Ray Vs the Meaning of Life

by Michael F Stewart

  To a mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders. Ack! More Dalen. Out, out, out!

  Her shirt stretches over her head and then mine and she’s hot against me. She draws farther into her room, mattress hitting the back of her knees so that she sits and takes me over top of her onto the bed. I’m breathing heavily. I taste salt on her cheek.

  Tina’s giving me every signal that she wants me with her tonight, but why am I not ready? Not that I’m not ready. I am. I so am. I think. That sort of readiness is making everything else so difficult to think about clearly. I recall her spinning in Pulled Beef. I picture her launching through the air in the ATV race. The wild expression on her face, both beautiful and terrifying as she embraced Deneze. Would this be happening on any other crazy night? When her father wasn’t dying alone in a hospital room? When she hasn’t downed a bunch of beer? Is this just another risk she’s taking? Filling her mind so as not to face reality. Am I a cliff?

  “Tina,” I gasp as she wrenches at the buttons of my fly like if she doesn’t hurry, she’ll be forced to remember. “I’m sorry,” I say. “We shouldn’t.”

  She shoves me back, not gently, and switches on the bedroom light. The spell is most definitely broken. Tears glisten in her eyes. She’d been crying already. She covers her chest. I start to say something, but she shakes her head and turns away from me.

  “I want to stay, but—”

  “You can go away now,” she says. The light switches off.

  I don’t know what she’s really saying. I only know what she said.

  “Tina—”

  “Go!”

  I find my shirt on top of her bra and wait until I’m outside of her room to pull it on.

  When I step out of the trailer, the shadow puppet guy’s racing bears and squirrels across the side of his RV in the headlights of his car. His neighbor is watching and laughing.

  Chapter 39

  I wake.

  It’s 10:00 a.m.

  I haven’t slept this late in weeks. Dalen’s not here, and I’m glad.

  I fell asleep in my clothes. I sniff them in the hope of recapturing something from last night. But that already seems too distant. I reel from armpit stench. I could have woken next to Tina this morning. All I managed to do was push her away. I clench my hands into fists.

  I have to explain what happened. At least to try. I leap from bed and step onto the concrete tile that acts as my doorstep. My hand fends off the bright sunlight filtering through the arms of branches above. A note flutters at the door. It’s written on Dalen Anders, Inc. letterhead. Come talk.

  Okay. After Tina. After chores, and priorities. I crumple the message into my pocket and head along the trail. The first thing I notice is that the road’s in good shape. Shallow ruts from those trucks that left for shift this morning still run in parallel tracks, but these are normal and, with the sun out, they should stay shallow. The road’s the only thing in good shape, though. That’s the second thing I spot. Strewn across the entire trailer park are beer and soda cans. Burger wrappers and chip bags crinkle in the wind. How much garbage do a thousand people create in a day? Lots. Finally, the worst of it, is the mud hardening to the RVs. I glance down the road; it’s not just the ones in front of me. All of them are coated on the walls facing the road.

  I jog down to Tina’s trailer, but she’s there helping Salminder out of a taxi. His arm is over her shoulder. Gone’s her flair from yesterday. Salminder looks to the muddied trailer and shakes his head at something Tina tells him. I venture no closer, but Tina glances back at me. Her eyes are cool. She gives a tiny now’s-not-the-time shake of her head. Either that, or she hates me. I have to get to shift and hope that she’ll come, too.

  While Salminder faces the other way, I run past. The only clean places are the washrooms and showers, which it appears my mother has taken under her care. Somehow that annoys me more than it should. Crystal’s back in her lounge chair, sullen, scratching at bug-bitten arms. But there’s no bear.

  On I walk, every trailer worse than the next. Several campers glance up as I pass and ask if I plan to help them with the mess I made.

  “Mud races, maybe not the best idea, muh?” my mom says. She has a paintbrush in one hand and a can of white paint the other. “That driver of Dalen’s been asking for you.”

  “Don’t have time for Dalen,” I mutter. I don’t want to talk to anyone except Tina. “I thought you wouldn’t touch the toilets?” I say. “And what’s wrong with the sign as it is?”

  Chips of paint flutter downward.

  Her lips press. I catch the flex of her jaw muscle and then it softens. “Thought you were doing enough already,” she says.

  Before she replied, I already had my retort. It was a good one. Worried I’m going to find the meaning of life in a toilet bowl? But the look on her face isn’t one I’ve seen very often. Once when the park had earned a little extra and she’d bought a new pump for the well. She’d had the expression then. Or when Crystal had graduated high school. And when I’d made my mom that Christmas gift, a stupid ornament that she’d treated like a crown jewel. She’d been proud.

  “Well, only if you want to,” I say instead.

  I stop at the pool. It looks like everyone used it to clean off. Mud clouds the milky water and layers the bottom in sediment.

  “Warm enough?” Penny asks from the fence.

  I dip my fingers in the water. “It would be, but it’s dirty.”

  “One more sleep, right?” she says with a sarcastic smile way, way too old for her. “I know.”

  I shake my head. “I think I have to empty it.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m not going to lie to you,” I say. Her eyes are disbelieving. “Not this time. I need to empty it. Clean it. Refill it, and then it’s going to be cold again and it’ll take time to warm. A few days in all, at least.”

  She looks up. “Can I help?”

  “Well, yeah, if you’d like.” She nods emphatically. “Meet me here tomorrow. It’ll take that long to drain.”

  She runs off as happily as if I had told her to fetch her swimsuit and jump on in.

  I connect the hose and start the process of reversing the filter and pumping out the water. It spreads in a slick across the deck, flooding the smashed remains of the bears. I wonder why people destroy beautiful things.

  I open the grill.

  The first customer is a jack with dark circles under his eyes. He asks for a Swami Burger. When I hand it to him I say, “If you want a real future you have to focus on the present.”

  He looks up, eyes clearing. “What?”

  “It’s that Swami Burger’s fortune.”

  He shakes his head but as he walks away, his gaze follows a bumblebee flitting between wildflowers.

  To the second customer I say, “The worst thing that can happen in your life is if you never put forward that one single effort. That one chance to give something everything you’ve got and see what happens.”

  It’s a skinny rail of a man. He squints at me. “Says who?”

  “Someone on the Internet,” I say, and then think, and probably Dalen, too.

  “The cost of being awesome is taking responsibility for your thoughts,” I say to a woman.

  “I think you’re losing it,” she says with a wink, and then cocks her head as if trying to recollect something, “Every challenge is an opportunity.”

  “Ha, good one,” I say. “Mine was Churchill, sort of.” I hear giggling. Penny lifts the pool hose and lets it shower down on her as the pool empties. Every challenge is an opportunity. “A really good one,” I say to the woman’s back.

  Between customers, I run back to the pool and shut off the pump.

  To Penny’s dismay, I explain, “Can you tell campers that they can hose down their RVs at the pool, please?” She looks downcast until I add, “You can help, if you want to.”

  Again she sprints off as if I was paying her in candy.

  The pool has only gone down an inch or two. Pl
enty of water remains to wash down all the muddied trailers, solving two problems at once. Minutes later, Penny returns, leading the first trailer. I have a broom from Pulled Beef that works well on the dirty siding without scratching it. Only one side of every RV is covered, so it takes less time than I’d have thought and almost everyone buys a burger while they clean, with Penny gleefully directing the hose.

  Today starts to look up, but between the washing and grill I don’t have a chance to deal with the garbage, and I worry about the bears. The worst part is, Tina fails to show for her shift. I lock up alone and head, exhausted, to rebuild the campfire from last night. I search for scrap paper to act as a wick to start the fire and find the note from Dalen in my pocket and realize I haven’t seen him all day.

  That’s when Grandma starts to move.

  Chapter 40

  “Hey, where you taking Grandma?” I shout.

  Mom’s there with Deneze and a couple of his friends. The extension cord hangs unplugged down the statue’s back. The generators have been left behind at the original site.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll get ’er plugged back in,” Mom says. Grandma’s brain is tucked underneath her arm.

  “But why are you moving her?” I ask. “It’s not what she wanted.”

  “Boy, I’ve lived under that woman’s shadow for fifty years, and I’m not gonna live there another day.”

  Deneze stands, waiting as we talk.

  “Where are you taking her?” I ask.

  “It’s time to put her in the corner.” She points to the edge of the campground.

  “Was she really so nasty?” I ask.

  “Over there.” My mom directs Deneze and his crew and then turns back to me. “Nasty? No, she was a friggin’ saint.”

  I can’t tell if it’s sarcasm as she hurries to catch up. Grandma’s brain sloshes about in the container.

  “Uncle Jamie okay with this?” I shout.

  “She was my mother,” she shouts back.

  “Well . . . it’s my statue,” I yell. “For now.”

  Her hands press at her hips as she glares. “Ray, this one’s not about you.”

  She turns away.

  “Put her facing the Big at least,” I reply.

  She doesn’t look back, but she holds a thumb in the air. “And don’t forget to plug her into the park grid!” I shout.

  I cringe when I hear the release of compressed gas. It’s the bus door opening. I’ve been avoiding talking to Dalen. Not only did he flub his performance yesterday, but I still wonder if there’s anything he’s told me I couldn’t have read out of a book or off a bunch of quotes on a webpage somewhere.

  With the fire set, I hesitate, not looking forward to a conversation with Dalen. I have lots to do though and fill what remains of my day with garbage hauling and RV cleaning. But I can’t avoid the bus door that whooshes open every time I pass within sight. Finally, I walk over to the bus steps. Charlie’s in her seat. “Hi, Dalen here?” I ask.

  “Out for a walk.”

  I glance down the road. “Said he wanted to talk to me.”

  “That was me,” she says. “Get in.”

  I do, and the door shuts behind me. She stands. With the door shut and me at the bottom of the stairwell, I’m surrounded with nowhere to look but up at her.

  “Dalen’s been on a walk since this morning,” she says.

  “It’s not my fault he—”

  Charlie holds up a hand.

  “You know what? We all have fault in everything. We’re all cogs in everyone else’s wheel. Heck, it’s my fault that some kid’s being run over a thousand miles from here. I probably could be there if I’d made different choices in life, but I’m not, so let’s focus on the here and now, all right?”

  I blink.

  “Good. Now yesterday you asked Dalen if anything he said was his. Not regurgitated dogma.” My cheeks heat. “I can’t answer that question,” she says. “I drive the bus. But I bet Dalen can.”

  “So what’s the matter?”

  Charlie drew a deep breath as if she wasn’t sure she should say anything more. “You’re important to Dalen. He has a daughter, you know?”

  I nod.

  “You were a chance to have a part of that relationship back. When he first started out, Dalen worked with people in small towns, with real problems. Divorces, addictions, he made a difference to individuals. Helped me, too. Then those towns became stops on a book tour. A really, really successful book tour, and his job became less about listening and more about selling books and speeches. Do you understand?”

  “No,” I say. “He knows everyone here. Better than I do. My mom’s out there, moving Grandma and painting the gate, and I don’t think she would be if all this hadn’t happened.”

  Charlie’s nodding her head. “That’s what I mean! Here, he’s different. He’s not coddling rock stars or helping CEOs schedule quality time with their kids. He’s back to the essence of things, individuals, not crowds. He was loving it.”

  “Until yesterday,” I say.

  “He stepped out yesterday, slipped back into celebrity sales mode.”

  “And failed.”

  “It was a slip,” she corrects.

  “But he says that if you’re not failing, if you’re not embarrassing yourself, then you’re not trying hard—”

  Charlie’s waving her hands like an umpire signaling safe. “Saying and doing, very different.”

  “What do you need from me?” I ask.

  The windows darken as the sun cuts low over the forest.

  “Just don’t give up on him, okay? Give him a chance.”

  I can see the pain in her eyes. The empathy. I realize that if I’d felt that kind of shared pain for Tina, I wouldn’t have even considered sleeping with her last night; we never would have made it near the bedroom.

  “Don’t give up on him,” she says. “He hasn’t on you.” Charlie hands down a check.

  “What’s this for?” I ask. It’s written out to Salminder. Just over ten thousand dollars.

  “The news release Dalen sent, it was as a fundraiser for Salminder to help him through his treatments. Dalen matched every donation, to the penny.”

  Unbidden, tears flood my eyes, and I climb the stairs to hug her.

  “Thank you,” I say, but I know words alone are not enough. Some fixing requires doing.

  Chapter 41

  I’m wringing my hands as I approach Salminder’s trailer. The check’s in my sweaty hand, but I’m not nervous about that. The last time I was here, I was groping his daughter.

  I knock on a post of the screened-in area. Salminder waves from his lawn chair.

  “Welcome back.” He’s pale, lost more weight, and I realize now how I missed his comment weeks ago about being on a terrible diet. Yeah, a cancer diet. If I’d been looking, I could have seen the signs. His skin sags, and the total lack of hair on his body is still strange.

  “I hear the Swami Burger’s a top seller. I need to get sick more often,” he says, and there’s a rasp to his voice that hadn’t been there.

  “I’d rather we sell less and you get better,” I say. “Maybe this will help. It’s from Dalen, and Mud and Fire.”

  I hand him the check. His eyes water before clearing again. “Getting sick can be profitable, who knew?” he says. “My secret is out, then.”

  “Sorry, Dalen didn’t tell me that . . . I mean . . . I’m sorry, I told him.”

  We’re silent for a minute. It’s not quite the reaction I’d expected.

  “Where is he so I can thank him?” Salminder asks.

  “He’s off for a walk, a long one. I think I’ve driven him away. I was really angry with him and asked if anything that came out of his mouth was his. He really bombed yesterday.”

  “And after he bombed, what did you do?”

  I lower my chin. “Nothing.” Worse than nothing. I avoided him, but my thoughts—those had been so negative and so mean.

  “Nothing.” Even with the waggly skin,
Salminder’s jaw sets. “Of this I am sure: that the man my daughter will choose to be with will be a good man.”

  “What?” I lean forward, knuckles white on the arms of the chair. “You mean me? I never said I . . .”

  Of course, he’s heard about last night. There are no secrets in an RV park. And then there was the serenading.

  “You may not know it, but I know. I know.” His eyes fill with life, but I’d rather not have all their fire focused on me. “Are you a good man, Raymond?”

  “I think so,” I say without conviction.

  “You can return and speak to my daughter only when you know so.”

  “When I know the meaning of life, you mean?” I ask with a sad laugh. After all that’s happened I don’t feel any closer. “How am I supposed to do that?”

  He struggles to sit up in the lounge chair.

  “Son . . .”

  Son. It’s such a simple word, but it’s not one I’ve ever heard from a man. And of all men, he’s the only one I want to hear it from.

  “How?” My throat’s tight with emotion.

  “Don’t eat crap,” he says.

  “Food?” I ask.

  “Yes, food. But not only food. Learn something every day. Think about what you can do better the next day. Don’t talk so much. Exercise more. Listen to good music. Learn to appreciate the beauty around you. Believe in yourself, no one else can quite as fiercely. Live simply.

  “Build this.” He taps his head. “Everything else will follow. A million dollars does nothing for the soul.”

  “Nothing else? That’s it?” It and so much at the same time.

  “Through my eyes I remember beauty and give it meaning. I give the grass meaning by feeling it between my toes. The starlings who fight off the crow, by protecting my own. By witnessing life, I give it meaning.”

  I frown; sometimes I want to punch the meaning of life in the head. Maybe there’s an easier way to force a clear answer. “That’s what it means to be Sikh?”

  His fingers trace his turban. “A Sikh’s life is of humble service, service without expectation of return.”