Take Me to the River

by Will Hobbs

  Somehow Fortino managed to brake without losing control or getting us ventilated with bullets. “Federales,” Rio muttered. “No worries, Dylan.”

  Huh? I was going to be lucky if I didn’t mess my pants.

  “Say as little as possible and don’t make any sudden moves, okay?”

  I was finding it difficult to speak. I couldn’t even swallow. “Got it,” I managed.

  The federal police threw spotlights on us. The glare was blinding. Two of the black-uniformed policemen fanned out to cover us while a third approached Fortino’s window, service pistol drawn. Fortino lowered his window. I noticed him placing both hands high on the steering wheel where they could be seen.

  The policeman’s face looked like it had been carved from the sharp, cruel stone of the surrounding desert. He pointed the flashlight at our faces and laps and down by our feet.

  I began to breathe again, at least, when he holstered his weapon. He began to question Fortino. “No se habla español,” the old man said about us—they don’t speak Spanish. I understood Fortino to say that we were on our way to catch up with a señora who was at a ranch delivering a baby. Stone Face bought that, but he wasn’t buying the explanation for why Rio and I were along, whatever it was. He wagged his finger at the two of us. “Identificación!” he ordered. “ID!”

  “Sorry,” Rio said in English. “We don’t have it with us. No ID.” Which was true—it was back with our stuff on the raft.

  A smile played at the policeman’s lips. “You two get out. We find out your story at the station.”

  Uh-oh, I thought. This is going to be bad, real bad.

  Stone Face left the window and walked back toward his cruiser to confer with his backup. The three federales huddled for a minute, maybe discussing which of them was going to take us in.

  “Mordida?” Rio whispered to Fortino.

  “Sí,” the old man replied.

  “You just asked if they’re going to mess us up?” I asked my cousin.

  “I asked if we should try a bribe, and Fortino said yes.”

  “You’ve got that envelope full of money behind the seat.”

  “That much money is nothing but trouble. I pull that out, we get taken in for sure. Do you have that hundred on you that you were telling me about?”

  “It’s in my pants pocket.”

  Rio’s eyes went to the policeman, who was on his way back. “Hurry—give it to Fortino.”

  Quick as I could, I fished it out and slipped it to Fortino, five folded twenties.

  I understood next to nothing of the ensuing conversation between the old man and Stone Face. Obviously this had to be done delicately. The conversation ended when Fortino showed the money, and the policeman took it.

  Stone Face scolded us about not carrying ID, and we were on our way. Another half hour, and we turned onto a side road, which was badly rutted. Just after midnight the road ended at the edge of nowhere, which would have been a good name for the ranch where we piled out.

  The baby had been delivered within the hour. Right away, Rio gave the midwife the envelope from Ariel with the $2,300 in it. We would’ve made a quick turnaround, only Señora Madrid had some news to tell. Evidently it was a bombshell. The Spanish was flying so fast and furious, I never caught on. I got the idea that something really bad had happened nearby, and not very long ago.

  As we got under way, lightning and thunder rent the night sky and bullets of rain pelted the windshield. Rio told me that Señora Madrid had been stopped at the same roadblock we were. The federales didn’t hassle her. When she asked what the roadblock was for, they told her there’d been an incident at the lodge up in the Sierra del Carmen—a raid, and killings, and a kidnapping.

  “You got my attention,” I said. “Tell me everything you know.”

  A bolt of lightning struck directly ahead and lit up the surrounding desert. The dry wash we were about to cross was suddenly filling from the cloudburst. Fortino raced across it, splashing water high on both sides.

  With Fortino’s wipers going full speed and barely able to keep up, Rio began to fill me in. The lodge where the killings happened, he explained, was located inside a vast nature preserve in the high-elevation forest. The men from Boquillas who had jobs there either worked in the lodge itself or guided hunts for wild turkey, black bear, and elk.

  Rio said that his father had been inside the lodge once, back when his dad was doing wildlife surveys for the preserve. “There’s an airstrip up there,” Rio said. “The lodge flies in groups from all over the world—have a mini-conference, bag an elk.”

  “Cut to the chase! What happened up at the lodge?”

  “Here’s what the police told Señora Madrid. Early yesterday morning, some men with automatic weapons burst into the lodge and killed some judges. Somebody was kidnapped as the killers were getting away. That’s all Señora Madrid knew.”

  “What about the helicopters?”

  “She said the federales didn’t say anything about them. I’m guessing Mexico asked the U.S. to help in the manhunt.”

  “But why?”

  “Maybe we could get there sooner—our closest army base is closer than theirs?”

  “Sounds like the lodge didn’t have enough security.”

  “They didn’t think they needed much, on account of how isolated they are.”

  “Judges? Why judges?”

  “All I can figure is, the judges who were meeting at the lodge were helping the government put the leaders of the drug cartels in jail. They must have been judges who weren’t corrupt, who couldn’t be bribed. One of the reasons the cartels have become so powerful is that they’ve been able to pay off government officials and law enforcement. The new president is fighting back. He’s sent in the army to help local police. People are getting killed on both sides, something like three thousand already this year. Kidnapping has gotten out of hand, especially in Mexico City.”

  “Who’s getting kidnapped?”

  “Business executives, their family members, officials, sometimes tourists. Some of the ransoms are in the millions.”

  “Seems pretty spooky, this happening in the mountains right above us.”

  “It shouldn’t affect us on the river. We just have to keep our eyes open, that’s all.”

  The storm kept up all the way back to Boquillas. Three times, Fortino made it through flooded swales in the road, and once we had to get out and push. We were pumped by the prospect of having a lot more water in the river to work with. I thought of Roxanne, and my cousin saying that tarantulas moving indoors was a sign that the weather was coming.

  It was three thirty AM and still raining, though not as hard, when we tromped into camp by the light of our headlamps. Before leaving, we had pulled the raft and the canoe onto high ground and tied them securely. On our return, we were thrilled to find them still tied but floating nicely on much higher water.

  Bone weary and ready to drop, we crawled into the tent and slipped into our sleeping sheets. I asked Rio if he had learned his Spanish at school and he said he did, but outside of class. It was mostly what the kids spoke. I asked how many kids were in the high school. He let out a yawn. “Last count, forty-seven.”

  “I like the sound of the rain on the tent,” I mused. “You think it will keep coming?”

  No reply. He was dead asleep. Half a minute later, so was I.

  Chapter 10

  The Wax Makers

  WE 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.”