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.”