The Highway Kind(91)

“Sweet!” Surfo said. “Right?”

“Right.”

Benigno handed him the bottle. After Surfo swigged from it, Benigno took a sip too. To him, it was like water.

Surfo eased the van into gear and they rolled.

The engine purred and snarled.

Surfo punched a button and god-awful noise filled the cabin.

“Skrillex!” Surfo yelled. “?Está chingon el guey!”

They were out of sight of the bar. Almost to the cannery. Out of reach of the one streetlight.

“Stop for a second,” Benigno said. “Over there. I want to piss.” He looked around as Surfo pulled over. He left the engine running—good. “Then we head back. You have already been too generous.”

Surfo nodded, rubbed his eyes.

“What was her name?” Benigno asked.

“Who?”

“The woman. In prison. What was her name?”

Surfo blew air through his lips. He shrugged.

“You don’t know?”

He lit another Domino and studied its bright red cherry of embers.

“Nah.”

Benigno put the cigarette out in Surfo’s right eye.


Surfo didn’t scream—he roared, like some animal. They were at least a kilometer away from the bar—nobody was going to hear it. But Benigno was already hammering his face with his left elbow, striking heavy blows over and over until Surfo slumped with his head back and bubbles of blood inflating in his crumpled nostrils and popping in the air. The old man hopped out and retrieved the hose and paper bag from between the surfboards. He unrolled the hose and went to the back of the van. He had Jesus songs on his mind. Missionary songs. He sang them softly to himself as he got the duct-tape roll from the bag. He shoved the hose into the exhaust and used half the roll to make sure it was secure and not leaking fumes. He ran the hose down the side of the van and inserted it in the window and made sure the exhaust was flowing nicely.

“You like duct tape,” he said to El Surfo as he turned off the lights and eased the door shut.


The gas had run out long before the Pemex kid in the Kiss hat showed up. By then, El Surfo was dead as a slaughtered pig. Gray-blue and foaming at the mouth. Benigno had hauled him well off the road, among scraggly weeds. He heaved a few cracked cement slabs onto the corpse and sat in the shadows until the kid showed up. All doors open to air out the van.

They filled the tank and they were pleased at the sound of that Porsche engine and they drove out of town, though the kid didn’t understand why Benigno wouldn’t let him turn on the headlights. At Wilo’s, the kid took his fifty bucks and the two surfboards.

“Sell those,” Benigno said. “Don’t let the bad guys see you.”

The kid was gone like smoke.

It took Wilo twenty minutes to rig the chains onto the engine, and it came out like a tooth. They tied heavy ropes to the front end and hooked them onto Panfilo the mule’s harness.

“I want that harness back,” Wilo said.

“You can have the mule too,” Benigno said.

They headed down to the frontage road. The mule was a puller. It made Benigno happy as he walked beside the big brute. By now, the road would be cleared. Light like God’s own fires was pouring over the dry gray peaks. Silver fish-belly clouds. Violet and orange streaks above him. Soon, he’d see the ocean again. Though he didn’t care about it. He patted Panfilo as they walked. He fed him a carrot. Truckers honked and he waved at them. If the bad guys slept a little late, he’d make it home. If they came looking for him...well, it would be a bad day for them.

Benigno found Maria in the van, sitting in the driver’s seat, her hands already on the wheel. She looked at him and laughed. She imagined hitting him with her shoe. Hammering his head with it. But she loved driving the van. She rested her elbow on the door frame and let the sea air coming through the open window lift her hair. She closed her eyes and remembered that her name was Veronica.

People in their cars, speeding to La Paz, laughed at the little old man and the mule and his daughter sitting in the broken-down old bus, the whole parade walking like some velvet painting you’d buy in a tourist shop. It was all so picturesque. So very simple.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


I’d like to offer my respect and gratitude to all the contributing authors, who took my vague guidelines and produced a remarkable batch of stories. Special thanks go to Josh Kendall, who believed in this project from the beginning and provided much-needed guidance. I’d also like to recognize the hard work of Pamela Marshall, Ashley Marudas, Maggie Southard, Pamela Brown, and the rest of the gang at Mulholland and Little, Brown. Copyeditor Tracy Roe’s expert parsing and trimming improved the book immeasurably. Kari Stuart and Patrick Morley at ICM Partners provided invaluable assistance every step of the way. As always, I owe a tremendous debt to Barbara Peters, John Goodwin, and all of my peeps at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore. The music of Townes Van Zandt inspired the book’s title and, in some ways, its theme. Gary Phillips gets a special mention for giving me the blessing to tweak his idea and run with it. My good friend Dennis McMillan deserves credit (blame?) for gifting me his 1960 Cadillac and helping to awaken my adult-onset mechanic’s syndrome. Finally, deepest thanks go to my beautiful wife, Sandra, for her unconditional love and support and for tolerating my idiosyncrasies and obsessions.