A line of cars shimmered in the heat on the two-lane highway. The grocery stores and mini-marts had been emptied and goods had been marked up for resale on the side of the road. Bottled water was being hocked for seven dollars apiece out of tents along the gravel shoulder. Gas stations had run dry and vendors were meting out fuel from red spouted jugs at twenty dollars a gallon. Desert people in rubber flip-flops and Hawaiian shirts would pull up alongside stranded caravans in beat-up ATVs and begin pouring crude oil into Escalades and Range Rovers with California license plates.
