Take Me to the River

by Will Hobbs

  Still suspicious, Carlos was at least listening to reason. I could see it in his cruel features. This might be working out to his advantage after all.

  Carlos ordered Diego to come ashore with the guidebook. Our captor retreated with it to a rock ledge at the back of the beach. He put the pistol down and began to turn the pages. For the time being, the storm in his brain seemed to have subsided. Rio, Diego, and I waited on the raft. We ate the last three energy bars.

  The swallows began to work the river again, and the weather continued to improve. A magnificent double rainbow spanned the canyon downstream. Carlos looked to the sky with apprehension. I wondered why rapidly improving weather had him worried. The answer hit me: The storm had given him cover. Airplanes and helicopters would soon be able to fly again. He might not have much time left to get off the river and vanish into Mexico.

  I ran this line of thought past Rio. He agreed, and said that Carlos was getting more and more desperate. We better figure out how to shake him, and soon. If a helicopter showed up—Big Bend’s River Ranger might come looking for us—there was no telling what Carlos would do.

  “What are you two jawing about?” Carlos barked.

  “The rainbows . . . the weather,” Rio said.

  “Lots of rapids the next fifteen miles. Twelve miles from here is a rapid where it says, ‘Bad at any level.’”

  “Upper Madison Falls. Worst rapid on the Rio Grande. We’ll have to go to shore and scout that one for sure.”

  “That’s at Mile 55. It says the deep canyons end at Mile 63.”

  “That’s right. Twenty miles downstream from here.”

  Slowly, Carlos kept turning the pages. Each map covered about five miles. “Yes, it’s true, and the land is flatter, as you said. I see a few roads on the Mexican side, but there is no telling where they go.”

  “Ranches, would be my guess.”

  “But how far from the river are the ranches?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Who is meeting you, and when?”

  “A driver from Terlingua—I don’t know who it’s going to be—three days from now. We’re ahead of schedule.”

  “What mile you get picked up?”

  “Mile 83—Dryden Crossing. Forty miles from here.”

  Carlos turned another page and discovered something that made him smile. “Why didn’t you tell me this before, Texas?”

  “What’s that, Carlos?”

  “Half a mile before we get to your road at Dryden Crossing, there is a trail to a village in Mexico. The village of Agua Verde is only a mile from the river! There is a landing strip there, and a road south. Can you recognize the trail from the river?”

  “If I was watching for it. I’ve never been through the Lower Canyons before. Just spent a lot of time looking at that guidebook, wishing I could.”

  “Wishing you could go through a rapid that’s ‘bad at any level’?”

  “Most people portage.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Carry everything around the side. It takes hours. We would camp at the end of the portage. That’s what my dad usually does.”

  “I don’t think so . . . I couldn’t get to Agua Verde today if we did that. Look, the storm is breaking up. I’m not staying on the river another day. I think you can row Upper Madison Falls, hot shot.”

  “I won’t know till we get there.”

  “I agree,” Carlos said with a sly grin. “Let’s not waste time talking about it.”

  “Fine by me,” Rio said. “Hold on a few minutes, though. The canoe is going to be nothing but trouble, as you’ve already seen. The water is just too big. See that brush downstream? Dylan and I will hide it in back of the brush . . . twenty minutes, no more, we’ll be back.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Carlos said with the same sly grin. “There, I thought about it. You’re right, Texas, that canoe is nothing but trouble, and your cousin shouldn’t be risking his life in it.”

  He wheeled around with his pistol and sprayed a clip full of rounds down the length of the canoe, low along the hull. The sudden, shocking bursts from the fully automatic pistol registered with brutal effect.

  Quickly, professionally, Carlos jammed a new clip into place.

  “What did you do that for?” Rio demanded.

  To remind us he’s a murderer, I thought. Diego, who clung to my side, didn’t need reminding.

  Carlos laughed. “To save me twenty minutes. And to save you an extra trip to this wasteland to come and get it.”

  Carlos announced that I would take his place in the front of the raft and make sure his chicken stayed in the boat. Carlos would be riding on the tarped gear behind Rio, “because the view will be better from the back.”

  We were soon underway. I suppose I was in a state of shock. With so many bad rapids coming up, I should have felt fortunate to be riding in the raft. As it was, I felt numb. My whole life I had taken freedom for granted. There was nothing sweeter, unless it was life itself.

  Diego and I sat on the front thwart, centered in the raft in front of Rio. I thought about something Diego had said, that kidnapping victims, children included, were always killed if their families couldn’t make ransom. Somehow, when it came time to make our move—whatever that might be—we had to make sure we didn’t leave Diego behind.

  Was there any chance, at the end of the line, that this vermin would let the three of us go?

  Why would he, knowing we would put the authorities on him first chance we got?

  Chapter 21

  Bad at Any Level

  IT ALL CAME DOWN to this: twenty more miles of the deep canyons, and twenty miles beyond. They were going to go fast, real fast. Rio told Carlos to hand him the mile-by-mile guide so he could read up on the rapids to come. Carlos did, grudgingly. When Rio immediately handed it forward to me, saying he had to keep his hands on the oars, Carlos cursed him, but let it go. His own hide was at stake.

  As much to calm my own nerves as well as Rio’s and Diego’s, I filled them in on what we were seeing. The Cañon Caballo Blanco—the Canyon of the White Horse—came up quickly on the right. We were approaching the signature geological feature of the Lower Canyons: the Bullis Fold, where the layers of limestone, rising from the Texas side of the river to a height of sixteen hundred feet, are folded an eye-popping 90 degrees. Immediately before the fold, three canyons in quick succession would enter from the Texas side of the river. Directly under the fold, as the river takes a horseshoe bend, we would encounter Bullis Fold Rapid.

  “Read me what it says about the rapid,” Rio said tersely.

  “Here goes: ‘Bullis Fold Rapid, Class 2-plus. Beware of standing waves and unpredictable currents in these narrows. Dangerous whirlpools and logjams occur during floods. Exercise extreme caution.’”

  “Thanks. That’s what I needed to know.”

  As we rounded the corner, I spied the three canyons entering on our left, and dead ahead, at a sharp bend in the river, the Bullis Fold on the Texas side. It was quite a sight: layer upon layer of cliffy limestone shooting from the river, soaring, then folding into horizontal cliff bands with steep talus slopes in between.

  Suddenly the entire spectacle was lit with glowing sunshine, the first to light the canyon in days.

  The rocks came alive. “Beautiful,” I said to Diego.

  “Magnifico,” he agreed.

  “Keep it in your mind so you can describe it to your mother.”

  “Do you really believe I will see her again?” he whispered.

  “Don’t give up hope, Diego. One thing I promise you, we won’t abandon you. You’re staying with us.”

  He squeezed my hand. “Heads up!” I called to Rio. “Look, we’re coming up on the narrows—Bullis Fold Rapid—and there’s trees in the river.”

  “Got it,” our boatman replied grimly.

  This wasn’t going to be easy. As the canyon walls narrowed to a bottleneck, the flooding river couldn’t pass through without boiling chaotically back
upon itself. There was no current line to follow downstream. I saw nothing but tremendous sucking whirlpools from wall to wall. To make it even worse, there were trees in the whirlpools, including huge cottonwoods.

  Rio had to keep off those trees, and he knew it. The first whirlpool caught us, spinning us round and round, and he fought desperately to escape it. He did, only to be caught by another, more powerful whirlpool that was holding two cottonwoods.

  Just when it appeared we would be crushed between the trees, Rio put his entire body into his strokes, pulling with everything he had and more. We were thrown spinning into yet another whirlpool. This was no Class 2. In a flood, these narrows could be every bit as deadly as the worst rapids.

  Splayed across the blue tarp behind Rio, Carlos clung tenaciously to the straps across the load. Nothing was going to pry him loose.

  What about his pistol—where was it?

  Just inside his backpack, no doubt, clipped beside him. The backpack was unzipped at the top.

  One by one, Rio put the whirlpools behind him. The last one threw us onto a current surging downstream at last. We rode it around a horseshoe bend, under a cave and some arches on the Texas side, and on to Palmas Rapid a mile below.

  Palmas, rated a Class 2, wasn’t even a 1. It was all washed out. On we sped to Rodeo Rapid at Mile 50.

  Supposedly another Class 2, Rodeo looked like 4-plus. The right side was studded with boat-eating holes—huge boiling reversals on the downstream side of submerged boulders. Most of the river was pouring down the left side, against a steep slope of smooth rock. The wave train waiting below the entry had more standing waves in a row than I’d ever seen. From above the rapid, they looked taller than the raft was long.

  Rio stood up on his seat to get the best possible view down the length of the rapid, sat back down, and announced we were going to run the big wave train down the left side. “Hang on!” he ordered as we raced down the tongue. “Dylan, you jump on the oars if I get blown out!”

  “Don’t even think of it!” I yelled. “You’re not wearing a life jacket!”

  This was going to be bigger than huge. I ran my hand through the harness we had rigged around Diego’s waist and grasped the aluminum crossbar behind us.

  Rio could have cheated this rapid, I knew, by taking a line just to the right of the wave train. I knew why he wanted to run the gut. He knew something that Carlos didn’t: The ride was generally the wildest in the back. Sometimes in big water a raft tends to buckle just behind the boatman. When it buckles bad enough, the back of the raft becomes a catapult, and sends people flying.

  No such luck. We took the huge ride through the troughs and over the tops of the crashing waves, Carlos yelling, “Ole! Ole!” all the way through.

  Four fast miles below Rodeo, a landmark the guidebook told me to be on the lookout for suddenly appeared. Burro Bluff, on the Texas side, was unmistakable. Its sheer cliffs, where peregrine falcons nested, rose seven hundred feet from the river.

  Here was the reason I was supposed to be keeping an eye out for Burro Bluff. At its foot lay Upper Madison Falls, “bad at any level.”

  I was sick to my stomach just hearing the roar as we drew near. “Dylan,” Diego said anxiously, “what’s that sound?”

  “It’s a big rapid, but don’t worry. Rio’s going to take us to shore before we get there so we can take a look at it.”

  “Which side does it say to portage on?” Rio called. His nerves were showing.

  “It says, ‘At high water, portage on the Mexican side.’”

  “We’ll see about that,” Carlos yelled from the back of the raft.

  “It says to land at the mouth of the side canyon, the Cañon del Tule,” I instructed Rio, “just above the head of the rapid.”

  Rio ferried hard to the right side of the river. Landing there turned out to be impossible. The normally dry side canyon was flash flooding. There was no place to pull in. Did that mean we were going to have to run Upper Madison Falls without a chance to scout it? What chance would we possibly have?

  I knew better than to speak. This very moment, Rio had to make a split-second decision. He had his eye on a small eddy on the Mexican side, just above the drop. Was it reachable? To get there, he would have to cut across the turbulent outwash from the flooding side canyon.

  Rio pivoted decisively, and began to row hard across the crashing waves. If one of his oars so much as slipped out of his hand, there wouldn’t be time to recover it. We would be swept down the right side of the rapid, which was choked with boulders big as Easter Island statues, impossible to run.

  Rio won through his battle with the fast water. He pulled hard into the bottom of the eddy, swung the boat around, and bumped the shore front on. I leaped onto a ledge and tied the raft to a salt cedar.

  Rio came off the raft with Diego and the guidebook. Carlos followed with his pistol in his waistband.

  First thing Rio and I did was to see if we could locate the portage trail. “What are you guys doing?” Carlos called suspiciously.

  “Looking for how to walk the raft around the rapid!” I hollered back.

  We found neither a trail nor walkable ground. The portage route was underwater, completely flooded out. “We can wait here until the river goes down,” I said to Rio, “even if there’s not a place to camp. What’s he gonna do, shoot us?”

  Rio missed my lame attempt at a joke. “You know something I don’t? Of course he would, and he’d start with you. Let’s scout the rapid, see what we see.”

  Chapter 22

  The Deal Goes Down

  RIO AND I CLAMBERED to the top of a high, flat boulder to see what we were up against. Upper Madison Falls looked nothing like the photo at low water in the mile-by-mile guide taken from high above, atop Burro Bluff. The photo showed the river dividing after the first drop into two rock-studded channels separated by an immense boulder field down the middle. The boulder field looked like an island of sorts.

  In flood, the Upper Madison we were looking at was a whole different animal. It was huge and it was fast, with only a few rocks showing. Our problem wasn’t rocks. Our problem—the ugliest, most lethal obstacle I’d ever seen in a river—was logs. Early in the rapid, at the head of the all-but-submerged island, a monumental logjam had formed. A tremendous amount of debris had been pinned there by the force of the current. At the base of the logjam were the trunks of several huge cottonwoods. At both ends of the logjam, limbs with bright green leaves were sawing up and down in the river.

  I was sick at the thought of flying down off the top of the rapid directly at those pinned trees, and trying to row to one side or the other.

  Rio was staring at the logjam with laserlike intensity.

  Carlos climbed to the top of a nearby boulder. Above the roar of the rapid, he called to Rio, “What do you think, Capitán?”

  Rio didn’t answer. He kept staring at that logjam, and the whitewater pillowing off it.

  After studying the logjam even longer, Rio turned to Carlos. “The portage trail is flooded out. We should wait right here for the river to go down.”

  “That would take days.”

  “Probably so. But that’s what I say we should do. You just called me Capitán.”

  Carlos pulled his persuader from his waistband and waved it back and forth. “Capitán, sí, but I am El Comandante. Can’t you go around one side of those logs or the other?”

  “That logjam is going to come up real fast. If I lose control of an oar . . . do you have any idea what would happen if we got swept against those logs?”

  “Tell me, Texas.”

  “The raft would flip over in a nanosecond. We’d all be thrown under the water. Guess what’s underwater in a logjam like that.”

  “Tell me, Texas.”

  “Branches. The power of the current would pin our bodies underwater against the branches. The current has more force than you can imagine. That logjam is a death trap. Trees in the river are the worst hazard there is. Does that explain it for
you?”

  Carlos scratched the stubble on his jaw. “You still have no idea who you’re dealing with, do you, Texas? I know what death looks like, and I am not afraid of it. There is only one thing that I fear, and that is prison. If I wait here like you say, I am going to prison. If we get in that boat, and you are rowing for your life with no life jacket, you are going to do your very best, and I will leave this river behind in a couple hours. We go our separate ways.”

  “You promise you’ll let us live, then, and you’ll leave Diego with us?”

  “My little chicken, too? You drive a hard bargain, El Capitán!”

  “Do you promise, or not?”

  Carlos laughed. “Sí, sí, I promise, by all that is holy, including the grave of my mother.”

  What a farce, I thought. Why was Rio even bothering?

  “Okay,” Rio said grimly. “Let’s run the sucker.”

  I was sick, just sick to the pit of my stomach. As I followed Rio down off the boulder, I knew all too well I might have only minutes to live. My head was ringing, my heart was pounding . . . I thought I was going to heave.

  I stopped in my tracks, and that’s exactly what I did—bent over and puked. Nothing much came out of my mouth. I’d hardly been putting anything into it. I was wracked by wave after wave of dry heaves.

  Finally it was over, and Rio was at my side. “Sorry, primo,” I told him. “I lost it, I guess.”

  “I’m the one who’s sorry.”

  “What for?”

  “For getting you into this fix.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you do. From the very beginning—”

  “Rio,” I said. “I knew the score. I knew what I was doing, and I’ve only got myself to blame.”

  “Hey!” Carlos roared. “You guys get over here!”

  My cousin reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. “Now listen, Dylan. No time to explain, but I have something in mind. When I yell ‘Jump,’ you stay in the boat, and you keep Diego in the boat. You don’t jump, got it?”