This excerpt takes place in May 2010 in the Rio Grande Valley.
The
Hunter
By Stew Magnuson
On my way out of Zapata the next day, I set out
to find the ruins of a gas station that was once on Highway 83 before the
Falcon Dam inundated the valley.
A souvenir store owner had tipped me off about
the building, which he said was near on old fishing camp about five miles west
of 83. He gave me detailed directions on how to find it, so after driving a few
miles I left the comfort of the paved highway and took off on a gravel road,
getting lost for a bit, but eventually righting myself until I come across the
fishing camp.
I can’t find anything resembling an old gas
station so I start to drive through the ramshackle collection of aging campers
and mobile homes shaded by gnarly old trees. It’s not long before an old man in
a red pickup truck intercepts me near a boat ramp. He rolls down the window.
“What ya looking for?” he asks. He looks a
little miffed, and I realize that maybe I shouldn’t be here.
I tell him my story and he listens carefully as
we both get out of our vehicles. He sizes me up and decides that I’m not a
threat. They have been having all sorts of problems with drug smugglers and for
all he knew, I could have been someone here to meet a boat full of dope coming
over the lake, he explains. They have been known to fly helicopters over the border
to see if the coast is clear.
“People round here sleep with their guns loaded
by their beds,” he says.
His name in Jack Cox Jr., and his father once
owned the fishing camp, which has been here for some fifty years. The old gas
station is just a few yards past the camp entrance and over a fence. It’s
marked “No Trespassing,” but it shouldn’t be a problem if I just want to hop
over and snap a few pictures, he tells me.
Since I introduced myself as an author, he wants
to know what I’ve written. It just so happens I have copies of my first book in
the trunk, and he wants to buy one.
“There ain’t much to do out here except read,”
he says.
 |
| Jack Cox Jr., May 2010 |
He invites me back to his house for a cup of
coffee.
Out front of the white mobile home, I’m greeted
by a shaggy white dog and a friendly cat, who has just brought Jack a dead bird
as a present.
Inside, the mobile home is not what I expected.
It is decorated with African art: masks, textiles, carvings.
“I managed a hunting camp in Somalia on the
Jubba River for five years,” he declares.
“You did what, now?”
I’m glad I grabbed my notebook.
Jack takes a seat in a chair, while I sit on his
sofa and fumble for a pen. He’s eighty-one years old, he tells me. Fox News is
on mute. I would expect an elderly widower’s mobile home to be a mess. The room
is cluttered, but clean. His coffee table is covered in magazines: The Weekly
Standard, National Geographic, Smithsonian. He tries to peg me as a liberal,
Washington, D.C.-based journalist. I tell him I’m a radical centrist. That
seems to confuse him.
“It means I’m in the middle and I get to argue
with everybody.”
Fortunately, the conversation turns away from
politics and to his days as a big game guide.
“I was an elephant hunter and a safari guide,”
he continues, first giving me a quick version of his life story.
He grew up in Midland, Texas, where he was a
friend of Larry L. King, who would go on to be a journalist, author and the
co-writer of The Best Little Whorehouse
in Texas.
Like many in that area, Jack joined the oil
business and worked for Rogers Exploration as a “seismic man.” The company sent
him to Australia, Tanzania, Brazil and Bolivia for years-long stints.
He married twice, both times to Australian
women. His second wife died fifteen years ago. He is still in contact with his
first. Back when he was a young man in Midland, he was in love with a high
school classmate. But a fighter pilot from the nearby Air Force base stole her
away. A lifetime later, the Air Force officer passed away, and Jack and his
long-lost love are at last together. She lives in Sweetwater, Texas, and he
travels there quite a bit to see her. She hates the fishing camp.
“I got her in the end,” he says with a smile.
He doesn’t mention any children, and I forget to
ask. Some kind of journalist, I am.
He was in Tanzania working for the oil company
when the opportunity to run the hunting camp in Somalia presented itself.
He pushes himself up from the chair, walks to
another room and returns with an album.
Inside, is an envelope, and inside the envelope
is a brochure for the camp. It’s fifty years old, but it looks like it was
printed yesterday. He was there from the late 1950s to the early 1960s—back
when well-heeled men could live out their Hemingway safari fantasies—for a
price.
He shows me black and white pictures of the
kills.
“My first lion,” is written in pen on the edges
of one. Jack and some other fellow is squatting next to a lioness, holding her
mouth open, smiling. Jack is young, his black hair slicked back, a broad,
handsome face. It’s startling to see him as a young man.
“Those were good times,” he said, showing me
another picture of two guests he identifies as members of the Kennedy
administration.
“And the women …” he trails off. Smiles. I can
see that he’s remembering one of them, maybe more. I don’t dare interrupt his
reverie.
“I closed up many bars in Nairobi,” he continues
as I look at a series of pictures of dead elephants, gazelles and such. That
was back when the Italians ran Somalia. Once the colonialists left, the “whole
country went to shit,” he says. That was the end of the hunting lodge on the
Jubba River. He went back to being a seismic man for the oil companies,
although he did spend a couple years trying to grow cotton in Australia.
“Money never was the thing, you see. But I wish
I had saved just a little bit more of it.”
He’s heading up to Sweetwater that day to see
his “lady friend,” as he calls her, so it’s time for me to go. He really wants
me to see the old gas station before I leave. So we head back outside where he
lets me take a few pictures of him as the cat curls around his leg.
“It’s been a good life. I’m not a religious man,
but I wonder what the adventure is on the other side.”
* * *
US
PROPERTY
NO
TRESPASSING
WARNING: YOU ARE ENTERING FEDERAL PROPERTY. DO
NOT ENTER. NO WEAPONS ALLOWED. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED. I.B.W.C.
Well, Jack said it’s no problem. So I climb over
the fence where the signs are hung and walk a few feet back among to find what
remains of old Highway 83 and a gas station.
The filling station is a yellowish-pinkish
shell. It looks as if the waters have come up several times to wash away
everything but its walls. The roof is gone, but a beam that once held it up to
keep the sun and rain off motorists filling up at the pumps still stands.
Someone else has ignored the sign and taken potshots at the beam, leaving a
half-dozen bullet holes in the concrete. Mesquite and prickly pear are growing
around it.
The old road itself is gravel and disappears
into the vegetation. I poke around for any relics from the old days—an old
bottle, a sign—there’s nothing but pieces of corrugated steel. A cluster of
cactus bulbs has somehow taken hold on top of the wall. I wonder how it can do
that.
I imagine the gas station in its heyday. If it
ever had one. It was unattached to a town—a good ten miles away from any of the
now submerged villages. I see the cars pulling up for gas and water on hot
days, parents yanking Coke bottles out of the pop machine for their kids, the
attendant wiping the dust and bug juice off the windshields.
Included in the $47 million the federal
government spent to construct the Falcon Dam was $3.5 million allocated to
improve fifty-five miles of Highway 83, and to relocate several miles of it to
the north. The Texas State Highway Department did the work. The unflooded
sections of the road and bridges were widened from eighteen to twenty-four feet
and graded to eliminate the “rollercoaster effect,” as one newspaper described
it. Care was taken to construct the new sections far to the north beyond where
the lake was expected to rise. Work was finished before the dam was dedicated
in 1953. Slowly, the Rio Grande waters swallowed up the villages and the old
highway. I wonder if they left any of those old federal shield signs standing.
I can picture bass swimming around them now.
One of the first dry spells after the dam was
built exposed the five abandoned villages and their buildings. The feds decided
that the structures were hazardous and bulldozed them, leaving nothing but
foundations. Yet the gas station sitting out here survived.
Taking a picture of the highway as it emerges
from the mesquite, I notice there are car tracks in the gravel. I doubt the ghosts
of old U.S. Route 83 left them there, so I’m not going to push my luck with the
Border Patrol, a drug smuggler, or whoever has been driving back here. I don’t
linger.
Post-Script
This encounter with Jack Cox Jr. occurred in May
2010. A little more than a year later, my attempts to reach him failed. His
phone was disconnected and a letter came back to me “Return to Sender. No
Forwarding Address.” Attempts to track him down online have come up empty. If
anyone knows the whereabouts or fate of Jack, please contact me.
To join the Fans of U.S. Route 83 group on Facebook, CLICK HERE. And check out the U.S. Route 83 Travel page at www.usroute83.com. Contact Stew Magnuson at stewmag (a)
yahoo.com
