Ray Vs the Meaning of Life

by Michael F Stewart

  Tina doesn’t say anything when I take my place behind the grill. After a while the flames begin to blur. I struggle to stay awake. Smoke and heat wake me twice when I wait too long to flip a burger or lean too far forward. I make it through my shift, walk straight to my trailer, see the little girl standing in front of it while her mother raps on the door, and swerve into the forest. A hundred yards in, I lie down on a spongy mound of moss just on the edge of the swamp.

  I planned only to wait them out. But I sink into a deep sleep.

  ***

  By the chirps of insects and garoumping bullfrogs, I know it’s night. But when I try to open my eyes, they won’t. My fingertips tear at swollen eyelids, but they’re inflamed by bug bites. The dark and me, we don’t get along. My heart rate ramps. Fear slithers eel-like from the black waters to choke my throat.

  One time, when I was four, I wandered out of the trailer to go for a wee. I must have gone too far into the woods because when I turned around the trailer had disappeared.

  I’d cried for Mama, and Grandma, and Crystal. But when I heard the rustles of animals I screamed, turned, and sprinted into the arms of dead pine branches. Each scratch was a claw barely evaded, a tasting monstrous fang in my imagination. Soon swamp water rose to my knees, and I slowed with each sucking step. Panicked and only four years old, I didn’t think about the swamp being away from camp. Only that I needed to keep moving and to escape.

  Maybe I had imagined them, but eyes seemed to glow under a midnight fall moon. Shining yellow globes tracked me, but kept their distance, as if suspicious that I was bait for a hunter behind. But there was no hunter, just the snores of my family growing more distant by the step. To me the shining eyes were floating marbles. I could feel their menace but couldn’t imagine to whom they belonged. Not until they howled. A howl to call the pack. And the pack replied.

  Wolves. I couldn’t count their number. I couldn’t hear beyond my sucking footsteps and panting. I couldn’t see the eyes anymore due to blurring tears. But I swear I spotted a cone of hot breath break the tree line bordering the swamp. The dark was so deep, so cold, and unrelenting.

  In the swamp are large boulders, erratics left by the glacier’s retreat. These are islands where the pines and birch grow in clumps. When the swamp water receded and my feet found dry land, I ran directly into one of the boulders and climbed. From the rock’s height I reached the branches of a birch, and into its safety I clambered higher even as the wolves snuffled about the boulder. But the darkness still groped for me, and its cousin sleep threatened to drag me from the branches into slavering maws. All the dark long.

  Early the next morning, Uncle Jamie found me. Staring, juddering with cold. He carried me back to my bed where I had fever dreams for two days before waking. I was safe, but never forgot the wolves howling at me in the dark, nor the bob of their marble eyes as they loped.

  So, yeah, darkness is my greatest fear. And I can’t even open my eyes, leaving my imagination to fill the woods with hooked-toothed watchers. My face feels bumpy and itchy as I lurch forward and straight into swamp. I spin, which is not a good idea, because I immediately lose my sense of direction. I stop to think and pry one eyelid open a crack until I spot a distant glow. As soon as I remove my fingers, my eyelids close again, so I can only take a dozen or so steps before I have to check again for the fuzzy light.

  The water grows deeper for a moment and then levels out. With the throb of my heart in my ears, I can’t even hear the slosh of my boots. The glow is a will-o’-the-wisp, luring me. Eventually the waters give way, but this is not the camp. It’s a small island with an erratic the size of a house.

  “Ray?” Uncle Jamie holds a long stick leveled at my chin. “Scared the heck outta me, what’s the matter?”

  “Woke up, can’t see.”

  “Bug bites, all over yah,” he says.

  “Is it bad?”

  Uncle pauses way too long. “Not like there’s beauty contests for Mr. Sunny Days or nothing.”

  We tried an RV park pageant once, but the judging got political.

  Uncle Jamie has mosquito netting over him. My vision’s fuzzed. The glow was from a fire burning so hot it’s nearly white. Wood stacked to the side looks suspiciously like the wood I chopped.

  “Wha’cha doing out here?” I ask, but he presses a cold can of pop on each of my eyes.

  “You hold those and we’ll get you back to bed.”

  He tugs the hem of my shirt and I follow, pressing the cool tin to my swollen eyelids. I’m comforted by him even though I stumble at times. We don’t have to go back through the swamp, which is good because I’m sure I have a dozen leeches already.

  By the time I reach the trailer, the swelling has gone down and I can see through slits.

  “Should be better in the morning,” Jamie says, leaving me with my hand on my trailer door. “Gotta run.”

  I blearily watch him head back the way we came.

  Inside, I take a salt shaker and season the seven leeches suckling my calves and ankles. After the bugs and the leeches, I’m surprised I have any blood left. I shudder as the last falls to squirm on the floor. I wipe the muck from my legs and bury myself under a blanket.

  My internal clock’s off. I slept too early and too long. I toss and turn until 2:30 a.m.

  Two-thirty’s a special time in camp. The only time of day or night that someone isn’t awake. Still, there are snuffles in the darkness, but everyone is at least trying to sleep. Except me. My eyes are better. Now’s my chance: It’s time to get the will back.

  Problem is, I know Crystal sleeps with her gun. And if I wake my mom, she’ll destroy or hide the will better, and I’ll have to wait to get the will from Sam Peregrine. That won’t happen today, and not in the foreseeable future. I’m running out of time. It seems worth the risk to try.

  Panic curls its fingers around my throat as I scan the woods from the safety of my window, flashing my light to catch any eye shine.

  There’s none.

  I ease the door of my trailer shut and slip into the night.

  Chapter 16

  Despite the cloud cover, I keep my flashlight pocketed. My feet know the way, and I reach the road and the first set of trailers. Some campers leave lights on all night, and the ambient glow is enough to keep me from tripping over the ridges of ruts. Once out of the darkness, I draw a deep breath and continue.

  I pause at Tina’s trailer. Her father washes it regularly and the siding glimmers. Wood is piled in a neat cord, stacked close but not too close to the fire pit. A screened-in area has small twinkling lights like stars. It’s as if nothing has changed. As if everything’s okay. I haven’t spoken to Tina about her dad since she told me he has cancer. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know if I should ask. Would I want to chat? I think I’d want to forget and hope it went away. Maybe I don’t want to know the answers. Because I care about him, and it hurts, and I don’t want to add my pain to hers.

  Someone coughs, and I hurry on to where floodlights pour down on the camp’s front gates. Mom’s trailer’s dark. I still have a key from when I lived here a couple of years back. I cringe as I slide the key into the lock and turn. With a click, I pull on the lever. The door creaks wide.

  I pause, breathe, and listen. Nothing. Not even a snore. I can only hear the steady hum of Grandma’s brain freezer nearby. She would approve of this. Grandma always had a sparkle in her eye. It might have been the champagne.

  The whole camper shifts as I step inside. I leave the door open. Crystal’s hunting rifle’s missing from the wall. When she’s not mocking me, the bear’s all she talks about. It’s out there, waiting.

  I shudder thinking about being out at night, stalking a grizzly. Could there be anything more terrifying than meeting a grizzly in the dark?

  I put my sister’s room at my back and head through the kitchen and dining area. The fridge rattles as it starts up and I nearly cry out, palm clapped over my mouth. It’s a trailer so this all takes three seconds, and
then I’m twisting the knob to my mother’s door and easing inside. Her head’s beneath the window. A side table is built into the corner beside her. The table’s where she’ll have stowed the will. She jerks forward, and I drop to the floor.

  “Wha—wha . . . ?” Her lips smack.

  A dream. She folds beneath her comforter. I start crawling backward to the door and escape. But I think of Tina and her dad, and the little pigtailed girl, Obelix, and jacks, and how it’s almost been two weeks since Grandma died, two weeks since I cast that fateful fireball. I can’t take it anymore. I need a solution. Okay, so it’s really about me. The double asterisks could mean that I’m doing all this for nothing. A loophole. I can’t have that sort of uncertainty.

  I worm around the edge of the bed. Every couple of creaks—there is no keeping anything secret in a trailer—I pause and listen for Crystal. My mom’s breaths are steady and slow, ending with a whistle. I keep going. Finally, I lie flat before the side table. On my hands and knees I reach to open the drawer. It slides out, and I peer inside.

  My mom grunts even as my fingertips brush cool papers. I turn my head.

  She stares at me.

  Her eyes flare.

  “Whaaa!”

  I scream too. She scrambles away like a crab until her hands slip off the side of the bed and she falls into the well between the bed and wood-paneled sidewall, feet kicking into the air and still screaming.

  “Mama!” Crystal shouts from down the hall.

  I reach into the drawer and snatch the will and stuff it into my shirt.

  “It’s me, it’s Ray!” I cry over both.

  The door opens. A gun barrel enters ahead of Crystal. She’s got the rifle short stocked with the stock over her shoulder and her finger on the trigger.

  “Ray, I’m Ray,” I say.

  She rubs up against the wall, and the light comes on.

  Both of them gasp.

  “It’s a monster,” my mom says.

  They’re both naked, but I can’t shut my eyes with a gun pointed at my chest.

  “What d’you do with my brother?” Crystal cries.

  I glance at the mirror on the wall. It’s with a mix of horror and understanding that I see the bubbly mass of my face.

  “Oh, no, no, it’s only bug bites.”

  “Shoot it,” my mom says. “Put it out of its misery.”

  Crystal looks like she’s about to but then stops. “No such thing as monsters, Mama. Those’re skitter bites.” The barrel dips—a little. “Why you here, Ray?” Crystal asks.

  I think fast.

  “Malaria,” I say. “And West Nile Virus. Zika too.”

  “You got all of ’em?” my mom asks.

  “Giving me fever dreams,” I say. “Sleepwalking.”

  Crystal’s eyes narrow. “What was you keeping in your table there, Mama?”

  My mother’s managed to pry herself back onto the bed, and she leans over to inspect the empty drawer.

  “I was looking for . . . an antidote. For the diseases,” I say. “And what do you have against pajamas?”

  “Give me back the will, son.” My mother says it cold as the pool-berg.

  I’m skinny. I can’t take my stronger sister in a fight. I can’t take my mom. But I have sense. And I am skinny.

  I drop to the floor and wriggle beneath the bed.

  “Get ’im!” they shout together.

  I don’t stop wriggling until I’m right under the middle of the queen-size bed with only enough room to slip out the will and shine my flashlight. I flip right to the end of the will. I find the double asterisks.

  **To give Ray a fighting chance I have hired Dalen Anders, Motivational Guru to the Rich and Famous, to join him for the month. If Ray doesn’t need him then Dalen’s pay will be kept in the estate. He sounded really good on TV, though. Call to arrange.

  I don’t care that they have my feet or that my stomach is burning from the rug as they rip me from underneath the bed. I now understand why my mother wanted to keep the will from me. I have a secret weapon. A game hack. A man who already knows the meaning of life. A guru Grandma will pay to tell me the answer.

  Chapter 17

  I slept the rest of the night on the couch, not trusting my mother to open the door for me in the morning. We’re far enough north here that no cell phones work. Our Internet is on satellite and the phone line is a fragile connection that usually goes out with any sort of wind, ice, or snow. This is the only place for me to call my savior.

  My mom sags into the couch springs as I make the call.

  “It’s real money you’re burning there,” she says. “My money.”

  “Grandma’s,” I say and point through the window to the head of her statue. “She’s still there.”

  “It’s not! She’s not! That’s a frozen brain.”

  “Dalen Anders’s office,” a man announces, and I grin.

  I look back at my mom, who watches with red-rimmed eyes. Crystal shakes her head. “Everything handed to you,” she says. “Go ahead, you can’t do nothing on your own, so why’s this any different.”

  “Yes—It’s Ray,” I say into the phone. “My grandma told me to give you a call if I needed help. Georgia Saintbury?”

  “This the RV Park Queen?” he replies. “Or the new king, I guess, right?”

  “Well, I dunno about—”

  “One minute while I transfer you.”

  I wait in silence as thick as the muddy road ruts. My mom’s lips are white from pursing.

  “Fine, three thousand dollars,” she blurts. “Three thousand dollars if you hang up right now. I’ll take back the park and we call it a day. Promise not to sell until the end of the summer.”

  “Ray? Ray?” The voice on the other end of the receiver crackles with energy. “Hey, hey! Are you ready to learn the meaning of life?”

  “You know you can’t do it,” Mom says. “You jes’ spent three days playing on a computer and near ruined the park. As if you can handle the rest of the month.”

  “Yeah, ’sides, no one knows the meaning of yer life. No one,” Crystal adds.

  If Dalen hadn’t spoken again just then, I would have hung up. I’d have gotten what I wanted. If my mom hadn’t said I couldn’t do it with such certainty, I would have hung up. Because, despite mostly believing her, there is a tiny part of me that thinks it’s possible for me to figure it out. If I hang up now, I’d have my money. Enough to start somewhere else and to spend a couple of weeks gaming. Tina would be okay, and I’d have my life back. But what life is that? If there is one thing I’ve learned for certain so far, it is that I don’t know the meaning of life.

  “Raymond?” Dalen asks. “You there? Are you ready?”

  “Three thousand dollars, and a two-week vacation,” Mom says. “Won’t bother you at your trailer. You’re not going to find the meaning of life.”

  I hope that, with all the swelling, she can’t see the stinging tears in my eyes. Out the window, Tina walks by, and I wonder what she’d do.

  “Think about it,” my mom adds. “Sleep on it.”

  Another night. This can’t wait another night.

  “Yes, sir,” I say into the phone. I’ve already wasted half the month. “I’m ready.”

  “I’ll be there in, let me check Google Maps . . . eight hours and fifteen minutes. Where the heck are you, geez?”

  I’m about to say thank you, but there’s a click and dial tone.

  “He’ll be here tonight,” I say.

  “Don’t see why he couldn’t tell you the meaning of life over the phone,” Crystal replies.

  “Better go clean your toilets,” Mom snarls.

  A weight lifts from my chest. Someone is coming who knows. An adult, a guru, who has the answers. I can breathe. The gut-berg even seems to melt and flip. I can clean toilets.

  As I collect the rags and pail, I see that the pool-berg on top of the pool cover has melted to the size of a refrigerator. I take that as a sign. Chains screech on metal as pigtailed girl k
icks her legs out and back on the swing. As she does, one rust-flecked leg of the swing set lifts and lands, lifts and lands. I wave at her. She grins back. I don’t deserve it and find it amazing that she could be happy here. Friendless in a filthy camp with so little to do. Two of her front teeth are missing. I can’t remember the last time I smiled so big someone could count my teeth. Do children know the meaning of life and then forget it? Or are they too young to have to worry about it?

  I’d been happy before Grandma died. Hadn’t I?

  I fill the pail with water and begin mopping out the stalls, running the gray water over toilet seats, counters and sinks until it at least looks clean. Then I change the water and scrub out the showers. As I do, something drools on my shoulder. Long tendrils of goo hang from the ceiling. I shudder, swallow the bit of bile in my throat, and swing the mop up to attack the snotties.

  None of this bothers me. I’m imagining what I’ll do with a million dollars.

  I’ll rent an apartment. Set up the fastest Internet connection known to humanity, and game for years. Pizzas will appear at my door for each meal. Across the world hundreds of thousands will watch me game. I won’t be a High Wizard. I will be the Supreme Wizard, and the ancient red wyrm coiled at the center of the world will fall under my thrall.

  Seven hours and four minutes remain. Sam Peregrine will be back in her office soon, too. With any luck, by this time next week I’ll be explaining to her the meaning of life, with time to spare.

  A half hour later, I’m scraping at crunchy tire ruts, trying to fill the deepest of them, and giving up when my shoulders begin to burn and blisters reopen on my palms. Next is fielding camper complaints. Each camper stumbles back when they see my plagued face.

  “My neighbor, that trailer there.” The jack points at a small trailer with a canvas awning. “He’s a late shifter at the mines, and every night when he gets home it’s like he’s trying to do a light show or something because there’s all this flashing.”