At Boquillas

They were hiking down the hill when they first heard the singing—a distant, lone man’s voice that seemed to echo off the river, or maybe off the canyon walls that rose at the trail’s end. Shelly said she thought the singing might be a radio, and Josh, her husband, said he wasn’t sure.

The hike was short, just over a half mile from the parking lot to the opening of Boquillas Canyon, where you were supposed to stop and watch the river pouring between the sheer cliffs. The singing had started after they mounted the hill, and it continued now as they descended to the river’s edge, where the reeds kept them from seeing anything but the trail itself and the sky above. Cuando, the voice said, pleading.

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Ben Stroud teaches creative writing at the University of Toledo. His book Byzantium and Other Stories won the 2012 Bakeless Fiction Prize.

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