by Mercy Brown
“You don’t know that he’s lonely. You don’t even know for sure it’s a he, do you? Don’t be sexist.”
“If we end up dead in a Hefty bag on the side of I-95, I’m going to be pissed,” he says.
“Don’t be so dramatic, Jesus Christ.”
“Come get the plate number off of this truck,” he says, pointing across the parking lot to the gas station. “That’s our ride. Call Sonia by eight thirty, and if she hasn’t heard from us, somebody better come looking.”
Cole pulls his Swiss Army knife out of his pocket and hands it to Travis, who takes it and stuffs it into his front pocket. “The corkscrew to the eye should get you out of a pinch.”
“You people have no faith in humanity,” I say. “Or truckers.”
“Hey, I’m a realist,” Cole says. “You never know.”
“You guys,” I say. “This is Maryland, not Camden.”
When Travis and I turn to leave, Joey is giving us this sad, worried look, but then Cole pats Travis on the shoulder.
“You guys will be fine,” he says. “Ace the test, Emmy. Show Professor Cocksucker what for.”
Which is why we love—no, need Cole in this outfit.
Travis and I walk across the parking lot, carrying our guitars. He’s still mad at me, I know, but he’s stopped telling me how dumb I am and I’ve stopped calling him a controlling, arrogant bastard, so this will have to do for now. The trucker is hanging out at the gas station booth, talking to the attendant, and I have no idea what his deal is yet, but you can infer from the sweeping gestures with his arms as he talks that he’s super glad to be talking to a human being face-to-face. Maybe he is lonely. Hell, driving a truck must be lonely, all that awesome Kris Kristofferson Convoy/CB stuff aside. This trucker is probably in his fifties with that short salt-and-pepper hair. The black ink of an old, bled-out tattoo (a real one, not a Sharpie one) is climbing up the side of his neck, which means the guy likely has a back piece or full sleeves at least. Former inmate? Biker? Can’t tell, really. He’s no retired punk rocker, this I know from the mustache, tucked-in flannel, leather vest, crisp blue Wranglers, and cowboy boots. He looks like he could even be from Nebraska. I look and see the license plate on the back of the truck says Montana. Close enough to Nebraska if you’re from Jersey.
Travis and I get closer, and now the trucker and the gas station attendant are paying attention to us, and why not? It’s damn near four a.m. on a Wednesday night/Thursday morning and we’re schlepping guitars across a rest area parking lot, so I guess we’re enough of a curiosity. With how skeptical the trucker guy looks as he watches us, I’m starting to feel less optimistic that this is going to work at all. But just as I’m about to say fuck it and turn back, I hear something familiar on the night breeze, something that is floating on the air to me. Something I know very well.
My father’s band Consequence had exactly one hit single. It was called “Love’s a Trip” and it peaked at seventeen for one week on the Billboard Top 100 in 1976, ninety-eight for the year. It starts with this lonely, haunting guitar riff, and that’s what I’m hearing right now, floating across the parking lot to me.
“Holy shit,” I say, nearly dropping my jaw. “Do you hear that? Or am I having a psychotic break right now?”
Travis pauses, and then he hears it, too. His eyes light up in recognition and he starts to sing along with the vocal, “Get on board, don’t bother to pack, you’re on this trip and you won’t be back . . .”
“It’s a sign, Travis.”
“A sign?”
“Yeah, a sign,” I say. “Don’t you believe in spooky supernatural signs?”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “No I don’t.”
“Well, I do and this is one,” I say, more determined than ever. “Work with me here.”
“I’m about to hitch a ride from a trucker in a rest area at four in the morning like a hobo. I’d say I’m working with you just fine.”
Dubious does not do justice to the look we’re getting from ’stache Montana. Oh, great, he’s shaking his head disapprovingly as we get closer. He turns around to look behind himself and he sees, of course, that no, there’s nobody back there that we’re looking at. It’s him we’re coming to see.
I clear my throat as we approach.
“Excuse me, sir?” I say. “Good morning.”
Nothing. No response. He sports a convincing “not amused” face as he takes in the sight of us, pretty scraggly at this time of day with our guitars in tow.
“Um, we’re in a bit of a jam,” I begin.
“Forget it,” he says, and it’s more of the kind of throaty growl you might expect out of an angry grizzly bear than any human sort of sound. I gulp as Travis shifts on his heels.
“We can pay you,” Travis says. “We only need a ride to Exit 9 on the Turnpike, not too far.”
“I said forget it.” He turns and walks away from us, back toward the cab of the truck. As he’s walking away from us, the Consequence song ends and I think, Well, I guess it wasn’t a sign after all. But then another Consequence song comes on and I realize that the music isn’t coming from the gas station—it’s coming from the truck. And it’s not on the radio, because nobody plays a double shot of Consequence on the radio, not even at four a.m. This trucker guy is actually a fan of Consequence, and he’s playing a cassette tape of Consequence’s album Blue Aphasia on his stereo.
“Hey, do you like this band?” I call as he’s about to climb up into the cab of his truck.
“What?”
“Consequence,” I say. “Great Southern-style rock band from the ’70s, right? Totally underappreciated, though.”
Now I start singing along with the next song, and you know I have to be a fan because nobody has even heard “Rubber Tire” if they’re not a big fan. I air guitar along and belt the verse out and I sound pretty darned good for four in the morning, thanks very much.
“So you’re a fan of Consequence, then?” he says, eyeing my Boss Hog T-shirt with a healthy degree of skepticism. “You don’t look the type.”
“Well,” I say, clearing my throat. “Actually? I’m the lead guitarist’s only daughter.”
“No way,” he laughs. He might be amused now, but he’s not convinced.
“Yes. Yes way. And I’m in a band now myself, and we’re on our way home from playing down in Baltimore and our van broke down.”
“What happened to it?”
“Alternator,” Travis says.
“You sure it’s not just the battery?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m sure.”
Montana doesn’t say anything else for a minute. Travis and I exchange looks. Montana still says nothing.
“So . . .” I begin.
“I don’t pick up strays,” he says. “As a matter of personal ethics.”
“But I need your help,” I say. “Mr. . . .”
He doesn’t say anything. He’s supposed to tell us his name here, but he just stares blankly and blinks slowly a couple of times. “Mr. Montana?”
“We’ll pay you fifty bucks,” Travis says. “It’s only a couple of hours north.”
“I don’t do rides,” Mr. Montana says.
“Please, Mr. Montana,” I say. “I have an exam at Rutgers first thing in the morning and I really can’t miss it.”
“Then maybe you should keep your ass in school instead of wandering around the highway with your boyfriend on a Wednesday night, ever think of that?”
I grit my teeth. I grind them. But I don’t back down.
“Look, the rock is in me,” I say, looking him dead in the eye. “I was born with it.”
“Then what do you care about an exam?”
“I care about my mom and all she’s sacrificed to get me through college.”
He’s thinking it over, I can tell because he’s tweaking the ’
stache and his tongue darts out to lick at the corner of his mouth as he concentrates.
“Let’s go, Emmy,” Travis says, pointing over to a Peterbilt rolling in to the pumps. “We’ll ask this guy coming in now.”
“Wait a minute,” Montana says. “You’re really a daughter of Consequence?”
“Yes,” I say. “I can prove it.”
“Right. I’m sure you’ve got your birth certificate on you and everything,” he says.
“Better than that,” I say. Then I pull my guitar out of the case and strap my Gretsch on. Montana’s eyes go real wide when he sees the guitar.
“Is that . . . ?” he says. “No, it can’t be.”
“Oh yes,” I say. “It is. This is Len Kelley’s very own Gretsch.”
Then I take a pick from my pocket and play Dad’s lead on “Rubber Tire” perfectly, right along with the truck’s cassette player.
“No Goddamned way,” Montana says, and his eyes go all watery with emotion. Like, the guy is about to crack. “You’re really little Emmylou, the only daughter of Len Kelley?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” I say. “Not so little anymore.”
“Your father was my guitar hero.”
“Mine, too,” I say, and something catches in my throat as I have a total moment here.
“This is like a sign from God—no, a sign from Len.”
Travis sighs a big, heavy one and I don’t even care what he’s thinking because this is awesome. He pulls a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket. “Come on. I’ll give you twenty now and the other thirty when we get off at Exit 9,” he says.
Mr. Montana scratches his chin, rolls back on his heels. He sticks his hand in his vest pocket and clicks his tongue.
“You’ve got yourselves a Goddamned deal.”
Travis hands Montana the twenty. Montana smiles, hops up into the cab, into the driver’s seat, singing like the guy is in church.
Girl, you wear me down, like a rubber tire . . .
Chapter Nine
I don’t know what I’m expecting when I climb up into Montana’s big rig, but I know this studded, red-pleather wonderland of bad taste isn’t it. The cabin is spotless save a spare pair of cowboy boots on the floor in front of the passenger-side captain’s chair, which, by the way, is covered in a plush Holstein-print seat cover. A black velvet curtain partitions off Montana’s mobile love nest, and Travis climbs in and positions himself just in front of it, sitting on top of a black, wooden box.
“That’s my mother you’re sitting on,” Montana says, pointing to the padlocked box under Travis’s ass.
“What?” he asks, his voice cracking as his face goes so pale I can almost make out the blood vessels in it.
“Her ashes,” Montana says. “I keep them with me on the road. Would you mind?”
“Oh, no, no, of course not,” Travis says, scrambling to get Montana’s mother’s remains as far from his ass as he can manage in that small space. He sits on the floor behind my seat. “Don’t mind me, I’ll just be over here finding Jesus,” he says.
“You’re a praying man?” Montana asks.
“I am now,” he says.
The cabin reeks of stale cigarette smoke and about eighty of those pine tree car deodorizers. It’s like he never removes them, he just keeps adding more. (Okay, not eighty but probably twelve? Seriously, they are hanging right there off the plastic galactic dolphin figurine that’s glued to the dash.) There are strands of Christmas lights adorning the cabin, which I don’t even notice until Montana flips them on with a switch, like he’s had them hardwired in.
“They make me feel like I’m at a party,” he says.
Okay then.
The multicolored party lights cast a rainbow on an additional four plastic Jesuses, two wobbling hula girls, a fake baby cactus stuck to the dash with the words “stay sharp” lettered on the small clay pot. There’s an old Polaroid photo of a dog in a frame tacked to the dash. “Timmy, he was mine as a boy,” he tells me. “I miss him like I miss my own mother.”
“Are his ashes in the glove compartment or something?” I ask.
“Nah,” Montana says. “We buried him under the sweet potato patch. That crazy dog loved sweet potatoes.”
“Well, who doesn’t love sweet potatoes?” I say, because I’m just reaching here, for something, anything normal that we can all converge on.
“More of an Idaho russet man myself,” Montana says.
Great.
And now I’m really hoping Travis isn’t right about this being a very bad idea because he’ll never let me live it down. If we live at all.
But it’s too late to back out now, because we’re pulling away from the gas station, onto the highway. The loud cranking of the engine gives me a thrill. Again I’m not sure if this is the thrill one gets before a daring adventure or a death rattle. My stomach is in knots and I can’t even look behind me at Travis because I’m sure he’s cursing me and my stubbornness from here to Exit 9 right now.
“And one thing,” Montana says.
“Okay?”
“Don’t ask me to blow the horn.”
“I wasn’t going to,” I say.
“Yes you were,” he says. “Weren’t you?”
“No, I wasn’t. Honest.”
“Oh, come on. Really?”
“Really,” I say. “I mean, if you want to blow it—”
“I don’t,” he says. “It’s just the kind of thing kids always ask you to do.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling a little disappointed in myself for not thinking of it. “Well then, will you blow the horn?”
“No.”
“Under what circumstances would you consider blowing it?”
“None,” he says, exasperated. “Are you slow or something?”
I’m really bad at truckers, I decide. I definitely can’t figure Montana out.
He takes out a Camel unfiltered and lights it, offers us each one. I’m so nervous, I actually take one and I don’t even smoke. The minute I light my cigarette I feel like I want to vomit. I’m hoping I can just hold the thing until it burns all the way down and Montana won’t notice. Travis takes one, too.
“You don’t smoke,” I say to him.
“Neither do you,” he says. Then Travis takes a drag and coughs his face off for ten minutes. “I’m more of a Marlboro Red kind of guy,” he explains.
“You’re musicians,” Montana says, ignoring the fact that we are dying because we want to puke and can’t breathe. “So you’ll appreciate this.”
Then he blasts more Consequence over his brand-new, top-of-the-line Pioneer stereo, complete with subwoofer and a wedge of speakers right behind poor Bean’s head at full volume. And now Montana is singing at the top of his lungs, and I have no choice but to join him. Travis is sitting with his head down between his knees, probably trying to preserve the contents of his stomach, or maybe he really did find Jesus. Either way I approve because I don’t have to see the look on his face right now as he congratulates himself for being completely right about everything forever.
We sing one entire side of the cassette, twenty-five straight minutes of Consequence’s Blue Aphasia, and it really is a damned good album. I used to practice to it a lot, but I haven’t listened to it in a couple of years and it’s like discovering all over again how good these guys were. When I think of how they struggled, it makes me sad.
It’s not lost on me that Travis seems to know every song on it, too, as he jumps in to sing with us here and there. Montana is actually a great singer. I tell him this and ask if he’s ever been on the stage. He gets a faraway look in his eye, and then he tells us all about how he was in a Southern rock band back in the ’70s, down in Alabama, the Night Crawlers. (Shit, we’ve been calling him Montana all this time and he’s from Alabama? He doesn’t sound Southern at all, but I’m from Jersey, so what do I k
now?) Anyway, the Crawlers were a bar band, but they had big dreams. Got picked up by a small promoter down in Mobile and cut a single, got some local radio play. They played the bar circuit every weekend and they were good, he says. But then the singer started sleeping with the lead guitarist’s wife. When the guy realized what was going on between them, it was in the middle of a set and a big fight broke out on stage. The guy ended up knifing the singer. Right on the fucking stage. Luckily he didn’t kill the guy, but he did do time. After that, the band was obviously history.
“And now here I am,” he says with a big sigh.
I’m sitting there with my mouth hanging open. I’m speechless here. This is like a Shakespearean-level tragedy. Not just the betrayal, the knifing, the jail time. The broken dreams, the destroyed friendships, that’s what kills me.
“So, um, what instrument did you play?” Travis asks from his crouch on the floor. Not obvious at all.
“Guitar,” he says, staring straight ahead.
“Rhythm?” I ask, hoping beyond hope.
“No,” he says, glancing over at me, looking embarrassed. He takes out another Camel and lights it off the old one.
“Oh,” Travis says, his voice cracking.
“It was the worst night of my life,” he says, quietly. “And she wasn’t worth it, either. She ran off while I was inside.”
We’re painfully quiet now. You might even hear a pin drop except for the growl of the semi’s engine and the tail end of Consequence’s “Brook River Blues.”
“Love,” Montana says, shaking his head. “It really is a trip, ain’t it? Never know the places it’ll take you.”
Travis and I exchange a glance and I see he’s now fondling Cole’s Swiss Army knife lovingly.
“Maybe if I’d had a mind to go to college like you, Emmylou, I wouldn’t be driving a truck today,” Montana says. “Maybe I’d be a banker or something nice like that. Better hours, that’s for shit sure.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Well, what do bankers know about music? The road? Life?”
“I admire you trying to keep your grades up. I’m sure your mama’s proud of you.”