Ray Vs the Meaning of Life

by Michael F Stewart

  I cancel the hearse and head off toward Pulled Beef. Sites eight and sixty-five are on the way.

  At site eight, the pigtailed girl asks about the pool again.

  “There’s a big block of ice in it,” I say. She just blinks. “The ice is full of leaves, and I have to wait for it to melt in order to clean the pool.”

  “Tomorrow?” she squeaks, eyes shining with tears.

  “Yeah, maybe tomorrow,” I say.

  The mother squints at me. “She was excited about the camp having a pool.”

  Stupid leaving the water in the pool all winter. Of course, that was me, but it was my mom’s camp. At that point anyway. She could have pumped it out.

  Site sixty-five has the rather plump man.

  “Camp life starts early round here,” he grumbles. His blue-and-white striped PJ pants are pulled up to his hairy chest, so he looks a lot like the Gaul Obelix in the Asterix comics. Funny, the mosquitoes buzz in a blurry halo around him but don’t bite despite what must be a rather tempting canvas. His tiny Jack Russell barks up at me. “What’s this I hear about no truck rally?”

  “Sorry, sir, but we’ve never held a truck rally.”

  He tries a different tact. “You have enough mud for one.”

  That is true, but not for long. The ruts are as big as ever and the sun high. They’re hardening. I’ll need to spend the night working on them or else call in a road grader.

  “Sorry,” I repeat and then rush over to where Tina’s poking her head out of Pulled Beef’s window. “Sorry,” I tell her.

  Even though Tina and I have been arguing as of late, it’s a relief to be here. This is where I’ve spent the last three summers; this is normal, a refuge. Last shift had been so awkward, without our usual banter. I’m relieved when I sense a bit of the old Tina back.

  “So happy you’re here,” she says. “Salminder’s in town getting more lettuce or something.”

  Tina has all the condiments and toppings out already. The salad bin is full. “Maybe he’s expecting a run on extra lettuce?” I suggest. “For all the vegetarian jacks?” I can count them on one hand.

  Tina bites her lip. “Yeah, maybe. Come on, get cooking. I need your help before the rush.”

  “And here I thought you were just interested in me for all of my money.”

  She laughs and my heart lifts. “You don’t have any money.”

  “So if I did, you’d be interested?”

  “No,” she says in a don’t-be-ridiculous tone.

  I pause. “Why not?” I ask, beginning to scrape down the grill.

  “You’re such a dork.” Her laughter isn’t mean even though it cuts. It’s lilting, like how a butterfly flies.

  “What do you mean?” I ask. “A dork?”

  Tina’s smile fades and she looks away. “I didn’t mean . . . dork-dork.”

  I step away from the grill to stand in front of her, unable to let it go.

  “It’s just been busy.” She starts chopping tomatoes.

  Dismayed that the awkwardness is back, I let the silence stretch.

  Chop, choppity, chop.

  “Okay I did mean it, but not in a really bad way,” she says. “You live in a trailer.”

  “So do you,” I reply, and return to scraping the scabs of grease.

  “No, I sleep in a trailer during the summer. You live there. Choose to live there. You play video games every night. Used to be all day, too. At school you don’t do anything, you let other people in your work groups do all of it. You’re smart, but you’re lazy. You don’t try.”

  I toss the brush I’m using. It clangs against the iron grill. I don’t feel lazy anymore. Not after today. I feel as though I’ve made up for a full year’s laziness in a single day, so I bristle. “And what are you doing that’s so special?” I demand.

  “I’m trying.” She nicks herself and sucks on her finger. Are those tears in her eyes? My heart goes out to her, but my brain’s still angry.

  “Trying what?” I ask.

  “I want to learn things. I don’t want to work at Pulled Beef.” Her finger’s bleeding still, but I’m not letting her off the hook. I’ve been taking it from campers, my mom, from Crystal, even Jamie, who keeps stealing the firewood I cut for the evening fire. What Tina said about school may be true, but if she had to hitchhike to and from school most of the time, and miss half the winter for snow, maybe she wouldn’t be the star pupil either.

  “Sorry, I didn’t quite hear that,” I say.

  “I don’t want to spend my life in Pulled Beef.” She lowers her voice as if worried her father will hear.

  “What do you want to do?” I ask.

  “I dunno, okay, just not do this for any longer than I need to. Do I have to know everything?” There are tears on her cheeks now and I back off. She’s never said anything mean to me before. I don’t understand it, but I let it go.

  “I do,” I mumble. “I have to know.” I have twenty-eight days to know everything. I yank open the freezer door to grab a box of hamburger patties.

  “It’s just money.”

  “Just a MILLION dollars,” I say, standing in a fog of frosted air.

  “Okay, maybe you would be a bit more interesting with a million dollars,” she admits.

  I smile. The will, the responsibility of the park, or maybe the pressure of the meaning of life, it’s this chunk of ice floating in my stomach. For a moment, looking at her downward sloping eyes, I can forget about it. I can recall the press of her hand on mine, even if I know now it was only out of pity.

  With the meat pucks on the counter I snatch the first-aid kit and peel open a bandage with a cartoon print. “Raymond Saintbury, lazy, dork . . . millionaire, knower of the meaning of life,” I say. “Quite the catch.”

  “You any closer to figuring it out?” she asks, offering her slender brown finger, blood sliding to the tip. I glance up, expecting to see her joking, but her dark eyes are steady. There’s the ice again.

  “Somehow, I’m actually farther away.” I grip her finger and press the cut into the bandage before securing the adhesive. We hold for a moment longer than strictly necessary before I let go. We lapse back to silence. Maybe that’s safer.

  As I fill ruts that evening, the same ruts I filled the evening before, I can see how it happens, how people stop searching for meaning. Everyone has these ruts to fill. If they don’t fill them, they turn to concrete and can never be filled, so they keep at it every day. That’s the real rut.

  Chapter 14

  The double asterisks have become a symbol of hope. Maybe desperation. It’s not surprising. The first asterisk saved me from being mistaken for a bear. For an entire week, I do nothing but run, clean, dig, flip. I even take an axe to the pool-berg, but it’s still too big and that’s only the one on top of the cover. I’ve discovered an even bigger one beneath. The double asterisks hold all the answers.

  After the first few days I gave up asking my mom for the will. So I called Sam Peregrine, but she never seemed to be in and if she returned my calls, then no one’s giving me the messages. Crystal’s probably just grumpy because she hasn’t bagged her bear yet, likely because it’s smarter than she is. But I don’t have time to hang around the office and wait for Sam Peregrine’s call.

  I even tried to hitch a ride into town one morning, but Tina caught me at the gate and tapped her watch, reminding me about my shift. Finally I email Sam Peregrine and get an out-of-the-office reply. She’ll be back in two weeks—a week and a half, now. There’s nothing I can do but hold on like the kitten in one of those motivational posters—Hang in there.

  Every day I lose a bit more sleep, and every day I get a little closer to begging my mom to take over and to forget the whole million-dollar thing.

  With three weeks to go, she still laughs as I pass her. Sometimes the glee sounds forced, though. It’s getting old for both of us. Once, I even catch her wiping down the counters in the women’s washroom as if she can’t help herself. Crystal’s gone off hunting again. At
least someone has what they want.

  There’s a routine to the chores, sure, but it’s a grinding routine, one that stretches me a bit more every day and will eventually pull too far and leave me dislocated and limp. I have begun avoiding the little pigtailed girl and almost snapped at her the last time she asked about the pool. The ice in my guts has swollen. I’m not even hungry anymore.

  Still don’t know where Grandma went. I asked Uncle Jamie, but he only shrugged and kept stealing wood. For what, I don’t know. There’s a near continuous trail of white smoke about a half a mile into the woods. I’m suspicious he’s working on his biggest fireworks yet. Something too big to be safely made in camp. His rocket. I was only eight at the time, but I still remember the summer when the whole trailer park was nearly flattened by one of his experiments.

  The only thing I know for certain is, caring for a trailer park is not the meaning of life. Maybe it’s the opposite, but I don’t have time to sort through what is or isn’t—I can only poke my head above the flurry of jobs for long enough to draw breath and remember the double asterisks. But even knowing it’s there, I seem unable to get to it. I can’t take it any longer. None of this is fair. I hate my grandma. I hate flipping burgers. I want my old life back.

  On Sunday, when even the manager’s jobs dip, I pick up my game controller, slip on my headset, and go on a gaming binge like I haven’t in a week. I planned on an eight-hour play. For breakfast, I’d made a quadruple meal pot of KD. And I locked the trailer door.

  I ignore the bangs that rattle the walls. The knocks. Tina’s out there too, but Salminder will be helping her. Cleaning can wait. The pool can wait. Yes, even the cute, sad, pigtailed girl. In my game I’m campaign leader, wielding a diamond-tipped staff of power, riding a giant wolf against dragon spawn whose meaning of life is to end mine and my rangers’ lives and then destroy our plane of existence—so I have an important job. One of my rangers is Chinese, two are from Los Angeles, there’s a Canadian, a Brit . . . in all, I am guiding a score of rangers from a dozen countries in a joint mission to take down the Black Dragon that has kidnapped the king’s daughters. Across the world another fifty spectators are following our progress as if it matters. Big stuff.

  Skirmish after skirmish, we win. My spell casting ability grows until I pulse with power, and the rest of my team clatters with magical weapons, potions, and rods of impressive things. A cloak of near-invincibility flaps at my back, and I can teleport at will. After each dungeon level, I pause and muscle down another bite of orange goo. Now the Black Dragon throws spawn at us that are more fang and claw than anything else. We’re way past the guard rooms and have cleared the Dragon Temple of its human acolytes. The traps have been evaded and secret passageways found. We’re entering the nurseries of the Black Dragon—it’s time to fry some lizard kids.

  By the time the trailer shakes on its struts, I’ve advanced to High Wizard. The bone doors to the dragon’s lair loom before me. Eighty-two spectators ping us with encouragement and strategies. The yelling beyond my headset is muted by exploding fireballs, clanging swords, and swearing in eight languages. Someone slides the window open beside my head and grabs my shoulder. I don’t even look over, not at first; there are dragon spawn to consider and the rest of my party of heroes. In the trailer, the air has gone moist. The KD is three-quarters done and turned chewy dark, blood orange. Tina glares at me red-eyed with a look of jaw-clenched disappointment. My vision blurs, refocuses, eyes grainy with missed sleep. Her mouth opens and closes but I can’t hear.

  She rolls her eyes, disappears. I turn back to the screen but everything goes silent. The screen goes dark. I hear the snapping of twigs. Tina returns holding a bundle of pulled wires. She cut my power.

  “I’m AWOL,” I say. “My heroes.”

  “You’re AWOL here, dork,” Tina says. Then her eyes tear again.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Her jaw flexes as if she’s forcing something down. “Nothing, I’m covering your shifts, and you’re a dork.”

  I frown and stand. My shirt actually crackles, it’s so starched with old KD and sweat. Quickly, I swap it for a fresher T-shirt and stumble out into the light of day. “What time is it?”

  “Afternoon,” she says.

  “I have to clean stuff,” I groan.

  “Wednesday.”

  “What? What Wednesday?” I ask.

  “You’ve been in there for three days.”

  Oddly, my first thought is that if I played for one more day, I might have had a vision. Tina ruined my dork-vision-quest. To play video games until I found my avatar. I can imagine mine being a teeth-bared-in-fear emoji. I glance back at the trailer; someone has decorated it with toilet paper. Notes taped to the door by campers flutter in a breeze. A cicada buzzes. I’m ravenous. I need to pee.

  “You really are a—”

  I’m in a haze, but mumble, “A dork, I get it, thanks. Whatever.”

  On the air is the sweet smell of wood smoke and something I can’t quite place. I follow Tina down the trail. Strewn about are pop cans and empty chip bags. At the trail’s end bags of garbage crawl with maggots. A lumberjack huffs at me. The pigtailed girl looks on hopefully. I turn away. I’d rather that she glared.

  In the washroom someone’s yelling. “Mine!”

  “It’s mine!”

  “I brought it myself.”

  “I need a square, just a square. Give it to me.” The voice drops low and threatening.

  I jog over and ease open the door to the women’s washroom, about to ask what the matter is when I see a woman straddling another who is holding a roll of toilet paper over her head. They flip in muck. I shut the door quickly. The camp is ready to blow.

  “Thanks for getting me,” I say. But Tina shakes her head. “Listen, I’m sorry.”

  “Tell that to everyone else,” she says, face flushing and eyes brimming.

  “What?” I ask. I can tell something’s up. “What is wrong?”

  But she’s gritting her teeth again.

  “I don’t need this crap,” I reply, tired, hangry, and fed up. “You’re the reason why I’m even doing this, you know?”

  She wheels around. “For me?”

  “Yeah, if I let my mom have the park, she’s just going to sell it and then Pulled Beef will have to leave and—”

  Her arms fold across her chest. “You’re sure it’s not about a million dollars? Don’t do me any favors!” She starts to walk away. “Super dork!”

  “Well, you’re . . .” Pretty, smart, amazing, and “dork” hurts coming from her. “Not a very nice person.”

  She folds as if struck in the gut and kneels in the crusty road.

  I jog over, but don’t touch her. She’s sobbing.

  “Tina? I didn’t mean it. You’re nice. You’re wonderful. I take it back.”

  She presses her hands over her ears.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “My dad.” Her chest hitches. “My dad’s sick.”

  “What d’you mean?” I ask and then realize. “I’m sorry I missed my shifts. I’ll take yours too, until he’s better.”

  Tina looks to the sky and then her face crumbles. I bend and pull her into my shoulder. “Real sick . . . ,” she says. “Cancer.”

  Salminder’s the closest relation to me beyond my family. None of us have ever faced cancer, or anything close to it. It’s not really something that computes. “I’m sorry, is he . . . okay?” I’m such an idiot, really a dork, but her sobbing stutters a bit. “I mean, they can do stuff, right?”

  “They caught it, he says, but . . .”

  And I know. Cancer.

  A woman sprints out of the washroom, clutching the toilet paper roll like it’s the Olympic torch. The second woman races after her. Suddenly I don’t really care about how clean the campers’ butts are. I don’t care about virtual monsters, not when there’s a real one right here in the park.

  Tina says, “He doesn’t want anyone to k
now.” She’s pale as she studies my face. “You deal with the camp. I’ll start the grill. I’ll see you later.”

  I don’t know what to say. Over the last week, I’d jumped to the conclusion that Tina had suddenly become mean. I feel as though I’ve been pulled from an alternate reality and placed in a game that really blows. What can I do? But some games don’t have a hack, a cheat. Not real-life games.

  “I’m sorry,” I reply, but Tina’s already gone, and the women who were screaming about the toilet paper are looking expectantly at me.

  Chapter 15

  I suspect where the will is—in my mom’s bedroom—but that’s always locked when she’s not around. There’s only one time of day when I know her door is unlocked: night. While she’s sleeping. Until then, I have three days of chores to catch up on.

  I hand bomb toilet paper over the washroom stalls. Despite how crappy I’ve been, I even get a few cheers. The road is a ragged mess. Nothing can help it until there’s another big rain. Obelix-the-camper stares at the hardened mud, his expression as droopy as the girl’s at the pool-berg. Even knowing the ruts are going to be almost impossible to smooth out, I try anyway; chipping at clay’s better than any of the other chores. I’ve disappointed everyone. I bail pool water into the washrooms and squeegee out the floors, which saves me at least an hour of scrubbing. Then I check in campers who, without me around, just grabbed spots and plugged in without paying. The camp is officially full, and it’s not even July.

  With a brain foggy from lack of sleep, I inspect the hot water heater and reignite the pilot. With a thump, the propane lights. The trailer park has hot water once more. I resist the urge to nap on the concrete floor. No one would find me there, but instead I head to the office and call Deneze, asking him to make a special run to get rid of the maggot factories.

  From her lawn chair, my mom claps as I wander back and forth with pails of water. All the while I check over my shoulder to watch Tina fake-smiling at customers when I know all she wants to do is curl into a ball and cry. Somehow knowing the pain she’s in makes it easier for me to power through my list. When I’ve done half my chores, I wad together the notes of camper complaints and jog to Pulled Beef.