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.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Patrick Millikin is a longtime bookseller at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona, and a freelance writer; his articles, interviews, and reviews have appeared in Publishers Weekly, the Los Angeles Review of Books, True West, and other publications. He is the editor of Phoenix Noir (Akashic Books, 2009), which contained the Edgar Award–winning story “Amapola” by Luis Alberto Urrea. Millikin lives with his wife, Sandra, in Phoenix. He currently drives a 1997 Chevrolet Cheyenne K2500 pickup and is slowly restoring a 1960 Cadillac Sedan DeVille.
CONTRIBUTORS
Ace Atkins is the New York Times bestselling author of nineteen books, including the Edgar-nominated Quinn Colson novels and five critically acclaimed continuations of Robert B. Parker’s beloved Spenser series. A former newspaper reporter and SEC football player, Atkins also writes essays and investigative pieces for several national magazines, including Outside and Men’s Journal. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his family, where he’s friend to many dogs and several bartenders. He drives a 2000 Ford F-150 with over 350,000 miles on the odometer.
C. J. Box is the bestselling author of twenty-one novels, including the Joe Pickett series. His latest, Off the Grid, debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Box’s many awards include the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel (Blue Heaven, 2009), the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, the Macavity Award, and, most recently, the 2016 Western Heritage Award for Literature by the National Cowboy Museum. His books have been translated into twenty-seven languages, and over ten million copies of his novels have been sold in the United States alone. Box lives in Wyoming with his wife, Laurie, and he drives a Ford F-150 Lariat four-by-four truck. His first-ever auto was a classic ’53 Chevy pickup.
Kelly Braffet is the author of the novels Save Yourself, Last Seen Leaving, and Josie and Jack. Her work has been published in the Fairy Tale Review, Post Road, and several anthologies. She currently lives in upstate New York with her husband, the author Owen King, and is at work on a new novel. Braffet drives a hybrid Toyota Camry, which she realizes is not that exciting, but since it’s one of the models that have been known to accelerate uncontrollably occasionally, she still feels pretty dangerous.