DIEGO AND MY COUSIN and I climbed aboard the helicopter and we lifted off. The direct route to Terlingua Ghost Town took us up the muddy brown river, over the twists, turns, and horseshoe bends of the Lower Canyons. The river from above, winding through that deep corridor of solid limestone, was a sight I would never forget.
As Tony Medina approached Upper Madison Falls, he was flying well above the range of Carlos’s weapon. I had a window seat, and was keeping my eyes peeled for the fugitive. I spotted Lower Madison Falls, and pretty soon we were over Upper Madison.
The logjam was still there, at the head of the island that was submerged only the day before. Overnight, with the water receding, dozens of boulders had popped up like dragons’ teeth.
My eyes went back to the logjam. Where was Carlos? Granted, I wasn’t looking through binoculars like the River Ranger was, but I didn’t really need them. I should have been able to spot the orange life jacket or the white shirt. I saw only logs and debris. Carlos had been on those logs within the hour, and now he was gone.
Rio and Diego and I had headsets that enabled us to hear what Tony and Rob were saying. Fifty minutes earlier, the suspect knew he’d been spotted. He even waved back. When the helicopter continued downstream, he knew it would soon come across us. He decided to jump in the river and try his chances in the rapids rather than wait for capture.
For the next fifteen minutes we backtracked, buzzing three or four miles of the canyon below the logjam, but failed to spot him.
The search-and-rescue helicopter showed up and hovered a few hundred yards away from us. We listened to the chatter back and forth. The other pilot was going to continue the search but attempt no rescue. Law enforcement and the armed forces on both sides of the border would be joining in. The search-and-rescue pilot said to tell the judge’s son that the Mexican consulate in El Paso had already been notified that Diego was soon to arrive in Terlingua Ghost Town. His parents would be hearing soon if they hadn’t already.
Diego was sitting right across from me. Despite the radio crackle, he understood. He was positively glowing. Rio and I reached out, and the three of us clasped hands.
Tony wished the other pilot good hunting and we flew upriver. It wasn’t long before I was looking down at the Hallie Stillwell Bridge and the abandoned village of La Linda. There was the white church with the twin bell towers we had seen from the river.
A few minutes after that, as we passed over the downstream mouth of Boquillas Canyon, I spotted the wax makers working at their vat, and their burros. Before long we left the canyon behind, and the village of Boquillas came into view. Here we left the river and made a beeline for Terlingua Ghost Town.
We landed only a couple blocks from the Starlight Theatre, on a basketball court. Half-court to be exact. The hoop was askew and missing a net. This is where Rio and I would have spent our time shooting hoops if we had bailed out at the bridge instead of forging ahead into the Lower Canyons. I shuddered to think what would have become of Diego.
Rio climbed out of the chopper, then me. I turned around to catch Diego, and planted him on terra firma. Rob told us to check in with Ariel first thing. She had been following the storm on her computer, and was worried sick about us. We promised we would, said our thank-yous and good-byes, and waved to our friends as they lifted off.
In the heat of late morning, the ghost town was pretty much deserted. Rio and I got a few waves as we walked past the Starlight, river bags over our shoulders and Diego in tow. I got the idea that seeing Rio come off a river trip was nothing new around the ghost town. Unlike Ariel, those Terlinguans who just waved had no notion that we had gotten personally acquainted with Dolly. It was just as well. We didn’t want to stop and talk. All we wanted was to get clean and find something to eat.
We trudged up the hill, passing Rio’s driveway by in favor of Ariel’s. Her bus came into view, and we quickened our steps. There she was, painting in the shade of her ramada.
We were halfway down her driveway when Ariel looked up and saw what might have been the filthiest, most banged-up trio ever to come off the Rio Grande. She shrieked and came running, paintbrush in hand. We were soon smothered with hugs and kisses and daubed with red paint. Our Terlingua homecoming couldn’t have been sweeter.
“Did you meet a new friend on the river?” Ariel asked, meaning Diego. “Don’t tell me—I’ve seen his face before.”
In a second, she had it. She’d seen a picture of Diego on TV, on the Midland/Odessa station. She was beside herself. Right behind us, a Jeep pulled into Ariel’s driveway. It was her friend Yolanda from the Terlingua Trading Company. Yolanda fussed over the three of us, wanting to hear all about it. Through the trading post window, she had seen us get out of the Big Bend helicopter. She didn’t rush out to greet us because she had just taken a call from the Mexican consulate in El Paso. She was on hold, waiting for the consul himself to pick up. Finally he did. The consul told her he would be arriving in three hours to pick up Diego Cervantes, the boy who had been kidnapped and was being flown to the ghost town.
“Clothes!” Yolanda cried. “The boy needs clean clothes.”
“And a meal—for the three of them,” Ariel added.
“And hot showers,” I chipped in.
The showers we would take care of at Rio’s. The clothes search would begin with a family that had a seven-year-old boy. A lady named Georgene was going to fix us lunch. Georgene owned the Lost Lizard B&B just down the street and always kept a full refrigerator. She had the best patio in town and loved to feed people.
Yolanda left in a hurry to get Georgene started on lunch. Ariel made a successful call to the ghost town mother who had the seven-year-old boy. We headed around Ariel’s back fence for home and those hot showers.
There was no one there to greet us but Roxanne. When Diego saw her, he about jumped out of his skin. Once they were properly introduced, he was cool with it. He hadn’t known that tarantulas are harmless.
I’m going to fast-forward to two o’clock that afternoon, when the Mexican consul arrived from El Paso. The U.S. Army brought him on a medevac helicopter, not that Diego needed a medical evacuation. When the consul stepped out of the helicopter, he got a rousing ovation from a crowd of more than fifty. News travels fast in a small town.
The consul got a welcoming speech from the owner of Terlingua Ghost Town. Who knew that the ghost town had an owner? Everybody but me and Diego, apparently. The consul, a dignified man with flowing white hair and a full white mustache, gave a brief yet eloquent speech. It ended to applause and whoops and hollers when he shook Rio’s hand and mine. This was a bit much for Rio. Some of his high school buddies had somehow heard what was up, and had raced from far-flung corners of the county to be there. “Speech, Rio!” they chanted. My cousin would’ve crawled under a rock if there’d been one handy.
Pretty quick, we were saying good-bye to Diego. He called us his hermanos—his brothers. He said he would never forget, and that his family would always be grateful. He hoped that Carlos didn’t drown, that he would soon be caught, and that his worst nightmare—life in prison—would come true.
Diego waved from the open door of the helicopter. He was wearing jeans and a Terlingua Youth Soccer shirt that pictured a skeleton-kid dribbling a ball off his knee. He gave Rio and me two quick fist pumps and one more wave good-bye.
As the chopper lifted off, the whole crowd was waving. There wasn’t a dry eye to be seen. Rio and I were still wiping tears when Rio was mobbed by his friends and a young woman named Amanda from KYOTE Coyote Radio.
Who knew that the ghost town had a radio station? Everybody but me. Amanda wanted an interview, and she wanted it now. She had her tape recorder in hand, and her microphone was at the ready. “How ’bout sunset?” Rio said. “Right here on the porch.” He told her he had promised to call his dad in Alaska on this date and right around this time, which turned out to be true. His father was in between his first and second trips on the Alsek River, and had arranged the call with Rio shortly after arriving in Alaska, not that Rio had ever mentioned it to me.
“I’m going to have to take some lumps,” Rio said. “Me not telling you and your family, like I was supposed to, that he wasn’t even going to be here, that’s not going to go over so good.”
“How about the river trip? Is he going to be as cool with that as you thought?”
“Maybe not,” Rio allowed, and went into the Starlight to make his call.
I had a call of my own to make, and lumps to take. I called from next door, at the Terlingua Trading Company. Naturally I was hoping that nobody would pick up, and I could leave a message. Guess who answered. That’s right, my mother.
Where do I even start? I asked myself. I began with a cheerful “I just got back from the river!”
“Did you guys have a good time?”
“Incredible!”
“How’d you like your uncle Alan?”
I held my breath. The clock was ticking. “Uh, actually, he was in Alaska.”
It went downhill from there. The next subject that came up was the weather. Back home, they’d been worrying about Dolly. “Were you anywhere near the storm when it brushed the Big Bend?”
“Actually, Mom, we were right in it. We got back early because the river was so high and so fast.”
Were any of the rapids dangerous, she wanted to know.
Only the one with a logjam in it, I told her.
“Did you know there was a violent incident near the Big Bend, in the mountains in Mexico?”
“Uh . . . not until we ran into the kidnapper . . . and the boy who got kidnapped.”
Well, that’s all I’m going to say on the subject of this phone call. It lasted about an hour, and I did some serious apologizing. My mom used the D-word—disappointed—five or six times. That about killed me. She forgave me before it was over, though, but only because I’d lived through it in one piece.