CARLOS HAD US SPOTTED and was trying to row to shore from the middle of the river. The rowboat was going by almost in a blur. I didn’t think he had a chance of breaking into the eddy. Strong as he was, though, he was gaining on it.
At the last second the coyote managed to row out of the mainstream current and into the water surging upriver. At the moment, he was at the foot of the eddy and we were at its head, fifty yards upstream. He rested a second or two, staring at us, before he realized he needed to row, and row hard, to have any chance of landing his boat. Before he could act, a huge sucking whirlpool grabbed hold of the rowboat and spun it twice around before spitting it out. By the time Carlos got his bearings and put his oars back in the water, he was halfway up the eddy.
The current in the eddy was nearly as powerful as the current out on the river. It shot him upstream and past us, no closer to shore than fifty feet. At the head of the eddy, the mainstream current grabbed hold of him once more, and down the river the rowboat went like it had been shot out of a bow.
Would he be able to pull into the eddy for a second try? I didn’t want any part of his wrath, but for the boy’s sake, I had to hope they made it. Without a life jacket, Diego was doomed to drown if they didn’t.
The coyote rowed hard, Diego bailing all the while. For the second time, Carlos was able to pull into the eddy. The big whirlpool caught the rowboat once again, but not as squarely. He escaped it sooner.
This time, as he shot upstream, Carlos was angling toward the shore. Was he going to make it?
It was going to be close. I grabbed one of the gear straps and flew to the front of the raft with it, passing it under the grab line. I thought I might be able to attach the strap to the rowboat if I was quick enough. Their boat would be attached to ours, and ours was tied to a boulder.
Carlos didn’t know much about rowing. He was pushing with his oars instead of pulling, and that was a mistake. You can’t exert nearly the power when you’re pushing. “Closer!” I yelled, beckoning him in. “Closer, closer!”
Carlos yelled something at Diego in Spanish. Diego grabbed their tie-rope and threw it at me, but it went nowhere, just landed in the water. Carlos, with a few last pushes, was closing the gap. I leaned out as far as I could, ready to run my strap through the ring in the prow of the rowboat.
Diego crouched in the front of the boat, holding on with a death grip. Then he wasn’t holding on at all. He rose and leaned forward, reaching out toward me with both hands. I saw hope in his eyes, I saw desperation. He was close, but not close enough. They weren’t going to make it.
Suddenly, in the pouring rain, Diego scrambled onto the tossing rowboat’s triangular prow. He balanced there for a precarious instant, then leaped. I tried to catch him, but he fell into the river. I had a piece of him, though—I had him by the wrist. He reached with his other hand, and I hoisted him up to the raft.
The rowboat swept on by. Carlos looked stunned. Then he looked angry, extremely angry. At the head of the eddy, the surging river grabbed hold of the rowboat once again and sent it hurtling downstream. Carlos quit rowing; he must’ve been spent. The river shot him around the corner and out of sight.
I helped the boy out of the raft. Diego’s chest was heaving, and he was sobbing uncontrollably. It was all he could do to stand. “You’re okay; everything will be okay,” I told him.
His eyes, looking downstream, were full of fear. “Everything he told you was a lie,” Diego sobbed. “I could not warn you. He said he would kill me, kill both of you, if I even looked at you.”
“Don’t worry,” Rio said. “I don’t think you’ll see him again. We’ll take care of you, Diego.”
“It was all a lie! My mother is not in Chicago . . . he is no coyote. My mother is in Mexico City. My name is Diego Cervantes. I was with my father at a hotel in the mountains . . .”
Diego covered his eyes with his forearm and nearly crumpled to the ground. I had never seen anybody so overcome. “You don’t have to—,” I started to say.
The boy brushed his tears away. He needed to talk. “I was outside when it happened. My father was inside with the other two judges. I heard shooting, so much shooting inside the building. Four men with war rifles but no uniforms ran out of the lodge. One was this Carlos—”
Diego heaved for breath and went on. “A security man came to help—all he had was a small pistol. He wounded one of the criminals. Carlos killed him with many bullets right before my eyes. Carlos and the other three, they ran all different ways. More guards came, more shooting. I tried to run away but Carlos, he grabbed me and ran into the forest. He knew who I was! By then I figured out who they were: criminals who work for the drug lords and kill for money. I tried to break loose, but he knocked me down. That’s when he dropped the rifle and used his pistol instead. Watch out—he still has it! It shoots many bullets very fast. Two guards followed but they were afraid to shoot because of me. Carlos put a cloth through my mouth and dragged me with him. Too many trees, too many rocks, too many places to hide. Helicopters came much later. I saw them, but they never saw me.”
“It’s okay,” I told Diego. “It’s going to be okay.”
“It’s not going to be okay!” he wailed. “They killed my father. I know it!”
I knelt next to him and pulled him close. He bawled his eyes out. “You don’t know for sure,” I said. “You said you weren’t inside. Your father could have survived.”
Rio and I weren’t comforted by my hollow words, and neither was Diego. He told us his mother had always been afraid this would happen. Sooner or later it happened to everyone who stood up to the drug cartels.
“My father is honest,” Diego sobbed. “So were the other two judges who came to the mountains with us. They don’t take the bribes. They put the drug lords into prison for the rest of their lives. In Mexico City, we live in fear. So many kidnappings. My sisters and I go to the international school in an armored car. At the school, there are guards at every door.”
“You’re safe now,” I told him.
“How can you say that? Carlos has that pistol in his backpack, with extra ammunition. What if he comes back?”
“He got swept away,” Rio said. “I really don’t think he could get back here even if he tried. We’re going to camp in the cave. Make something to eat. You’ve been brave, really brave. Let’s get you out of the rain and the wind.”
We grabbed some gear and took Diego up to the cave. We left him with an energy bar and water, and went back to the boats. We carried the raft and the canoe well out of reach of the floodwater. All the while, we kept looking over our shoulders. “You really think he couldn’t make it to shore?” I asked.
“It’s a minor miracle he made it this far in that rowboat. There’s a rapid around the bend. Most likely he got swept into it and capsized. Without a life jacket, he’s history.”
“He stole the rowboat from the wax makers way upstream, don’t you figure, Rio?”
“For sure. He must’ve had it hidden nearby when he walked into camp yesterday morning. The Black Hawk patrolling the river never spotted him because he was floating at night. It wouldn’t have been that hard to do. The moon was up, and there weren’t any rapids. During the day he probably had the boat hidden in the cane.”
“I’m afraid there’s not much hope for Diego’s father. At the house where the baby was born, didn’t you hear that the judges were killed?”
“I did, but all the same, it’s good you told Diego not to give up hope.”
When we got back to the cave with our second load, Diego shared another fear with us. The cartels always killed the people they kidnapped, even children, if their families couldn’t pay the ransom. His family wasn’t wealthy.
Rio and I left the cave to fetch the rest of our camp gear. We weighted the raft and canoe with smooth stones to make sure that a gust of wind wouldn’t pick them up and throw them on the sharp limestone boulders, the cactus, or the catclaw mesquite. Our rescue knives from our life jackets were all we had in the way of weapons. We unclipped them, scabbards and all, and put them in the deep front pockets of our lightweight desert trousers. They were better than nothing.
Back in the cave, we set up the table and chairs. A flat, knee-high rock served as a third chair. We rigged the stove and gas bottle, spread our tarp on the ground, and set out our cooking stuff. We also brought out all our remaining food items. It wasn’t a very impressive inventory, but we weren’t going to starve.
There’d be no skimping this evening, that was for sure. We were going to use three of our soup packets—Diego chose chicken noodle—and make a big pot of pasta. Diego gave the nod to the four-cheese sauce packet to flavor it. We ate our fill looking out the mouth of the cave, through the unceasing rain, to the flooding river. A big cottonwood tree floated by. No doubt Rio and Diego were thinking the same thing I was: The slope below the cave was so steep, we wouldn’t be able to see Carlos if he was sneaking up on us. It would also be impossible to hear him, with the cave roof amplifying the sound of the river.
After we rinsed our plates and put away the dishes, Rio brought out his cards. We taught Diego how to play Hearts, and he caught on fast after a couple of rounds. After four rounds, with Rio in the lead, the light at the back of the grotto was getting dimmer and dimmer. Diego grew increasingly anxious, glancing at the mouth of the cave as if his tormenter would appear at any moment.
Rio fished a new trick from the bottom of his dry bag—a couple of candles. The candlelight had a soothing effect on Diego, and we kept playing. It wasn’t until it was pitch-dark outside the cave, with Diego in second place, that we called it a day. We put away the things we had spread out on the tarp, inflated our ground pads, and lay down to sleep. Rio was the odd man out. He claimed that a kid from Terlingua didn’t need a ground pad.
Sandwiched between the two of us, Diego fell asleep fast. He had an angel’s face. It broke my heart to think he would wake to the loss of his father.