Category: PART OF A SERIES
-
BURNING DOWN THE PANAMERICANA, Chapter 4 – The Falcon Takes Flight
The fourth chapter of a five-part series. By the time the race reached León, the roadbooks were dog-eared, the cars were running on borrowed grace, and half the drivers were looking at their co-pilots like bad investments. Dust lay over everything like a fine layer of consequence. The Falcon, however, looked alive—if by alive you…
-
BURNING DOWN THE PANAMERICANA, Chapter Three — A Little Bit of Heaven Raising Hell
The third chapter of a five-part series. They said the Lincoln Capri looked like it had already seen the future, then driven back through a dust storm to tell about it. The two-tone coupe squatted on the plaza outside the Puebla hotel, wide-shouldered and slightly worn, but still proud in its curves. Its yellow tailfins…
-
BURNING DOWN THE PANAMERICANA, Chapter Two — Hope and Horsepower Under the Hood
The second chapter of a five-part series. They said the Lincoln carried dignity like a steeple; the Ford carried defiance like a barn door held on with two screws and a prayer. By dawn, Oaxaca smelled like bread and spent incense. The city had not yet forgotten the tremors from Lucinda and Delgado’s Room 203…
-
BURNING DOWN THE PANAMERICANA, Chapter One — A Tequila Inspired Challenge
The first chapter of a five-part series. The Lucky Lady Lounge was not where sensible ideas went to be born; it was where they went to be dared. Over the years it had incubated innovations such as Rusty Hammer’s Hammer-Hatchet-Bottle-Opener (two injuries, three ruined fence posts), the Goat Roping Indoors Experiment (do not ask about…
-
SALT & SOIL, CHAPTER SEVEN: A Black and White Ending
The last of seven chapters. Morning came slow to Fort Stockton. The sun had to climb over the Davis Mountains before it could lay a finger on the courthouse square, and that delay always gave the place a feeling of suspended judgment, as if the town were waiting for its sentence. On this particular morning,…
-
SALT & SOIL, CHAPTER SIX: Devil’s Ride
Chapter Six of seven. The roadhouse lot had always been a bad place to stop. The kind of place where fights outnumbered parking spaces, where moths beat themselves stupid against neon beer signs, where the jukebox rattled out country hits like funeral dirges while half the bar forgot the words. Cutter idled the Highboy at…
-
SALT & SOIL, CHAPTER FIVE: Highboy Hymnal
Chapter Five of seven. The Flying Cloud’s aluminum kept the night like a secret, but morning pried at the seams. By first light Shannon was outside, hands on hips, studying the Dodge the way a woman appraises a dress she can’t wear twice. “Too loud,” she said. “We need denim, not sequins.” Lalo Cantu answered…
-
SALT & SOIL, CHAPTER THREE: Shannon’s Gambit
Chapter Three of seven. San Angelo smelled like hot tar and cattle trucks. Cutter eased the Dodge Sportsman off the loop and into the gravel lot of a roadhouse that promised Chicken-Fried Steak and Cold Lone Star in letters half burned out. The van’s flames looked less like decoration in the midday sun and more…
-
SALT & SOIL, CHAPTER TWO: BODIES IN MOTION
Chapter Two of seven. Dawn came on slow, the road turning the same pale color as Cutter’s knuckles on the two-spoke wheel. The Oldsmobile ate the miles the way it did everything—without hurry, without apology. The Rocket under the hood rumbled its steady hymn, and the coffin in back gave a dull, occasional thud over…