The Diesel Mnemonic by Ryan Neil Myers

IT TAKES SONNYBOY three years to find the Buyer again. But since this truck stop looks, smells and sounds just like all the others - especially on a snowy night like this - he feels as if he never left. He's bigger now, though he carries his weight well, looks like he can put it wherever he wants: the end of his fist or the steel toe of his boot. His Levis have lost their knees, and his leather jacket its luster, not to mention its fit. His beard grows in dark, uncombed tangles.

The Buyer sits alone in a corner booth, thick in the arms and chest, hairless from head to toe, sleeves rolled to the elbow, meaty hands spread on the table top. Damn, if he doesn't look exactly the same. And the empty shoeboxes are there, too, stacked next to him on the bench.

Sonnyboy sits across the aisle at a table for two, and being so close to the Buyer makes his heart pound hard. The knife in his right boot makes him itch, but he likes to think he won't need it. He's taken down men bigger and faster in places much, much worse than this.

A trucker sits across from the Buyer, knob-knuckled hands slowly chafing. He's a boot-and-belt-buckle type, not Sonnyboy's kind at all. Sonnyboy listens close as they speak.

"Five hundred dollars," says the Buyer, his voice as smooth as a freshly graded gravel road.

"For what?" says the trucker.

"To write it down."

"You put them in some book?"

"They're just for me."

"Why?"

"Paying you not to care."

"But five hundred dollars...."

"Events aren't worth as much as people. Yours goes for five."

"Hell."

Sonnyboy tries to relax as he watches through the corner of his eye. The trucker takes an ink pen from the Buyer's big fingers, takes the small sheet of paper the Buyer slides to him, and writes. Sonnyboy watches the trucker's wrist bend tight, and he remembers it was Skynyrd's Freebird playing when it was himself on that bench three years ago. Today it's some kind of Seattle grunge, and he can't tell the songs apart because they all say the exact same thing. He remembers the smell of the paper: a mother-of-pearl sheaf of pulp. He remembers the pen: the name of some forgotten Midwestern bank fading down the side, the cap chewed. He remembers the wad of cash the Buyer paid him: three thousand dollars he never spent. It bulges in his pocket right now, like a pale green tumor.

Sonnyboy knows what the trucker writes. It's a memory, the kind that hides in the back of the mind until triggered by incidental sights and sounds: the rumble of a diesel engine, the blur of highway lines, the cacophony of overlapping radio stations, the smell of coffee and vinyl, the stretching of stiff muscles after half a day's nonstop ride. They all mean something to Sonnyboy, all point to something, to a hole in his life. It waits for him when he sleeps, and it swallows him when he drives.

The Buyer's eyes are closed now, face lifted to the ceiling. His lips move, issuing whispers Sonnyboy can't hear. But Sonnyboy remembers: What did it look like? How did it feel? What did you think? What did it mean? The Buyer's words make the trucker write faster, harder, body rocking as the pen scratches deep toward the bottom of the page. The Buyer moves too, eyes now on the jerking pen, leaning, whispering.

The trucker grimaces in pain, and the Buyer breathes deep. Sonnyboy breathes with him, feeling the cold burn in his mind where something important was taken with nothing to fill the gap. Was three thousand dollars really worth so much back then? Or was the memory that painful, something he was ready to give away for a lesser sum?

The pen stops, but the trucker is too tired to lift his fingers from the page. The Buyer carefully pulls the paper away, turns it and reads. He smiles, sighs. Folds the paper once, twice, edges matching, creases sharp. He opens a shoebox, gently scoops up the folded paper, and lays it inside like a fresh-caught toad.

As the trucker takes his five folded Franklins and slips from the booth, Sonnyboy stands. And as the trucker shuffles to the exit, Sonnyboy moves to the edge of the Buyer's table and waits to be noticed. Again the knife in his boot itches, but he thinks maybe the Buyer is a reasonable man, so it won't come to that.

The Buyer puts a lid on the shoebox and returns it to the stack, then looks up at Sonnyboy without recognition.

"Help you with something?" he says.

"Know me?" says Sonnyboy.

"No, but you can sit anyway. Don't mind a little company while I eat."

The Buyer takes the ink pen from his breast pocket, same bank name, same chewed cap, just as Sonnyboy remembers it. The Buyer twirls the pen in one hand, gestures to the opposite bench with the other, and smiles.

"You bought something from me," says Sonnyboy.

The Buyer's smile fades, and the pen stops.

Sonnyboy slides into the booth, a tighter fit this time. He watches the Buyer glance over his boxes, like a hen guarding her chicks. But then the pen twirls once again, and the Buyer smiles at Sonnyboy as if they're friends.

"Sure you have the right man?" says the Buyer.

"Don't remember you worth a damn."

Sonnyboy reaches into his pocket.

"First," he says, "we'll try this nice."

Sonnyboy pulls out the three-thousand dollars - still held in the same red rubber-band - and slides it across the table.

"Son," says the Buyer, "this doesn't look right."

"I want to buy it back," says Sonnyboy.

"What back?"

"Whatever I sold you. You keep it in one of those boxes?"

"These are empty."

"Where do you keep the filled ones? Your rig?"

"All right. Which one's yours? I'll check if it's in stock."

Sonnyboy swallows, remembering only a burst of hot white nothing.

The Buyer snorts, frowns, then drops his voice to a table-shaking octave. "All sales are final."

"Not tonight," says Sonnyboy.

The Buyer's pen twirls faster. "I don't know one from another. Could just as well give you another man's."

"I'll know it when I see it," says Sonnyboy.

"Will you?"

"I'll recognize my writing."

"You think so. I know you won't. You'll pick the sweetest of the bunch. Your heart will tell you it's yours, and the next day you'll sign a check for gas and know the writing isn't yours, never was. And let me tell you, having someone else's memory stuck in your skull is far worse than missing your own. I've seen it."

Sonnyboy balls one of his hands into a fist, and with the other hand he pushes the wad of cash closer to the Buyer.

The Buyer looks down at the money and touches it with the tips of his fingers, as if the bills are made of crumbling ash.

"Now," the Buyer says, "what I'm about to do, I don't do. Get it? I do this because I like you, that's all. This is a lot of cash. Can get you, I don't know, half a dozen events. Or a couple ex-wives. Three of four childhood friends. Plenty to fill the gap. Stop the ache. You do ache, right? You miss something? That why you tracked me down?"

The look in Sonnyboy's eyes recaps three years of pain.

"I can fill the gap," says the Buyer. "Follow me to my office."

The Buyer slips from the booth, puts on his jacket, and bundles his shoeboxes.

Sonnyboy doesn't want anything but what he sold, knows deep down he'll have to fight for it, but first he has to know which rig is the Buyer's. So he slips out too, following the Buyer outside, back into the cold.

Sonnyboy crunches snow behind the Buyer, fists balled tight as he's led through the brood of sleeping semis. And it's the rig next to Sonnyboy's, this whole time. Snow falls too thick to see the color of the cab or the writing on the trailer. How many times has Sonnyboy passed this rig on the road?

The Buyer's voice loses half its power in the snow. "What's your pleasure? A childhood, maybe? A few good times? What do you need?"

"If I knew what I needed," says Sonnyboy, "I wouldn't be here."

The Buyer laughs. "Good. That's good."

They stop behind the Buyer's trailer, and the Buyer fumbles in his pocket, jangling his keys. "I'll fix you up good. Give you what you need."

The Buyer is so much faster than Sonnyboy imagined. His fist slams deep into Sonnyboy's gut. Sonnyboy doubles over with a yelp, but despite the pain his reflexes make him reach for the knife in his boot. But before he can touch the pommel under the cuff of his jeans the Buyer grabs the back of Sonnyboy's head and slams him toward the trailer's door. Sonnyboy catches half the impact with his hand, takes the rest in his forehead. He falls back into the snow, dizzy and about to retch.

He sees the Buyer's boots crunch away toward the cab. He hears the Buyer's gravel laugh.

"Gave you what you needed, huh?"

Sonnyboy fights the swirling, bites back pain, and gets to his knees. He hears the Buyer get into his cab and slam the door. Sonnyboy knows it'll take another year to find the Buyer, another decade, and by then there won't be enough of Sonnyboy left to care. So he stands and staggers toward the cab.

The engine blast makes him lose his footing and fall to the snow. The rig rumbles as he picks himself up and stumbles against the left front tire. The hunting knife emerges from his boot, and he cups the pommel in both hands as he drops onto the tire. The knife goes deep into the soft sidewall flesh, hissing air into the night.

Sonnyboy smiles to himself and staggers to his feet.

The door opens and the Buyer tries to climb out, cursing. But Sonnyboy has taken down bigger men than this. As the Buyer leans out, Sonnyboy slams the door against the Buyer's head, making him fall hard to the snow.

Sonnyboy wastes no time connecting his steel toe to the Buyer's ribs, again, again, again. The Buyer rolls and groans. Sonnyboy pulls himself up into the cab, kills the engine and grabs the keys, then climbs out and steps on the Buyer's outstretched hand.

"No..." says the Buyer. "I'll give you ... I'll give you...."

Sonnyboy trudges to the back of the trailer, finds the right key, and swings the door wide.

Shoeboxes. Hundreds and hundreds. Stacked high and deep.

Sonnyboy climbs up, reaches for the nearest box, and opens it. The folded slip of paper jumps into the wind like a freed butterfly, fluttering away into the white of the falling snow. Sonnyboy opens the next box and the next. Papers zip away into the night, flying home.

The Buyer crawls to the bumper, clutching his ribs. "Stop, please, stop...."

Sonnyboy opens more and more, tossing empty boxes to the snow as paper streaks through the air, memories returning to their masters, no charge. But still, there's nothing for Sonnyboy. He digs on, deeper and deeper into the truck, crushing boxes under his boots.

"Leave me something," says the Buyer as he tries to climb into the trailer. "Just two or three of the good ones."

Sonnyboy looks back as he rips open the boxes. He sees the Buyer's skin shrinking over his bones, the pounds dropping off as the years drop on.

"I don't need much," mumbles the Buyer. "Just a dozen summer days. Or half a dozen friends. One first love. Please...."

Sonnyboy claws on, ripping lids, sending paper and ink into the snowy night as his lungs burn and his fingers turn numb. But he can see the back of the truck now, almost there.

"Just one..." whispers the Buyer. "Just one...."

Sonnyboy reaches the final stack against the back wall, and he opens, opens, opens.

And he finds it. The one piece of perfectly folded paper that doesn't fly away.

Why does the road call to Sonnyboy in words he can't understand? When he unfolds the paper, he remembers.

* * * *

* * * *

Her name was Rose.

She sat on the passenger side of the pickup, still smiling somehow. Smiling despite the angle of the little truck, rear tires high and spinning. Smiling despite the broken passenger window, despite the way the blood slicked her dark hair to the side of her face. Her legs where hidden beneath metal and vinyl and glass, as if the truck had become elastic and she had pulled it up to her waist like a blanket for warmth, and somehow she thought it funny.

No, not funny. She just liked to smile. Especially with him, with Sonnyboy, but that wasn't his name back then. She smiled most when they were driving, when the highway lines blurred and the radio served music seasoned with static and there was more road ahead than behind.

And she smiled more that day because they weren't going back. Always they had returned and left something of themselves on the road, but not this time, this time they'd keep it, or find it, or whatever it was they hoped for. Even then Sonnyboy didn't know. Didn't care. Should've, but didn't.

The semi looked unharmed. It wasn't fair for Sonnyboy's truck to be so twisted, and for that semi to just sit there grinning just down the road, the driver running toward them, for what? They didn't need anything. Rose was fine. She smiled like always, smiled more than she had ever smiled because she and Sonnyboy were on the ultimate trip, he had promised and delivered at last, they were doing it, going, driving, driving, driving.

But now only she drove. Sonnyboy's seatbelt pinned him to his seat, but Rose, she traveled on. She whispered something, but she was too far away for him to hear.

She was gone.

* * * *

Now Sonnyboy stings deep inside. He grimaces, biting back the shock as everything that is Rose returns to him in one sucker-punch, a punch much harder than the one the Buyer gave him only moments ago.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" croaks a whisper of gravel behind him.

Sonnyboy turns and sees a man like a scattering of sticks, skin shifting like a loose pair of coveralls. The Buyer's skull can still grin as the lips form words.

"You sold it for a reason," he says with a wheeze. "A reason. They all do. They forget that. But I'm a nice guy. I'll buy it back. Same price. Now that you know."

Sonnyboy glares at the Buyer, wishing his knife wasn't still in the front tire. The Buyer raises a shaking stick hand.

"Won't be the same," he says. "As last time. Because now you'll know. Know you won't want it back."

Sonnyboy hurts inside, but not as bad as on the outside, not as bad as he feared he would. The memory is as fresh as yesterday, and yet watered down by five years of subsequent life, like scotch and soda. Time is as good as any aspirin for this kind of pain. Another year and he would have made it back then, could have moved on, however crippled. The Buyer had known that, but had said nothing, had flashed cold cash and promises as thin as snowflakes. But now?

Yes, knowing is worth the pain.

There are two boxes left. Sonnyboy opens one, and as the paper flies away, the Buyer's skin sloughs off, rippling into the night. Sonnyboy opens the last box, and the Buyer's bones drift into the air, spinning away, up into the falling snow.

Sonnyboy leaves the truck, crushing empty shoeboxes under his boots, not the only man healed tonight. He walks to his own rig knowing he'll still ache and sting for a time, but not forever. He'll ride on, for Rose and yet not for Rose, remembering her always but no longer hoping to find her around every curve of the road. He knows he'll be fine in time because the warmth of the cab and the rumble of diesel do for him what they haven't done in years.

They fill him with the long lost buzz of wanderlust.