Take Me to the River Read Free

bizarre-looking vegetation I was seeing out the window. In no time he had me calling out the names, like giant dagger yucca, sotol, mesquite, and creosote bush. He also pointed out landmarks as we passed them by: Double Diamond Ranch, Cathedral Mountain, Calamity Creek Wash, Butcherknife Hill, Nine Point Mesa, Fizzie Flat, Camel’s Hump, the Christmas Mountains.
    We were more than an hour into the drive without having passed through a town of any description. No gas stations, virtually no buildings other than a few double-wide trailers. My cousin Rio lived beyond the rim of the known world.
    The sky was spectacular, with thunderheads trailing dry rain. It was so dry out here the rain actually evaporated before it hit the ground. With another bend in the road, a new mountain range soared from the desert floor. This one was so high, clouds were snagging on its tall trees and stone towers and pinnacles. This range was like one gigantic fortress, its battlements lit up by the most glorious rainbow I had seen in my life. “Unbelievable,” I muttered. “What are those mountains called?”
    â€œThe Chisos. Along with the Rio Grande itself, they’re the heart of the Big Bend.”
    At last we rolled into civilization, a town, or maybe just a haphazard collection of buildings strung along the road on the hardscrabble flats below Bee Mountain. The sign on the post office said Terlingua, but it wasn’t the Terlingua I was looking for. This one had a couple of motels, the state highway department, a quilt shop, a café with gas pumps, and somewhere up ahead, the Terlingua School and a small grocery.
    The cost of gas was a jaw dropper. Back home it was pushing $4.40, the worst ever. Way out here it was $5.19. At the only intersection in town, with the national park posted straight ahead, L.B. took a right. We passed between two river companies, Rio Bravo Adventures and Blazing Paddles. It was nearly eight PM local time, and both were closed. My stomach, still on Eastern Time, was declaring mutiny. A road sign promised relief: TERLINGUA GHOST TOWN—5 MILES .
    â€œDon’t expect things to be like they are back home, like supper at suppertime,” I remembered my mother telling me. What was the plan, I wondered—eat at the Starlight or at Uncle Alan’s?
    We were headed west, directly into the setting sun. The pavement was rough, and the road traveled the contours of the desert like a sidewinder. The sun-tortured landscape looked like it had been dumped out of a sack after the rest of the world had been made.

Chapter 3
Burger Night at the Starlight
    W E CREPT PAST THE ghost-town cemetery. The graves were mounded with bare dirt and flat stones. Rio’s mother was buried here, I remembered. When Rio was only three, she died somewhere along those eighty miles I had just traveled. She was on her way back from grocery shopping in Alpine.
    As we rolled past the rocky ruins of old buildings, the rounded facade of the Starlight Theatre came into view. “Where’s the ghost town?” I asked.
    â€œYou’re in it,” Cannon replied.
    â€œWhere do people live?”
    L.B. pointed at the hillside beyond. At first glance it looked more like a rock pile than anything else. On second glance, below the mine tailings that crowned the hill, small rock houses came into focus. Scattered across the slope, they were camouflaged uncannily well by giant prickly pear cactus, ocotillo, creosote bush, and half-fallen stone walls from the mining era. Vehicles were sprinkled here and there. I made out a few people moving around on foot.
    Cannon hawked out the window again. “Back in the 1970s, that’s when the artists and river runners and what-not started moving into the ruins. Generally people without two nickels to rub together, mostly Texans who wanted to get away from it all and didn’t mind cohabitating with the snakes and scorpions. For years they had no electricity, no running