disturbance in the cane. We came up empty. The wax makers were going to have to sell their wax in Mexico, Rio said, or else wait a couple of months for the water to come down. By October, most years, they'd be able to wade this stretch of the river again.

The day was pretty well shot, and now we were passing through a wide, low valley—the floodplain Rio had talked about. Both shores were choked solid with a wall of the bamboo-like cane soaring up to twenty feet high and overhanging the water. Dusk was gathering and we were anxious to get off the river.

The only excuse for a campsite we could find, a couple of miles after we floated past the national park boundary, was on the Texas side. The guidebook had it marked as an old cattle ford. The place sure enough reeked of cattle, and it was littered with fresh pies.
PRIVATE RANCH NO TRESPASSIN
, the sign said.
TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT ON SITE
.

“Hmmm . . . ,” I said. “What do you think, Rio?”

“It's public land again after a few more miles—Black Gap Wildlife Area—but we'd be nuts to float in the dark. Let's stay here, but not set up the kitchen, in case we need to beat a hasty retreat.”

“From the landowner?”

“Or his heat-packing hired hands, or an aggressive bull. If we have to get back on the river we will.”

The wind was stirring and a thunderstorm was brewing. We ate a can of tuna apiece and then we pitched the tent.

The stars stayed out, no cattle appeared, and neither did cowboys packing heat. We woke to day three and an incredible view of the Sierra del Carmen upriver. It was a huge relief to have put those mountains behind us.

We wondered if the manhunt was still on, but we didn't have to wonder long. We were eating breakfast on the boats—Raisin Bran with rice milk—when the Black Hawk flew by. Within minutes it was headed back upriver.

No new messages.

Chapter 11
The Point of No Return

P
ERCHED ON A BLUFF
on the Mexican side, the abandoned village of La Linda appeared as we rounded a bend. Its whitewashed church with twin bell towers looked sadly beautiful against a backdrop of stony hills. We had the Hallie Stillwell Bridge in our sights. Beyond the bridge, no more Black Hawks. We'd be good to run the river without fear.

We floated under the bridge, a real eyesore. Concrete barriers, chain link, and razor wire made it impossible for pedestrians as well as vehicles to cross. Even so, a man in a green-and-white pickup—Border Patrol—was keeping watch from the American side. Just past the bridge, where the river made a sharp left, an abandoned chemical plant appeared on the Mexican side. The bridge had been built for trucks to haul a chemical called fluorspar sixty miles north to the railroad.

Rio pointed to a bulldozed swath of the riverbank on the Texas side. “This is where we would've launched for the Lower Canyons if we hadn't added on the extra mileage for Ariel.”

“It turned out to be kind of high anxiety, but I'm glad we did.”

“It's time to start with the new guidebook. Let's go to shore and pull it out.”

We beached our boats, got out and stretched our legs, and chewed on some jerky. Rio fished the guidebook for the Lower Canyons out of his waterproof day bag. “So, Dylan, you wanna take a look?”

“You bet. I barely glanced at it back in Terlingua.”

I took a seat on the raft and turned to the introduction. Suddenly I had a lot more to chew on than beef jerky. Here's what it said:

Without doubt the Lower Canyons section of the Rio Grande, with its spectacular scenery, whitewater, and rugged wilderness character, makes for one of the great river adventures in North America. Anyone considering this section must factor in the combination of its length—83 miles—with its extreme remoteness. It is in fact the most rugged and remote section of the entire 2,000-mile border between the United States and Mexico. Preparations need to be exhaustive. Exercise caution at all times, on and off the river. If you injure yourself or damage essential gear beyond repair, help is not on the way. You may well not see another human being during the duration of your trip. Hiking out through the desert can be fatal, especially during the summer.

Soon as I finished that opening paragraph, I read it a second time. I would be lying if I didn't admit that it gave me the jitters. What would we do if we broke a leg? What if one of us got appendicitis or got bit by a snake?

Downstream from here, we were going to be way out on a limb, and if something happened, we couldn't call for help.

Did Rio have a satellite phone along, and just didn't tell me?

What were the chances? He didn't have a phone of any description at home, and sat phones are expensive, even to rent.

Here you are, I told myself, about to take your last step on the slippery slope. Think, you fool. Stop and think.

I tried to appear casual as I reached for my water bottle and took a long drink. Rio was skipping stones on the river. He wasn't in a rush; just the opposite. He had called for this break, at this exact spot, because it was the point of no return.

I turned to the first map. It showed the put-in where we were standing. It showed the bridge. On the Mexican side was La Linda. On the American side was a ranch, Heath Canyon Ranch. The map showed a paved road leading north
to Marathon. Somewhere along that road was a turnoff
for Big Bend National Park and Terlingua. If we decided to bail out here, we could get the Border Patrolman to radio Terlingua. If that didn't work out, we could walk to the
ranch. We could ask them to call Terlingua for us, call Ariel.

What about Hurricane Dolly? The Border Patrolman watching the bridge would know what the hurricane was up to. Had it made landfall in east Texas or Louisiana, like they thought it would? What if, against the odds, it had come ashore at the mouth of the Rio Grande and was heading for the Lower Canyons this minute? Shouldn't we at least be asking?

The Border Patrolman wouldn't be able to tell us for
sure if we were going to run into Dolly. The storm could veer any which way. He could only give us the latest odds.

Should I bring it up with Rio?

If I did, would he entertain the idea of quitting on the trip just because we might run into rough weather? Not hardly. He'd been picturing high water from the start. It was why he'd brought the raft along.

Stop
, I told myself. Just stop. You've got your mind chasing its tail. The first thirty-three miles were only to drop the donations off at Boquillas. All the whitewater is downstream. Just quit worrying and do what you came all this way to do.

Rio was no longer skipping stones. I closed the mile-by-mile guide and spit out a wad of jerky gristle. “You still on Mile 1?” he said. “Reading all about La Linda and the DuPont plant?”

“Just thinking. I've been doing too much thinking, actually.”

“About whether we should commit, now that we're here?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“I saw you reading the introduction—the big heads-up.”

“They don't pull any punches.”

“One thing I forgot to mention back home—I've never been past here.”

He'd said it casually, but this was big. “You mean, downstream of the bridge?”

“Yeah, right.”

“You mean you haven't run the Lower Canyons before?”

“Never laid eyes on it, except in pictures.”

“But I thought you'd done it with your dad.”

“I never said that, did I?”

“I just assumed, I guess.”

“My dad hasn't run it for the last two years. None of the guides have. There isn't much market for week-long trips. Some private river runners do it, mostly in the spring.”

“Man, that's different.”

“Different from what?”

“From what I was thinking.”

“Okay, it's different, and maybe I should've told you, but would it have made any difference?”

“I don't know . . . I could have factored it in . . . I guess not.”

“So, you're good with it? We can always go home and shoot hoops, watch DVDs of
Man vs. Wild
. Hey, no pressure. I'm cool with whatever you decide.”

I hesitated. The heat was so intense, it was hard to think at all.
This is it
, I told myself.

No doubt Rio could hear my gears grinding. Here's what I kept coming back to: You play it safe, you'll disappoint your cousin and yourself. You'll have to live with that.

“I'm in,” I told him. “I'm going all the way, till the wheels fall off and burn.”

“That's what I was hoping to hear,
mi primo loco
.”

Rio had just called me his crazy cousin. This felt great, absolutely great. We slapped hands and got back on the river.

Floating under the walls of Heath Canyon and then Temple Canyon—tantalizing appetizers of the mighty Lower Canyons to come—we passed into the broken and rugged country beyond. Once again the quiet of the wilderness prevailed. We were beyond the reach of the helicopter patrol; we'd left all that madness behind.

Everything on the Texas side was part of the Black Gap Wildlife Area, and we were seeing wildlife. We watched a herd of bighorn sheep, their young included, charge down a slope that would've made an extreme skier vomit. They were doing all sorts of insane aerials, huge leaps off of boulders, just unbelievable stuff. We thought for sure a mountain lion must be chasing them, but it turned out nothing was. They were simply having fun on their way down to get a drink.

We floated past a huge rock formation on the Mexican side called
El Caracol
—The Snail—and ran the Class 2 rapid below a dry wash on the Texas side. The bow of my canoe caught some air, but I took on barely enough water to soak my boat sponge. The best part was, Rio liked my style. He could see I was far from being a novice.

Downstream we found a shady beach, went swimming, and took naps. We were living the life of Huck Finn. I had made the right call.

At Mile 13 we replenished our freshwater jugs from the springs that emerged between rock layers on the Texas side. We were lucky the river wasn't any higher, or the springs would have been underwater.

We made it all the way to
Las Vegas de los Ladrones,
the Outlaw Flats, at Mile 17. A grassy flat on the Mexican side in front of a spectacular butte called
El Sombrero
made for a perfect campsite. The grass had been mowed by cattle and all the pies were dry. The guidebook said we would be seeing quite a few cattle, “more than half wild.”

We pitched the tent and set up our camp table and chairs. Rio dug out his fishing tackle, which wasn't the kind I was expecting. It consisted of a tackle box and a couple of laundry detergent jugs, capped and empty. I'd never done any jug fishing but I'd heard of it. The basic idea is to suspend a couple of hooks from the jug, which serves as a float. For anchors, Rio had brought along four-inch lengths of heavy construction rebar.

We put together two juglines with two leaders apiece. At the end of each leader we tied on a hook.

For bait, Rio had brought along a block of Zote Soap. That, I'd never heard of. “Made in Mexico,” I read aloud. “Sixty-six percent animal fat. Zote Soap is safe for the environment and safe for your family.”

“Not to mention, catfish go crazy over it,” Rio added. “The citronella scent is what does it.” He sliced off four chunks and baited the hooks. “We'll try Spam if the soap doesn't do the trick.”

We deployed the juglines in the pool just down from our campsite. One of them produced a yellow catfish, a ten pounder. Rio carved two fillets and fried them up. As the sun was setting and the full moon was rising over that big wide-open country, we feasted. Ten more miles and we would be inside the Lower Canyons.

I slept well on a belly full of catfish, and woke to clear skies. By the time we were pouring pancake batter on the griddle, things were changing. A skirmish line of clouds was heading our way from downstream. Rio remarked that it was early in the day for thunderstorms to be cooking. This looked more like a front.

“Front?” I repeated. “Front, as in tropical storm front?”

“Possibly. Our garden-variety thunderstorms boil up out of the clear blue sky. This is something else.”

“Can't be Dolly,” I said after some thought.

“Why not, Dylan?”

“This front is coming from downstream. The map shows us running north and a little east until the last fifteen miles of our trip. The Gulf of Mexico is south and east.”

Rio shook his head. “Nice try! Tropical storms have a counterclockwise spin. The first band would arrive from the northeast.”

“Hmmm . . . ,” I said. “That might be exciting.”

“Something to tell my dad about. He'd be sick that he missed it.”

Just then came the sound of a snapping twig from the brush at the back of the campsite. We heard shuffling feet. We spun around on our chairs. Scarcely twenty feet away, a man and a boy stood at the edge of the clearing. I about jumped out of my skin. What were they doing here, in the absolute middle of nowhere?

“Don't be alarmed, my friends,” the man said in heavily accented English, raising his hand in a peaceful gesture.

Their clothes were torn, and their faces, hands, and arms were badly scratched. They looked like they hadn't slept for a week.

“We lost our way . . . had a rough time . . . need some help,” the man said. About forty, he was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved shirt—white polyester. The boy was my little brother's age, right around seven. He was wearing a soccer jersey. Underneath the name of the team,
LIVERPOOL FOOTBALL CLUB
, were the words
You'll Never Walk Alone
.

The man had a beard of sorts, a week's growth of coarse black stubble. The scar dead center on his forehead, mostly above his hairline, made you want to look away. His eyes were all over the place, assessing us and our gear—the kitchen, the tent, the boats.

The boy had yet to look at us. His eyes were on the ground. One eye was blackened, and the cheek on the same side was bruised. He was covered with cuts and scratches. As my own hands would testify, nearly every plant in the desert had its way to draw blood, and it looked like the boy had stumbled or fallen into more than a few. The man kept one hand clamped on his shoulder.

Evidently they weren't related. They weren't acting like it, and their faces didn't bear a family resemblance.

“Are you hungry?” Rio asked. “How about some breakfast?”

“Please,” the man replied. “We haven't eaten in days.”

The man and the boy approached us. The man had a small backpack that he placed under our table, next to the gas bottle. “I am Carlos,” he said. “The boy is Diego. Do you speak Spanish?”

Rio hesitated. “Not that much,” he said, which surprised me. “Keep speaking English,” he went on, “so my cousin can understand. I'm Rio, he's Dylan. Come, sit down on these chairs. We'll make more pancakes, and we could also fry up some meat, if you don't mind Spam.”

The Mexican flashed a wide smile. “Like they say in the U.S.A., beggars can't be choosers.”