Ray Vs the Meaning of Life

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Ray Vs the Meaning of Life Page 20

by Michael F Stewart


  “You know what I’m going to do when you get the answer wrong?” she asks. “I’m going to become a hunting guide.”

  I may not know my meaning of life, but I understand Dalen’s. By bringing meaning to the lives of others, he brings it to himself too. That’s his meaning, though. Not mine. He’d lost it, and it took Sunny Days to get his mojo back.

  The road comes into view and the night air is full of the chop of a rising helicopter.

  “There goes a hundred grand,” I say.

  Before we break back out onto the road, Crystal puts her arm around my shoulder, squeezes once, and then shoves me into the swamp.

  Chapter 46

  As I stagger out of the swamp, my mother’s arms cinch around my chest. My injured thigh muscle cramps from the cold water.

  “Idiot. Thought I’d lost another.” Her voice breaks, and she swats me in the shoulder and it’s then that my leg gives out. I slide down her front to the road. “Ray!” she shouts and tries to lift me. Crystal’s there and she drags me along the road to a dry area.

  “It’s his leg,” Crystal explains. “Bear got him.”

  Four tears bleed through my jeans. The helicopter has been and gone. The place Crystal dragged me to is dry of mud and now I understand why. The bus is gone, too.

  “Used all my bandages on the guru,” Crystal says.

  “Tina’s good with the first aid,” Salminder says, and I hear her run back into Sunny Days.

  I have my pants off by the time she returns. Crystal’s cleaned the wound and pronounced that if I want really cool scars I won’t bother with stitches.

  “Anyone for a midnight burger?” Salminder asks. It’s a strange question with me half-naked on the ground, my leg a mess from a grizzly bear. “Tina can help Ray here,” he adds.

  Tina stands among them, clutching several rolls of bandages and tape.

  “Oh, yeah, after a night like that I’ll even spring for a Swami Burger,” Crystal says, taking the hint. “Nothing I want more than a couple greasy patties and special sauce in my stomach.”

  “Me, too,” my mom replies. She and all the gawking campers follow her, with a sleepy Penny asking why she has to go as well.

  Tina rolls her eyes as she kneels at my side. She blanches a little when she sees the claw gashes.

  Her hands are gentle as she pours some more peroxide on a cotton ball and dabs it along the edges. They left us alone for a reason, and for the third time in one night, terror rips through me.

  “What was it like?” she asks.

  “The bear?” She nods, and begins to wrap the wound with clean bandage. “I was so scared,” I say. “The thing drooled on me.”

  “That’s pretty gross.” She laughs. “Did the meaning of life come to you? Did your life flash before your eyes?”

  I look down; what am I supposed to say to her?

  “I’ve read most of Dalen’s books, you know? They’re pretty good,” she says.

  “Doesn’t it bother you that he steals so many lines from others?”

  She glances at me. “No. That makes them better, so why would that bother me?”

  We fall back into silence. A sudden urgency squeezes my chest, as though our relationship has been bleeding out for days, and we have between now and when she’s done with my leg to bind it. Salminder gave me the gift of alone time with her. What was his message to me? You’re a good man. And I’m wasting my chance. Just like I seem to have been wasting Dalen’s teaching all this time.

  “I thought of you,” I say. “With the bear. I thought of you.”

  She stops. A tear drips from her nose to fall on my thigh. She wipes it off.

  “Only a seventeen-year-old boy would come up with a girl being the meaning of life,” she says. There’s a cautious edge to the words that could cut more than any bear claw. But her father’s sick. She’s protecting herself.

  “No,” I say. “It’s not about sleeping with you. It’s about making it right. Us right.”

  Her twisted smile relaxes. “Sorry,” she says. “It’s . . . it’s been hard. Confusing. I don’t want to be alone. I’m not ready yet.”

  “I’m the one who’s sorry. I left you alone!” I say.

  But she looks at me with such intensity. “No, don’t say that. You were right. You were so right. I would have regretted that night forever.” I swallow because I’m not sure what she’s saying. “Not because of you,” she says, her voice softening. “Because of doing it for the wrong reasons. Wrong time.”

  “Focus on your dad,” I reply, and begin to pull on my pants, but she reaches down to grab my hand.

  “I am,” she says. “He’s going to be okay, they say. No new cancer spots and the ones he has have shrunk. They can’t even see them anymore.” Her face is radiant even as tears fall.

  Now I’m crying, and she abandons the tape to lean down and kiss me, and although it lacks the rush of before, it’s the sweeter for it, salty with tears mine and hers.

  “You know I don’t actually have a million dollars,” I say.

  “Yeah, I know,” she says and kisses me again.

  ***

  There are five more days before I have to tell Sam Peregrine the meaning of life. They are the best five days of my life.

  Penny is my sidekick. With my leg I can’t fetch cleaning supplies quickly or send messages to campers. Let me say, it’s a lot easier having a cute six-year-old ask someone for late payment of rent. While we scrub the floors together, she turns it into a race. Everything becomes a game. Every day she goes swimming. Even while the pool’s still cold, and then we warm up around the campfire. There are two fires now. The first fire pit became too small to hold everyone.

  At both of them Uncle Jamie sells bags of Grandma’s Unicorn Farts, GUFs. He’s test-marketing formulations while Penny works on a logo of Grandma riding a unicorn that flies through the air using a jet of rainbows coming from its butt. At the campfires, I watch in amazement as relationships bloom. Jacks go off hand-in-hand while Tina smirks behind her fingers. I’m holding her other hand. Even Obelix has found someone who loves trucks and terriers as much as he does. I wasn’t expecting it to be Buck Hawley, but they look really happy together. Salminder’s beard has begun to grow back in. For now he looks sort of hip rather than dignified.

  Later, my mom officially takes back the camp chores, freeing Tina and me and Penny to begin breaking down the playground and developing plans to build our own. While swinging sledgehammers, we come up with sayings for Swami Burgers.

  No burger was ever swallowed in a single bite.

  The burger was not. The burger will never be. The burger just is.

  To the still mind, the burger surrenders.

  Thought leads to action, action to habit, habit to hamburgers.

  Knowledge speaks, but burgers listen.

  When the student is ready, the burger appears.

  And Penny’s favorite. If it’s brown, lay down. If it’s black, fight back. If it’s Swami, fill your tummy.

  I try not to think about the meaning of life. My mom’s stopped asking. It’s only when I catch her alone that I know something still isn’t right. It’s hard to say goodbye with Grandma’s brain up there.

  Crystal’s working on logos for her hunting camp, aptly named “The Grizzly” after the taxidermied bear she plans for its entrance. We talk about expanding the trailer park. Standing near the freshly painted gate, I blink in amazement. For once in my lifetime, the camp’s name isn’t ironic.

  On the day I’m to talk to Sam Peregrine, I look in my cracked full-length mirror and see Better-Ray. I don’t need to visualize him. He’s here. I’m not stronger in the sense that I’m not any more muscular than I was, but there’s something in the way I stand that fills out the reflection. It’s been more than twenty-one days since this all started, and I’ve made a habit of it.

  My unused climbing gear lies jumbled on the floor. Maybe I’ll climb Big Mountain later this summer, but I didn’t have to climb anything or go on a v
ision quest to be better. Everything I needed was all here in front of me. In me.

  There’s a banging at the door. I open it to Deneze. “Hey, wanted to wish you luck.” He’s got his hands in his pockets, and he’s staring at his steel-toed boots. “Know what you’re going to say?”

  “Yeah,” I reply. “That—”

  “No.” He holds up a palm. “Don’t tell me, okay? I think that’s part of it. It’s better if you figure it out on your own.”

  “Well, I have to tell the executor something,” I say.

  “Only if you want a million dollars.” He laughs.

  “How about you? You going to do the vision quest thing?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Nah.” He flushes like he did that time at the pool. “What if I told you I like what I’m doing?”

  I realize now that his embarrassment hadn’t been because he felt stuck following in his father’s footsteps; his embarrassment was because he wanted to follow in them. “I’d say you’re really lucky.”

  “Shouldn’t I want something more? I mean, it’s garbage disposal.”

  Deneze isn’t the only one who suddenly seems to think I have all the answers. He looks at me with such desperation and uncertainty.

  “And other people clean porta-potties.” I shrug. “Why do you like it?”

  “Well, I’m helping people. I like working on the trucks. I like being outside.”

  “Sound convincing to me.” He nods again and maybe that’s all it takes, accepting it. Owning it.

  “You want some oatmeal?” I ask. “If you pour enough sugar on top, it’s pretty good.”

  “Gotta finish the route. You going to do Mud and Fire next year, you think?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Hope so. Want to take it to that townie girl.” He grins.

  He heads down the path, ponytail bobbing, the richest kid in a hundred miles. But maybe not for long.

  A truck honks—Sam Peregrine has arrived.

  Chapter 47

  My mother hulks at the mouth of the path. She doesn’t appear armed but holds her hands tight to her hips. Jaw muscles twitch.

  We’re like two gunfighters waiting for sundown. I stand with my legs spread, knowing I have to go past her. But I’ve faced a grizzly. In the dark.

  “You know,” she says, after half a minute of silence. “I hope you get it right. I never did.”

  I swallow the lump in my throat. “I killed Grandma.” It’s out, and I realize that the secret has been tearing at me, holding me back from embracing each moment all month.

  “How do you figure?” my mom asks. And I explain the video game that fateful morning. She shakes her head. “Funny. Can’t tell you how much your grandma loved being with you. Wasn’t killing her. Gave her another thing to live for.”

  That iceberg in my guts, the last of it, it had split once after the grizzly, and then slowly melted over the rest of the week. I don’t feel it anymore. “Thanks, Ma.” It’s all I can manage to say.

  “You can stay, you know, I won’t kick you out. And I won’t sell, neither,” she adds. “But give the meaning a try anyways. I’m . . . I’m proud of you. Always have been.”

  As I walk past my mother, I give her a hug. And I rub her back as I lean in to her ear. “I’m kicking you out for sure,” I whisper and start laughing, and she laughs with me. “This whole thing is so crazy.”

  She nods and then shakes her head at Grandma’s brain. “It is.”

  Neither of us really knows what it we mean, but that’s the point of it. It doesn’t matter. There’s another honk. Sam’s waiting in her truck, waving at us from the road.

  I shut her truck door and slump into a chocolate-brown leather seat that smells of pine freshener. She smiles at me, eyes shifting to my mom and then back. In her hand is a letter sealed with wax, and written on it in shaky handwriting is The Meaning of Life.

  “Why do you and my mother hate each other?” I ask.

  Sam glances at the letter and frowns. I realize she wants to see what’s in it as much as I do.

  “I married her boyfriend,” she says. My eyes flicker to her bare ring finger. “He was a bastard. Second-best-looking boy at school, though.” Her smile’s back. “Sure was cute.” She holds up the letter. “Are you ready?” I hesitate. “There’s a lot of people who want to know the answer,” she says. “Me included.”

  “But it’ll be my grandma’s answer,” I reply. “I’m not sure my meaning of life’s the same as hers. Just like yours wouldn’t be my mom’s.”

  On the radio a country singer croons about lost love.

  “She was ninety-something,” Sam says without missing a step. “Has to have learned a few things.” Her fingernail itches at the wax. She’s not interested in my answer. Not the answer of a seventeen-year-old boy.

  “Can I?” I point to the envelope.

  “No cheating. I wouldn’t want you to peek before giving me your answer.” She winks, and I wonder whether she really means it or whether she wants to collude. To take not only the second-best-looking boy at school from her old nemesis, but the inheritance too. After a pause, she hands me the envelope.

  “Tell me what you think, Ray—what’s the meaning of life?” she asks, without removing her gaze from the envelope’s seal.

  I shrug and shake my head. With the weight of the wax, the slim envelope feels heavy, even for all that it’s supposed to contain. I look again into Sam’s shining eyes.

  “Well?” she urges. “Aren’t you going to try and guess something? Open it!”

  I glance out my window.

  At the end of the path the sun drapes my trailer, and in the glade stands my mother. She’s waiting with a smile on her face. I look to the envelope and back to Sam. “Thank you,” I say. “It’s not for me to open though. Not for my grandma to answer for me.”

  An expression of cold fury sweeps over Sam Peregrine, and I jerk her snatching fingers away from the envelope.

  “I’m the executor! It’s mine to read.” I kick open the door, and she screeches again. “Tell me. How do you know?”

  In her tight eyes I remember something Dalen said. I don’t know what Sam Peregrine’s been through. I don’t know why she’s held tight to bitterness, to the past.

  “I can’t tell you,” I say. “And this won’t either.”

  “The park’s your mom’s and your uncle’s then,” she shouts. “There’s nothing I can do for you. You’ll be thrown out.”

  “Always was their park. I don’t need anything,” I say. “It’s all here.” I tap my head and shut the door.

  I take more steps backward, toward my mom. Sam Peregrine sags over the steering wheel of her truck and starts the engine. When she pulls out, my mom appears at my side.

  “So?” she asks.

  I hold up the letter.

  “You didn’t open it?”

  “I will,” I say. “At Grandma’s funeral. It’s her meaning of life. Not mine.”

  Her lip quivers, and she closes her eyes. A single tear breaks from her eyelid and tracks down her cheek. I hug her.

  “You need to say goodbye, Mom,” I say. “We all do.”

  “That would be nice,” she says.

  ***

  The date for the funeral is set for a week later. Over a thousand people show on the day. I think some of them are only here to see me finally crack the wax on the envelope, but many more once stayed in one of the five trailers at the back of the park, trailers I’ve since sealed with caulking and cleaned. These people, some as old as my grandma, others my mother’s age— children of those who have passed but who still carry the stories of Sunny Days—they come with flowers and photos. Memories of a very different legacy than the one I hold of my grandma.

  With no body to bury, the ceremony takes place beneath Grandma’s brain. A hill of flowers brushes her toes.

  When it comes to the eulogy, my mother hints at a lost childhood that wasn’t without its good moments. Campfire smoke, songs, marshmallows, and laughter.
My uncle talks about magic, the magic of the woods, and his search for it in fireworks, until he finally found it with the help of Grandma. He hands out hundreds of GUFs. I don’t care how crazy he seems to everyone; he’ll always be the man who carried me away from the jaws of wolves.

  Then it’s my time. A hush falls over the crowd as I make my way to the front. I touch Grandma’s toes and breathe deeply of the fragrant flowers. In my hand’s the envelope. Some of the wax has broken away, and it’s dirty with my fingerprints. But I haven’t opened it. My stomach twists as I do, the heat of expectations, the wax falling to the grass. Inside’s a single sheet, which I unfold and read.

  “It’s a recipe,” I say. “It’s a recipe for apple pie. The meaning of life is baked apple pie.”

  Maybe she was celebrating a bit too much when she wrote her will. But a recipe’s as good as any. Those in the audience who once stayed here and shared in Grandma’s pie, they smile knowingly. They understand even if most the people in attendance simply lift an eyebrow and shake their head at an old coot.

  The letter generates a titter of laughter and more than a few groans. Everyone starts launching unicorn farts. I duck out of the way. As the GUFs flare off of her statue’s boobs, I’m pretty sure she’s smiling in her brain. My uncle’s eyes shine with more than tears, and he grins at me with each pop of a fart. Between his thumb and forefinger he dangles one. He waggles it and points at Grandma’s statue. My jaw unhinges and he gleefully whips another fart into her chest.

  I get it, suddenly: the weeklong fire. The white-hot kiln in the woods. That’s where Grandma had gone. Uncle Jamie had cremated her, and now the ashes are sprinkled in the farts. She’s part of GUF’s secret recipe. I laugh as I throw my GUF into the air. It lands in my palm where it flashes green.

  “Bye, Grandma,” I say and let the wind take her away.

  ***

  A week later I receive a note from Dalen. In it, he sends a check for $5000, a refund for one week of mentoring less medical expenses, including the airlift. I offer it to my mom and to my uncle, but they tell me to keep the money, so I split it with Crystal.

 

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