Dan Fogelberg - Tucson, Arizona (Gazette)

Rising in the heat like amirage
Tony keeps his Chevy like a virgin locked in his garage
He brings it out at midnight and cruises down the empty boulevards

And he prowls the darkened alleys
That snake between the city's thirsty yards
The lonely desert skies reflect the anger in his eyes
And it is dawn.

His father died of drinking
And left five children sinking with his mom
His older brother Bobby never made it back from Vietnam
With high school well behind him he lives at home
And works this shitty job.

And he thinks his '60 Chevy
Is the only true amigo that he's got
His heart is filled with sadness
And his soul is like some ugly vacant lot.

Mary Estelle Hanna came out from Louisiana for the sun
A deal gone bad in Dallas
Left her burned and broke and on the run

To make the rent and groceries
She takes this job at $3.15 an hour
Serving shots of whiskey and tequila
In some smoky red-neck bar
And she dreams some day she'll make her way to L.A.
And become a movie star.

Tony saw her working
He swallowed hard and asked her for a date
Mary laughed and answered
"I would but every night I'm working late"

He said he had some cocaine
That she could have if she'd
Just ride along
She said "What the hell,
I may a well I haven't had no fun in so damn long"
He picked her up at closing time
They pulled out on the road and they were gone.

Tony's mom got frantic
When she found her son had not come home
Mary's roommate panicked
And called the sheriff from a public phone
They asked her lots of questions
She tried her best to tell
Them what she saw.

And late that night they found poor Mary
Lying in some narrow, dusty draw
And the coroner reported that she hadn't been deceased for very long.

Two weeks on they found
It buried to the windshield in the sand
There inside lay Tony with a small revolver in his hand

The papers simply stated It must have been the drugs
That drove him mad
The neighbors speculated what could make a good boy
Go so bad?
Well, it might have been the desert heat
It might have been the home he never had.