Ray Vs the Meaning of Life

by Michael F Stewart

  Chapter 30

  Five days remain until “Mud and Fire,” the name Obelix and I settled on for the truck rally. Mud races for pickup trucks and ATVs. I decided it was time to push my uncle, too, so Obelix is in charge of Mud and Uncle Jamie the Fire. I gave him the same nudge the death of my grandma has given me. When I asked him, he didn’t hesitate, just a single glance back to Grandma’s statue and then a swift nod, before disappearing as he counted on his fingers.

  My days are full. Now that I’ve told my mom I don’t want her help, I’ve locked myself into getting everything done myself and doing it well enough that she doesn’t have a reason to criticize. Every time I catch Tina, she’s reading from another of Dalen’s books, scribbling on the note that acts as the bookmark. Sometimes I wonder if she should be the one working with Dalen and not me. She’s smart. Motivated.

  She could use a hand, too.

  Every morning, Dalen treats me to oatmeal and has taken to leaving me a prepared salad for lunch. After a weird pep talk about something or other, we go through a session of meditation and visualization of Better-Ray, and then he helps me set my goal for the day. Today, it’s to enlist someone. The goal for the week is to enlist the rest of the campers to improve the camp. The pool-berg, for example—that could have happened a lot earlier if I’d had some help.

  “If life really is virtual reality, then we might as well make it good,” Dalen says as I’m lugging the cleaning fluid and buckets back to the shed. “You have a role in the relationships around you. Don’t blame them for anything and don’t blame yourself. Accept conflict as something that just is and do better.”

  “What are you talking about?” Sometimes he runs on as if I understand the stuff he says.

  “Remember that you are an animal. You have instincts.” He pounds his chest. “These instincts are to survive.”

  “Sounds smart to me,” I say and close the hasp on the shed lock. I had a really good shooka-shooka-shooka morning. The forest glows with vibrant greens.

  “Not really,” Dalen says. “Some of our instincts are obsolete and cause suffering. Most of us have all we need, but instinct is powerful. It pits us against one another. It pushes us to want more and more. To think of the future, at the sacrifice of the present. So say you do get the million dollars. I know that you’ll want more.”

  I snort.

  “No, really, I’ve seen it. A person with one million wants another. A person with half a billion won’t be happy until they have another hundred million, or more.”

  “Okay, so I’m an animal.”

  “Yes, and you must override these instincts because everywhere people will use them against you. They will steal your money by marketing to those instincts. Marketers know you are hard-wired to find a mate, to earn money, to carve out a place in the pack to survive. That’s not the meaning of life. That’s survival, and most of us get caught up in that. Even the richest, even the happily married. They make themselves unhappy by thinking they need more, that another mate might be a little bit better. But when you recognize your instincts, you can head them off.”

  “What does that mean for happycamperhappycamp?”

  “It means finding a higher meaning than survival, and that is helping the pack thrive, not just yourself within it. It means being grateful and being present. It means you need a new password.”

  “Iamarecruitmentofficer,” I say. I’m joking but he fist-bumps me anyways.

  I think about what Dalen said after we part. It isn’t until I notice Obelix strutting around camp with his pants pulled up to his nipples and his little yipping dog that I understand. For the first time in days, I have a free hour on my hands before my Pulled Beef shift.

  I start at trailer site number one. I have a list of everyone in the camp and their assigned site number. This one is Buck Hawley’s. He comes to the door of his trailer wearing a black T-shirt stretched over a tight frame. He smells of sawdust and tobacco smoke. I don’t know how he makes it through the doorframe without turning sideways.

  “Yep,” he says, looking down at my clipboard and then back up.

  Ropes of tattoos are nearly lost over the dark skin of his arms.

  “Hi, Mr. Hawley,” I say. “My name’s Ray, and I’m in charge of the camp.”

  For a second time his eyes run over me, and then he leans out of the trailer to look around.

  “This a joke?” he asks.

  “No, sir, I’m offering fortunes and asking what people want for their camp. How can I make Sunny Days better?”

  “Fortunes?”

  It had sounded like a fun icebreaker. I’d written a good dozen down that I could use depending on how I read their mood.

  “Yeah, I see . . . I see . . .” I wave my arms in a mystical way.

  He shuts the door.

  “How would you like to improve the camp?” I shout.

  The trailer stops creaking, which likely means he’s stopped moving in it.

  “Quieter for the night shifters,” he says through the screen. The undercarriage creaks again.

  It’s wishful thinking but I write the request down. “I see sleep in your future!”

  Then I move on to slab two, but Wendy Wilson’s out, as is the occupant of slab three, which gives me an idea. Slab one is near to the playground and pool, not ideal if you’re on night shift and want to sleep during the day. I only need to find someone who would prefer Buck’s site to theirs. Slab four is occupied by a wiry thin woman, with steely hair. She’s hanging her washing.

  “Hi . . .” I look down at my sheet. “Salema . . .”

  “Don’t worry, no one can pronounce my last name, what can I do you for?” She keeps pinning up a sheet. A sign at the corner of her slab says, “I’m the bitch with the hitch.”

  “Well, I was wondering what I can do to help you?”

  She smiles. “Like my washing?”

  “Uh, more like camp stuff. Anything bug you? Stuff you’d like to change?”

  “Sore back. I’d like a good ten years of life back.” I make like I’m writing all of this down and she chuckles. “Maybe something social, you know, all the men here hunker in their trailers or their trucks. It’s not healthy.”

  “Yoga, maybe.”

  We’re both laughing.

  “I’d pay to see that,” she says.

  I’m still smiling as I approach the next slab with someone home. It’s the mother of the little girl, Penny. When I say hello, she jumps a foot and holds her hand against her chest.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  She gives a jittery nod and goes back to fiddling with the camping stove, trying to screw on a new fuel canister. Her hand shakes.

  “Pool ready?” she mutters.

  “Soon,” I say.

  She scoffs.

  Behind her back, I bridle. I stand a little taller, and I squint at her. She checks over her shoulder, catching my look, and hustles around the picnic table as if to put it between us.

  I flush with shame. “Sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry about the pool. I should have got to it earlier. We don’t have many kids— Sorry. Just. I’m sorry. Can I . . .”

  What can I do for someone who fled from an abusive husband? She’s wearing the same tired clothes she was wearing when I first met her. The answer to what can I do for her, I guess, is everything. “Sorry,” I say and I walk off, not to slab nine though—instead I head back to the office.

  “Mom,” I say, rapping on the door before opening it. She’s sitting on the couch and wiping her eyes. “What’s wrong, Ma?”

  She gives her head a little shake. “Nuthin’.”

  “Not nothing, you’re crying half the time I see you.”

  Her face darkens. “Maybe you shouldn’t be taking my park away then.”

  My fingers tighten on the edge of the door, and I’m about to slam it. Someone’s mom recently died.

  “Is it Grandma?”

  Her eyes flit toward Grandma’s brain. “Hard to be sad w
hen I keep expecting her back, ya know?” Her chest hitches.

  “But she’s not coming back, is she?” I ask.

  “Not in my lifetime. Maybe yours, if she gets what she wants.” Tears slip down, and she dries them with a napkin. “What you want, anyways?”

  It takes me a second to remember what I came for. “Do you have any clothes, you or Crystal, that you’d mind giving me?”

  “You?” she demands.

  “Not for me, someone I know.” I jerk my head back at camp.

  “You talking about that woman with the girl?”

  I nod.

  She sniffs again and then breaks into a grim smile. “Just leave this one to me.”

  I hesitate, about to tell her no, leave it to me. And I see the tears are gone. And I recall my goal for the day, to enlist. I nod and start to back down the steps and then stop.

  “And, Ma?”

  She’s already on her feet, headed into Crystal’s room. She swallows, waiting.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  As I walk out of there, there’s a smile on my face. I didn’t do a damn thing, but I’m still smiling. Dalen was right. I’ve enlisted my first camper. And more campers remain. But the high I get is brief. It’s brief because nothing, nothing in all of this has told me the meaning of life. I can’t connect the dots. The pool-berg may be a sculpture, but my gut-berg remains a crusty chunk of angst.

  Chapter 31

  The next morning I wake, but I don’t answer Dalen’s knock at the door. I bury my face in the pillow. A few minutes later he’s managed to jiggle the door enough to open it. He looms over me. I feel leaden, as though I sink into the lumpy mattress.

  “What’s going on here?” he asks.

  I sigh and roll over.

  “Better-Ray?”

  I shake my head. “Just Ray.”

  “Explain yourself.”

  I sigh again. “Well . . . I can see how your spiel is making things happier, better around here, but I still don’t see how it’s helping me figure out what I should do with my life.”

  “It’s a journey—”

  “Screw the journey, I can’t start because I have no idea where to go. I want to know where I’m going. Should I be a lawyer? A doctor? An artist? What!” I’m sitting up now, heaving. “I have to decide what I want to do, but I suck at almost everything. What can I do?”

  Dalen stares at me for a full minute before I look away.

  “Tell me about yourself,” he asks in a quiet voice. “What are you good at?”

  “I’m okay at school, when I want to be, but it’s boring so I don’t try very hard. I don’t know any other languages or nothing. Never really got into sports.”

  “You’re listing excuses and weaknesses,” he says. “What are you good at?”

  I think, but I can’t name a thing. Nothing. I’m a pretty good gamer, but I haven’t been doing that much. I like flipping burgers, but that’s not a career. “Nothing. I’m not even sure I should go back to school. Don’t need school to game.”

  But even gaming I’m not so sure about anymore. Last night I discovered I’d lost another six followers. I’m down to fourteen. Maybe my fans are more important to me than I am to them. Dalen starts to speak, and I know what he’s going to say. Stay in school. Education is the key, yadda yadda, so I’m rolling my eyes as he begins.

  “Each of us can spend our lifetimes working on our weaknesses. School forces us to do this. You get an F. Do it again. You get an A. Good job, now you don’t have to work as hard in that subject, you can focus on what you suck at.” As he’s talking, his fingers slowly fold into fists. “Did I ever tell you about my daughter?”

  I shake my head.

  “My daughter’s on the autism spectrum. Really struggled. Every day was a grind for her, trying to learn what she had the greatest difficulty with. By the end of the year we would know exactly what her weaknesses were and so would she. It’s backwards. Forget about your Fs. So you suck at something. Admit it, and move on. Learn what you have to, sure, but don’t focus on it.”

  Right now Dalen is saying stuff I’m not sure I’m supposed to hear. Like these are adult secrets. School is broken? It’s like he’s admitting guilt. And I want him to keep talking.

  “Do you know why?” he asks.

  “No, why?”

  “You can’t be anything you want to be, no matter how hard you try.”

  I’m about to nod again, but stop. “Wait—what? Isn’t it supposed to be, I can be whatever I want, I just have to try?”

  “No, I’m not going to waste my time or yours. You can’t be anything. You going to make the NBA? Be a concert pianist? How about an astronaut? All you need is focus, right?”

  “Right, the American Dream.”

  “Is bullshit.”

  It’s the first time I’ve heard him swear, and it surprises me.

  “The American Dream worked when the government was handing out land, and the dream was to have a good life with a family. It worked when your only other option was to be a priest or a soldier. That’s not now. Now you have to find your niche, you have to dig deeper into that niche and be the best of what you can be. Not the best at anything. Not the best at everything.”

  I fold my arms over my chest.

  “Not buying it?” His smile’s almost mean. “All you need is perseverance, you’re thinking? How good a pianist do you think you could become if you did it day in and day out?” I shrug, but he tells me, “Mediocre. What about a doctoral degree in astrophysics: have you grown up solving puzzles for fun? Maybe you’d get your degree—you’re smarter than you know—but that doesn’t matter, you’d still be mediocre in the field. You wouldn’t be great. What subject do you hate in school?”

  “Math,” I say.

  “You have to work twice as hard at math to get worse grades than the best kid at math in your class, am I right?”

  “Ten times as hard,” I admit.

  “Good, now imagine putting all that effort into something you loved and had some natural talent for. How much better would you be in that subject, or that task? Being great takes work and perseverance, but there are things at which you can never be great. Our culture forces us to invest in so much stuff we suck at. You can be great at who you are.”

  “I can’t just do one subject because I only want to do one.”

  “How old are you?” He knows, so I don’t respond. “Who the hell stole from you the magical fairy dust of possibility?” Then he waves his arms. “Ignore that. What would you do at school if you could? One subject.” I shake my head again and he frowns. “Where are you holding back?” Dalen demands. “What do you want but tell yourself you can never aspire to have?”

  I have an answer, but it’s not what he’s getting at. It’s Tina. I want to confess my feelings to her. But I’m frightened.

  I flush.

  “Good enough for me,” he says. “You’ve got something going on up there. Now commit to making it happen. Proceed with no caution, like you will die tomorrow, like mistakes are to be expected. Now let’s go clean some toilets!”

  It’s enough to get me out of bed.

  Proceedwithnocaution. It’s my new password. My mantra.

  Chapter 32

  For the next hour Dalen and I run through our exercises, but this time when Dalen asks me to visualize, I’m not looking at a picture of my goofy happycamper self, I see me holding Tina, and not in a hey-you’re-such-a-good-friend hug. She’s embracing me back in an omg-hold-me-close-Better-Ray grip.

  Washroom-cleaning meditation, on the other hand, doesn’t start well. I have trouble clearing my mind. Shookas turn to shook-shooks as I worry over professing my love to Tina. What if she laughs?

  Proceed with no caution.

  My mind whirls. I draw steady breaths in the hope that Dalen will think I’m serene and calm. It’ll take a miracle for me to go from dork to boyfriend in Tina’s eyes. How can I convince her that I’m worthy? Mud and Fire is all about horsepower and testosterone; I need t
o do something that puts me out there, makes me vulnerable. Something that reflects her interests . . . and I know what it is. Maybe the meditation did work, because I jerk out of the trance knowing what I have to do.

  “Who can do it?” Dalen intones.

  “I can!” I fist-bump him on my way out of the first washroom and into the next.

  Of course, it’s barely dawn and I have more cleaning. There’s nothing like scrubbing floors and urine from toilet seats to peel unfettered joy from your skull. The overhead fluorescent lights buzz. Flies knock their faces against the mirror. As I scour, I start to hum. It’s not one of Tina’s made-up melodies. A pop song. Even to my ears it sounds tinny, but I keep scrubbing in rhythm. The morning disappears with the notes of music. By the time I’m done the second washroom, it’s my best meditation session ever. I am centered. At peace. And Dalen wasn’t even around to witness it.

  “The mud’s coming along nicely,” Obelix says as I step out. “We’ll have a good swamp of it for the races.”

  “Glorious mud,” I say.

  Campers have dropped logs across the stretch of muck that act like stepping stones across a river.

  Mud, mud, glorious mud, I hum and step carefully along the roadside.

  I lug the pails of dirty water into the forest to dump them and stop when I hear a squeal. Penny and her mom’s trailer stands a little farther down the road, so I stalk through the forest until I’m within sight. Between the trunks of birches, I watch as Penny opens a large cardboard box. The cardboard has been darkened by rainfall. I already can guess what’s in it and who left it. Penny’s mother holds back, glancing down the road as if hoping to identify the Samaritan.

  Penny lifts out Crystal’s old teddy bear, a big brown one, thin in spots but it might as well be brand new the way Penny squeezes it. Tears sting my eyes. Then Penny’s mom’s picks over the contents, holds up soaps and lotions and smiles and digs some more. A jumbo box of tampons excites her way more than I’d ever have expected. I’m really glad I told my mom, and I’m proud of her for doing such an amazing job.

  I’ve never been proud of her in my life.