by Mercy Brown
“Well I don’t know about that,” I say. “But she does put up with me, I’ll give her that much.”
“Of course she’s proud,” he says. “I know what happened to your dad was tragic, but he was a good man. He’d be proud if he could see you today.”
I am practically gagging here on the level of sleep-deprived emotional intensity I’m choking back. I look out the window, my eyes welling up with tears. Then I feel Travis’s hand in mine, holding it. He squeezes and I feel the first tears fall.
Then out of nowhere, Montana reaches up and grabs a pull-cord near the ceiling and yanks it down, and the loudest air horn I have ever heard blows right over our heads. On and on it goes for a full twenty seconds probably. “For Len,” Montana says, staring straight ahead at the white lines firing past us on the Turnpike. That woke up all of Cherry Hill, I’m sure of it. It was so worth it, because man, blowing a truck horn while cruising eighty miles per hour at five a.m. on the Turnpike is about as cathartic as turning your amp up to eleven. It’s that good. Fuck it, I’d rather be a trucker than a banker any day. I really would. I’d definitely rather drive a truck than teach English.
But I’m a musician, no matter whatever the hell else I do. Just like Montana. That’s what I tell him. He nods, because he knows it’s true. “You’re born to it, right?” he says. “You don’t get rid of it, no matter what you do. It stays inside of you, and in some way, it colors everything else about your life.”
That’s perfectly true.
Montana tells Travis to go ahead and pull the black velvet curtain back and look what’s behind it, and Travis hesitates before he reluctantly complies. Back there, mounted carefully to the wall above a tidy bunk adorned with a tiger-striped comforter and velvet pillows is a gorgeous, vintage Martin acoustic.
“Go on and play us something, kid,” Montana says.
“Are you sure?” Travis asks. “I mean, this thing must be worth a fortune.”
“It was my granddaddy’s, so be gentle with her.”
Travis takes the guitar down carefully and he busts out a rowdy “Rocky Top.” We all sing along together, and Jesus, next to fucking Travis when it’s against the rules, this is turning out to be the best bad decision I may have ever made. South Jersey is rushing by. Eighteen wheels are carrying me to my exam like wings on the wind and I can feel it’s all going to work out. Somehow. But then as we’re on the last line of the song, Montana rips a disgusting burp.
“Oh Jesus,” Montana says, and his face goes pale. “Oh dear God in heaven . . .”
That’s when Travis and I get hit with a stench so foul that we both simultaneously start gagging. I quick put the window down and stick my head out.
“I’m sorry, but I need to pull over,” Montana says. “I’m real sorry. I think I got a bad egg salad in Virginia. I just . . . Sweet Jesus, oh Jesus . . .”
“Are you okay?” I ask, feeling alarmed.
“No,” he says. “I am not okay.”
Then he starts to vomit into his own mouth. He covers it with his hand as I scramble to find a plastic bag and fail, so I hand him a cowboy boot.
Montana barely manages to pull off the highway, into the James Fenimore Cooper rest area just south of Exit 6. It’s five in the morning and we’re still an hour from home, but I’m so horrified at the certainty that Montana has shat his pants that I’m not even thinking about my exam now. I’m mortified for the guy, I really am. First his wife sleeps with his singer and he goes to prison for stabbing a man, then he ends up alone, driving a truck the rest of his life with nobody but his dead mother along for the ride, and now this?
After we’re safely parked, Travis helps Montana drag himself out of the truck, across the parking lot into the service facilities, and if I didn’t realize that Travis was part saint before, well, I do now. I don’t even know how many times Montana has to heave on the pavement as they cross the parking lot, and I can’t bring myself to consider what might be coming out of the other end. By the time they get inside, I don’t know what the man has left inside of him. He’s got to be made entirely of truck exhaust and forgotten dreams by now. Travis comes back out to the truck about fifteen minutes later.
“I called an ambulance,” Travis said. “It’s on its way. He’s got to be dehydrated, and who knows how bad he’ll get before it’s over.”
“Fucking rest area food.”
“Never buy vending machine egg salad,” Travis says. “That’s what I always say.”
“Salmonella?” I ask.
“Probably.”
Travis and I are sitting on a bench inside the facilities with our guitars and my backpack. Montana has managed to change his clothes and he’s sort of shivering in a heap here with his jacket wrapped around him, slouched over on the bench.
“Travis,” Montana says. “You have to get our girl to school for that test, you hear me?”
“I will,” Travis says.
“How are you going to get home?”
“We’ll manage it,” Travis says. “Just worry about you now.”
“She’s counting on you,” he says.
“I know,” Travis answers.
The ambulance finally arrives and a young EMT takes Montana’s blood pressure and temperature before they load him onto the stretcher. We follow them out, guitars in hand, and watch as they load him into the back of the ambulance.
“Do you have anyone you want us to call?” I ask. “Any family or anything?”
“I’ll be fine,” Montana says. “You just worry about that test.”
“Call and let me know you’re okay,” I say. I actually give Montana my phone number and address. “Write it on a postcard or something.”
“Don’t worry, Emmylou,” he says. “It’ll take more than a little egg salad to take me out of this world.”
As we watch the ambulance pull away, I feel Travis’s hand in mine and I squeeze it. I’m sure Montana is going to be fine, but seeing his big rig lurking in the parking lot like a sad and lonely giant fills me with an aching sense of melancholy.
And now it’s five forty-five in the morning and I’m still an hour from home.
“Fuck,” I say. “Now what?”
“Let’s try George again,” Travis says.
Thank God we have a second roll of quarters in my backpack. Travis calls three times in a row and finally, just as I’m about to really break down, George picks up.
“What the hell, George? What if I was in the hospital or something?” Travis says over the phone. “Did you fall asleep drunk on a Wednesday?”
George apologizes, says he’d fallen asleep with his headphones on and didn’t hear the phone ring. He promises that he and Molly will be here in an hour, never fear.
“I told you George and Molly are fucking,” I say after he hangs up.
“Definitely saw that one coming,” Travis says. “But I think she’s really good for him.”
“She scares me.”
“Exactly.”
I’m so exhausted by now, I feel like I might finally fall asleep. Now I really do feel like a hobo, because I’m telling you this plastic bench in the rest area looks as comfortable as a Sealy Posturepedic. I curl up on it, trying to get comfortable. Our guitar cases are on the ground in front of us. Travis has his legs stretched out over them, and he puts his arm around me and pulls me close. I am tired and shaky and I’m not out of the woods yet, but I let out a big yawn and Travis makes a really good body pillow. He’s warm and strong and he’s here, which is my favorite part.
My favorite part of all.
***
“Vagabonds!” I hear George’s voice, wired on however many cups of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee the man can drink in a single hour. “Vagrants! Your limo is here.”
“Where the hell have you two been?” I hear Travis say, exhausted and relieved all at the same time.
&nb
sp; I open my eyes and see George in a pair of mesh soccer shorts he’s obviously slept in, flip-flops (and it’s March, for God’s sake), and a Rutgers hoodie. Through the glass entrance I see Molly behind the wheel of George’s Jeep, waving at us. I glance up at the clock and it’s seven forty in the morning. Seven forty? Fuck! What the hell took them so long?
“We went to the wrong rest area, dude. I’m sorry. We were looking all over for you at Woodrow Wilson before Molly double-checked the Post-it note and saw you were at James Cooper.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, I’m going to be late,” I say, my heart racing. “I can’t be late, I’ll be fucked.”
“We’ll get you there, Emmy,” George says. “Never fear.”
We run out to the Jeep, jump into the backseat, shoving our guitars into the back, and Molly takes off like we just robbed a bank. At this point, I’m pretty ready to cut my losses and just be grateful if we make it back to Hub City alive.
“Are you sure your professor won’t let you take this exam late?” Travis asks as we speed north past Exit 7.
“Yes,” I say, hardly able to keep my eyes open.
“Are you sure you’ll be in any shape to take it? You’ve had an hour and a half of sleep.”
“I’m sure I have no choice,” I say.
“Try to sleep,” he says. “You can get another half hour in.”
I do sleep—I go out almost before he finishes his sentence. I’m curled up on the backseat, my head in his lap as he gently runs his hand through my hair and that’s like falling asleep to angels singing or some shit because it’s just the nicest, most comforting thing I’ve ever fallen asleep to. I’m asleep for a total of forty seconds when the Jeep stops at Bottom of the Hill, a ratty but awesome convenience store a block from where I’m taking my exam. George runs out, grabs a large coffee as Travis wakes me up.
“Drink this,” George says. “You’ve got five minutes.”
“How on earth did you make it back to New Brunswick so fast?” I say.
“Don’t ask,” George says. “Just be glad you slept through the worst of hyperdrive.”
“I got her here, didn’t I?” Molly says, eyes wide like she’s just done a gram of crystal meth.
I down the coffee like water, pinch my own cheeks. Now I’m thinking like Toni Morrison. I’m emoting like Chinua Achebe. I’m plotting like Marge Piercy. I’ve got this. Modern Novel. I eat Modern Novel for breakfast. I am a fucking connoisseur of modern literature now. Bring it, asshole English exam. Bring it.
We’re parked on Hamilton Street now, near Murray Hall where my exam is. I down the last gulps of my coffee. Travis takes my car keys and says he’ll be back to get me at ten.
“Be back at nine thirty,” I say. “I won’t be longer than an hour.”
“You won’t?”
“Nope.”
Now that I’m here, I know I’ve got this. I look like I’ve been in a car wreck, I know. I feel like it, too. But there’s no English exam they can give me that I can’t ace in an hour if I’ve read the books. And I have. Some of them multiple times.
Travis hands me my backpack and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear before he kisses me, completely unexpectedly and very sweetly on the lips.
“Go get ’em, champ,” he says.
And now I’m totally awake. I’m fucking euphoric. Or delirious. Either way, I’m ready.
I roll into class and I look like shit, I know. My hair is probably—well, I have no idea. I rake my fingers through it and comb it back behind my ears. I’m in yesterday’s clothes, including underwear, and I try not to think about that or how I might possibly smell right now. I haven’t brushed my teeth in . . . never mind. See, I expected to make it home, sleep a few hours, take a shower before coming here. But that’s not how it worked out, obviously. Sometimes shit just barely works out, and this is one of those times.
Professor Cocksucker looks dubiously at me and hands me my blue book. He probably assumes I was up all night snorting lines of coke and fucking six different guys from bad home environments, not up all night because I had to bring the rock to Baltimore and then possibly save a trucker from dying of food poisoning on the road. I had shit to do, is what I’m saying. What did he do last night? Sleep. And what good did that put in the world? Exactly.
These exam questions are not terribly difficult, but they’re not basic, either. I have to think about them, but my thinking brain is totally wired and online from the coffee and all the crazy shit that has happened in the last twenty-four hours. I am inspired right now about life, and thinking that what makes these stories so good, so vital, is not that they are or aren’t real or relevant, but that when you read them they make you feel like you lived them. They give you an experience that you just can’t otherwise have. That’s why books like these are so powerful, why they mean something. I can’t live in tribal Africa and experience what happens when the Christians come. I can’t be a black slave at the end of the Civil War. But I can read Beloved. Fuck, it’s the least I can do on that front. Good stories do something like what good rock and roll does, they make you feel something. Sometimes it’s something new. Sometimes it’s something familiar, but you feel it for a new reason. And I do realize that listening to good rock and roll and reading good books don’t by themselves put food on the table. They don’t put a roof over your head. But they give you a reason to keep drawing air. Survival just for survival’s sake is fine if you’re a virus. A microbe. If you’re human, there should be a point to survival, and if love and art aren’t it, then I guess I don’t know what is.
And as I’m writing these short essays in long hand with my rollerball, it flows out of me so fast, I’m worried I’m going to run out of space. I end up needing two blue books to get it all down.
And I still finish in an hour.
I close the second blue book on my exam and look up to see Professor Cocksucker staring right at me. I look down at my crumpled T-shirt, my untied combat boots. I rub my hands on my face to try and smooth the bags away from under my eyes. I don’t know why he’s looking at me like that but it makes me uncomfortable. I feel judged and fuck him for being a judgy judgmental bastard. I hold my chin high, get up from my chair, and drop the blue books on the steel desk in front of him.
“Wait a minute, Emmy,” he says, pointing to a chair next to the desk. “Have a seat.”
“What is it?”
“Please,” he says. “Just for a minute.”
I sit there while he opens my exam book. He has his red pen drawn and I’m appalled. That motherfucker is going to grade this right in front of me? Right here? What kind of a dick is he?
I see him stick in a hyphen and circle something I accidentally misspelled (I’m good at spelling, so I’m a little mortified, here). He flips through and underlines a few things in the first essay. He’s biting his lip as he reads, nodding. Then he looks over at me and nods again.
“Very well done,” he says. “Now go home and get some sleep.”
Out on Hamilton Street, my little CRX is parked at a meter. When I get there, I see a mass of blond waves and Travis is fast asleep behind the wheel.
Chapter Ten
“You can do this,” I say to Julia Time.
It’s Friday night and we’re downstairs in the gear room of the Court Tavern, a dimly lit, unused corner of the bar with a low ceiling and band stickers and graffiti plastering one wall. It’s just before Circle Time’s set, and I’m with Millie and Dan, Circle Time’s drummer, giving Julia a pep talk while Matt is I don’t know where and I don’t care. Probably upstairs drinking with people from out of town since everybody around here is still pissed off at him. We’re all adults and we know shit happens and not all couples last forever, but cheating on your girlfriend of five years with Hanna Octane, or anyone, really, is just a shitty thing to do. Hanna hasn’t been seen or heard from in a week and there’s no small concern the g
irl ended up back on the psych ward after all this shit broke.
Julia was shaky when she got here tonight, but she was doing okay. Now that she’s about to go on she’s having a little bit of a crisis, and who can blame her? It’s a lot to get on stage with someone who’s so thoroughly and publicly fucked you over. But it’s not just that. This week, Circle Time got a call from spinART Records and some guy from the label is here tonight to scope them out.
“Fuck Matt,” I say. “You’re a pro, and he’s not going to get in the way of you doing what you want to do. You guys totally deserve to be on spinART.”
“Thanks, Emmy,” Julia says, but she doesn’t look at all convinced.
“Drink this,” Millie says, handing her a shot of Stoli. “For courage.”
She downs it and grimaces as her eyes water. She’s ready.
We follow her to the stage and Dan takes his place behind the drums. Julia picks up her bass from the stand and straps it on and she looks good. She looks pissed, but she looks strong and like she’s not about to take any shit from anyone. Ever again. Matt appears and there’s an obvious murmur throughout the audience, but he ignores it. Matt and Julia don’t even look at each other and the tension up there is almost unbearable. But when they start to play, they both seem to get deep inside the sound, and while the band’s happy songs now have a poignant lilt to them, they still work. From here it looks like Circle Time will survive this betrayal, and those of us who love their music appreciate that. If they land a record deal, this is a band that will get somewhere, we’re sure of it. Their sound is really hot right now. Their mostly clean but slightly dirty guitar tone and hooky bass lines throughout their set are right in there with bands like the Breeders or Throwing Muses.
The spinART guy is sitting on the bleachers digging it, and I’m standing in the thick of the crowd watching the band with Joey when Travis arrives downstairs with Cole right behind him. Everything scene-related that I’m mulling over crashes into the brick wall of my stilted joy the moment I see Bean and all that blond boy hair come bouncing down those concrete stairs.