Hot.
Hot as hell. Hot as the devil standing over you with his
pitchfork and his leer and the sinking certainty that you ain’t
getting out of this one.
Back of his shirt
sticking to the car seat. Nothing
but the shimmering haze-heat of August stretching across the
stone-baked land in every direction.
He had stopped and
filled his cooler with ice and cold beer in the last town.
Now he drank them slowly, savoring each cool drop on his
tongue.
Dust-devils rose
quickly, attacked the road with fury, then just as quickly careened
into the distance, drunken madmen.
At first he thought he
was just another dust-devil. But
as he got closer, first a hill, then a form began to take shape
through the haze. Dust
was blowing off of him crazy-wild, the whites of his blind eyes
dripping sand like water. His
gnarled hands cradled a broken, worn guitar, it’s strings long since
gone. The ancient face,
burnt black by the sun, squinted into crow’s feet from under his
hat..
