Epilogue
Bob died as he had
lived, strapped into the cockpit of an airplane.
Harvey died of old age.
Santos has grown old.
The Corpus Christi Kid,
against all odds, went straight, got an education,
and became a respectable citizen.
Johnny is gone.
Claude died a natural
death, an airport bum to the very end.
Dealin' Don is still at it.
I don't know what became
of Mike, or Buster, or all the old crop-duster
pilots and old smugglers. I've lost track of all my wetback
friends, and the
Border Patrolmen. I have not gone back into that past and tried to locate
those who played such an important role in that part of my life.
My life has taken me
away from those men, away from that river, away
from the little vegetable patches and the rolling cotton fields. And
although my dreams from time to time still carry me back across the
skies
of that barren land, I know that I will never go that way
again.
I no longer know of the
old farmers and ranchers, and the mechanics, and
the men who pumped the gas at The Old Laredo Airport.
They have all slipped
off into the cloudy memories of that past.
Like the
young man that I once was, they have all moved on to live out
their lives
on one side of the Rio Grande or the other.
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