ARIEL HAD HER RADIO dialed to KYOTE Coyote Radio when Amanda came on the air with the intro to her interview with Rio. Ariel and I were listening in from her place, under the ramada. “Just be yourself,” Ariel had told him.
It must have helped that Rio’s buddies weren’t there watching him. It was just Rio and Amanda in the station’s tiny space in the building behind the Terlingua Trading Company, and he hit it out of the park. I wished my parents could’ve heard the interview. They would’ve discovered how golden he was, and how well he handled himself.
We spent the next day with Ariel recovering the raft and the rest of the gear we’d left at the takeout. A day and a half of desert sunshine had dried the road out enough for us to get through. Halfway down to the river we encountered a sheriff’s department roadblock. The fish camp was off-limits until the manhunt was over. When we told them who we were and what we were after, they escorted us to the river. The sheriff scooped us with an update: Carlos hadn’t been found, but his backpack had, with his weapon inside. The backpack had been discovered between Upper and Lower Madison, caked in mud, when the floodwater subsided. “Evidently he wasn’t able to hang on to it as he swam the rapids and tried to get to shore,” the sheriff said.
We asked if there was any indication that Carlos was alive. The sheriff thought long and hard before answering. “Can’t say,” he replied. To our mind, that was a yes.
As we loaded up our stuff, a couple of helicopters were working the area. We could pretty well guess that the United States and Mexico had boots on the ground as well. Carlos was probably hiding in some rat hole, waiting them out. We weren’t very confident that he was going to get caught.
Late afternoon, as we drove into the ghost town and laid eyes on the Starlight, we knew something was up. The parking lot was packed, and it included a number of white vans with satellite dishes. “Hmmm . . .,” I said. “What’s this all about?”
“Rio’s radio interview, bet you anything,” Ariel said.
Rio had Ariel try to sneak her pickup past the Starlight, but they were on the lookout for us. Somebody pointed, and somebody else yelled, and suddenly we had a pack of media types on our heels.
“You might as well enjoy it,” Ariel told my cousin. “It’s going to be great for the ghost town. Think of the gas that’s going to get sold, and the meals, and the rooms, and the art, and the souvenirs!”
“I’d rather run Upper Madison again,” Rio groaned.
“Really?” I said.
“Not really . . . I can handle this . . . I can handle this . . . but you have to help me, Dylan.”
“As long as you’re the front man,” I told him.
I had the passenger window down, and was taking in the sights and the sounds. This was unbelievable. A couple guys with big video cameras on their shoulders were already filming. I suppose Ariel’s old truck with the oars and the raft frame lashed to the overhead racks was just the sort of material they were looking to shoot. We found out later they’d been filming around the ghost town all afternoon, killing time making “B roll” while waiting for us to get back.
We never even made it home. Covered with road dust and wearing our beat-up straw hats from the river, we did three interviews in the next two hours. The first was with the Midland/Odessa station, the second was with the El Paso station, and the third was with the San Antonio station. It turned out that the interviewers, and the crews, too, had all been in Terlingua Ghost Town before, covering the annual world-famous chili cook-offs. They were huge, apparently.
The TV reporters all wanted their interview to take place on Terlingua’s world-famous porch, with the Chisos Mountains in the background.
That’s where we did them, out in front of the Starlight. With my sunglasses to hide behind, it wasn’t that bad. Rio kept pulling me in. What could I do?
The sweetest part was ending up the last interview as sunset was lighting up the battlements of the Chisos Mountains. I was saying how much I loved the ghost town, and the Big Bend, and the river. That I’d be back first chance I got.
Then it was over. They told us we would be on the late news in about an hour. We headed into the Starlight; all we cared about was supper. The place was packed, just jumping. A cowboy band was playing. There was a line to get seated, but they brought us right in, me and Rio and Ariel. Yolanda and Georgene and Amanda were waiting at a reserved table. We got a round of applause. This was crazy!
The owner of the Starlight came over, shook our hands, and said that everything was on the house. We ordered the biggest steaks they had. While we were waiting, the cowboy band called Rio up to sing with them.
The song Rio sang was that old Marty Robbins tune, “El Paso,” one of my all-time favorites. In the very first line, Rio dropped “El Paso” and replaced it with “Terlingua,” so it went like this: “Out in the West Texas town of Terlingua, I fell in love with a Mexican girl . . .”
Rio knocked the place dead. When he sat down I asked him if it was true about the Mexican girl. “Not tellin’,” he replied.
It was ten thirty by the time we got home. We were sitting up talking about the river when Yolanda knocked on the door a half hour later. My parents had called, and they wanted me to call back.
Hmmm . . . , I thought. Back in Asheville, it’s midnight. I bet they’ve decided against letting me hang here uncle-less for three more days, and go home on the day I was ticketed for.
Over at the Trading Company, I punched up home with more than a little apprehension. Here’s what my parents wanted to talk about: Rio’s interview with KYOTE in Terlingua, Texas. Turns out KYOTE Coyote Radio was an affiliate of National Public Radio, and my parents always listen to NPR. Rio’s interview played in Asheville a few hours ago, and they’d heard the whole thing. Rio was fantastic, and all was forgiven. Rio sounded so mature, they said, and so modest. He never came out and said it, but we had saved the judge’s son!
My mother had something else to tell me. Soon after the interview, her brother called from Alaska. Uncle Alan hadn’t heard the interview but she filled him in on it. They had a long talk about the two of us and what we’d done. They decided we were stand-up guys, even though we were also numbskulls.
My mom told me that both of them were tempted to rush to Terlingua ASAP, but decided against it. They thought we should have the full time together that my plane ticket allowed. Not only that, they were talking about my whole family coming out to the ghost town in late October for the chili cook-offs and the Day of the Dead. The weather was always perfect then, and my mother would love the Lost Lizard B&B. Her brother was guaranteeing that it was scorpion proof.
“So, are we really going to do it?” I asked my mom. “Come out to Terlingua this fall?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” she said. “I’m overdue, as you know.”
Things were looking up. Way up.
It wasn’t hard to kill the next three days. We put a lot of miles on Rio’s mountain bike and his dad’s. I still had that hundred dollars I hadn’t taken on the river, and it was burning a hole in my pocket. I stopped by the quilt shop to see if they had any quilts made by the women of Boquillas del Carmen. They had dozens. I picked one out for my mother and had it shipped home.
I tried to track down another souvenir from Boquillas, something for myself. On the river, Rio had mentioned that in addition to quilts, Fronteras Unlimited also imported walking sticks from Boquillas as well as scorpions made of copper wire. I struck out on both counts. The TV crews had snatched them all up. Oh well; I could look for them in the fall.
On my last day we hiked to the brink of Santa Elena Canyon, lay on our bellies, and looked eight hundred feet straight down to Rock Slide Rapid. From above, I wouldn’t have thought it was runnable. Rio said it wasn’t as bad as it looked. We talked about paddling it in the fall.
On my fly day, we had to get up early to catch my eight AM bus out of Alpine. The sun was rising over the Chisos Mountains as Ariel drove us north. The big open desert sprinkled with mountains no longer looked like the far side of the moon. With Alpine in our sights, I spied a sign that said DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS. I got the threatening tone but couldn’t make out what it actually meant, so I asked. My cousin got a good laugh out of that. He explained that it was the Lone Star State’s antilitter motto.
Pretty soon we were standing on the curb in front of the High Desert Hotel, waiting for the Greyhound to lope into town. Rio asked me what the little cardboard box in the top of my backpack was all about. I said there was no such animal in my backpack as far as I knew. He said I should check.
I did, and I found a small box like he said I would. Inside was a wicked-looking scorpion fashioned from copper wire, cleverly braided. Its stinger was curled up and ready to strike. The eyes were made of small blue beads. “Awesome,” I said, holding it out on my palm. Rio beamed.
There was more to come. Ariel had a bright-colored Guatemalan bag over her shoulder. She gave it to me and said the bag was for my mother. “Look inside,” Rio said.
“What’s inside the bag is for you,” Ariel added.
Here came the bus. I had just enough time to undo the bubble wrap and see what this present was all about. It was one of her hubcaps, with brightly colored geometric designs surrounding a canyon scene, a bird’s-eye view of the Lower Canyons. There were two boats way down there on the winding river. One was a blue raft, and the other was a red canoe.
I just lost it. So did they.
All too soon the driver was throwing my duffel in the baggage compartment. We said our good-byes and our see-you-soons. I boarded the bus and took a seat on their side of the street. I had time to give them two fist pumps in honor of Diego before the bus blasted off in a cloud of diesel.
I have only one more thing to report. At the airport in El Paso, there was a headline in the newspaper that grabbed my attention on the way to the gate. It went like this: FUGITIVE CAPTURED ALIVE IN MEXICAN DESERT.
The story included a photograph of Carlos snarling like a rabid dog. It came as no surprise when I saw that his name wasn’t Carlos. One of Mexico’s 10 Most Wanted was on his way to prison.