Ray Vs the Meaning of Life Read online

  RAY VS THE MEANING OF LIFE

  Michael F. Stewart

  RAY VS THE MEANING OF LIFE

  By Michael F. Stewart

  Copyright 2018 Michael F. Stewart

  Cover Art by Martin Stiff

  Formatting by Polgarus Studio

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form.

  www.michaelfstewart.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living, dead or virtual, is entirely coincidental.

  Praise for Keep in a Cold, Dark Place

  “With its tyrannical parents, moronic siblings, goofy monsters, and dark humor, the book summons the works of middle-grade master Roald Dahl.

  A darkly funny rural tale with a scary bent.” —Kirkus Reviews

  Praise for Counting Wolves

  “Stewart lets the story do the talking in a world populated by fabulous supporting characters and full of surprises. Counting Wolves is an engaging read for teens and adults alike,” Wesley King, author of the Silver Birch Award and Edgar Award winner OCDaniel.

  Praise for Assured Destruction

  “A fun, fast-paced thriller guaranteed to distract teens from Facebook …” —Kirkus Reviews

  For Teagan and Natasha.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Here’s what killed Grandma:

  The garbage truck pulled into Sunny Days RV Park at half past nine. I was gaming in my camper and missed most of it, but there were witnesses. Grandma was checking on the trailers like she did every morning to make sure no one was “cavorting.”

  Now my half-sister, Crystal, she was hunting with her rifle out. The .22, for picking off squirrels, even the odd raccoon, you know . . . dinner. But Crystal didn’t kill Grandma. She says Grandma’s dying was the same as one of those domino setups, where one thing follows another.

  The truck roared up from the main gate in a direct line headed to the rear, where the garbage was piled. It’d been raining, and mud pooled in the road’s tire ruts.

  The way Crystal tells it, she hit that squirrel with the crack of a rifle shot. The bullet knocked it from the tree branch and onto the face of Grandma, who staggered, screeching, into the path of the truck. The truck locked its wheels and slid through the mud like a greased pig through a farmer’s fingers.

  But the truck didn’t kill Grandma.

  My ma, who had been scrubbing toilets, lurched out of the stalls, bucket sloshing, and witnessed what came next. Says that getting squished by the truck would’ve been better. One of those dream catchers people use to keep away nightmares hung in the truck’s windscreen. Grandma had a weird fear of dream catchers. Seeing the feathers dangling from the web of gut, she screamed and ran toward the garbage pile.

  Near the bins, smoke was streaming from Uncle Jamie’s firework shack. He was doing what he’s always doing, mixing various powders and such to concoct his explosions. The whole shack looks like it’s ready to fall over; he just leans the metal sheets together like walls. Says it’s not laziness, but to release pressure in the event of what happens all the time.

  In my game, I was protecting a party of rangers, hacking dragon spawn left and right. My trailer’s back in the woods, nearer to Uncle Jamie’s than anyone else’s, and atop a tiny hill to keep it out of the swamp and to improve reception. But this is what I heard happened from those witnesses: Grandma was sprinting, which is a little like a dog with two legs, a front right one and a rear left, trying to run. And smoke was a pouring, and the truck was a roaring and chasing Grandma like a nightmare itself, when Uncle added the wrong powder and . . .

  KABOOM!

  But the fireworks didn’t kill Grandma, either.

  Tina witnessed all the rest—Tina’s pretty much the smartest, most beautiful girl in the universe; just a glance from her and I can walk on top of all this mud, know what I mean? She’s the reason why I, at the age of seventeen, keep flipping burgers at the park’s burger joint where she works with her dad, instead of doing the famous stuff I’m meant to do. Now Tina says the firework shack went off like an exploding unicorn, all rainbows and sparkles. Uncle Jamie was fine, never had hair anyways, except on his buttocks; the man’s buttocks are as hairy as a bear’s, which is a great segue because . . .

  The blast shook me from my game, but it shoved Grandma to her knees. She shouted about cavalry and artillery. Tina screamed, “Bear!” Grandma crawled for cover, right into the woods. Mom said Grandma headed for me, that I could have helped her more, but I don’t know how. I wish I could’ve—really, I do. But Tina says the bear had been waiting.

  Bears don’t usually do that. Wait, I mean. They come around before the garbage truck because they like to pick through the refuse, but usually black bears, not grizzlies like this monster. It’s a bad thing when a bear starts stalking.

  While Grandma crawled, Uncle Jamie stumbled around in a daze. Mom says the smoke hit her then. But the bear was freaked out by all the noise.

  This next bit I’ll never forget, because I was there.

  After the blast, I snatched a climbing hammer—closest thing to me—and a can of bear spray, and bolted out the door. I hollered, still too far away to use the spray, and sprinted through spiny pine branches that snagged on my bare chest.

  Coat pearly in the sun and as big as a trailer itself, the bear towered on thick haunches. Grandma gave it this puggish scowl and shook her head at the thing. That’s when the bear hugged Grandma the way she hated to be hugged. Her spine snapped like a branch in a storm.

  As I broke into the clearing, I could tell Grandma was a goner. She hung over the bear’s leg like a towel on a rack. Tears blurred my vision, but you didn’t need to see well to use bear spray. I knelt and aimed between its shoulder blades.

  The grizzly dropped Grandma to spring’s frost-bitten leaves and bumbled off, leaving her crumpled on the ground.

  The bear’s what killed Grandma, or so everyone thinks. And life won’t ever be the same.

  Chapter 2

  I’m first to her side. Her eyes are staring. “Dead,” I whisper, with my fingers at Grandma’s wrist and my heart pounding as if to make up for hers. “Grandma, no.”

  A rifle shot cracks. Tree bark s
plinters near my head.

  “Sorry,” Crystal shouts. “Thought you was another bear. Get a haircut.”

  “Sheeit,” my mom says. “Call the freezer people.”

  I glower at my ma. Grandma was rich. She owned Sunny Days RV Park and wasn’t all that pleased about getting old, so she’d arranged for the freezer people to come and freeze her if by chance she kicked it. Grandma always told everyone her Last Will and Testament would be a “doozy.” “You can take my park, but I’m gonna want it back when I resurrect like Jesus,” she’d say.

  Uncle Jamie sobs, tears plowing through soot, leaving muddy streaks. I quake, wearing nothing more than my undies and my boots, too stunned to do more than gawk.

  Within three minutes of that bear attack, a steady whomping sound begins, coming from the direction of Big Mountain, and moments later a speck of silver near the snowcapped peak flashes in the morning sun. My climbing hammer’s cold in my palm, two years old and still shiny as the day I bought it. I’d planned to set out to climb the Big today—that will have to wait, like it had to wait yesterday and every day of the last year and the year before.

  We gape as the silver speck grows. None of us has ever seen a helicopter this large. It lands, taking up six empty trailer slabs. A dozen figures pour out, clad in head-to-toe coveralls and masks as if we might be zombies.

  “How’d they know?” Ma asks the question I’m thinking.

  “App,” Tina says, slouchy eyes serious. “There’s an app for everything now.”

  The door of the helicopter reads: TIMELY CRYOGENICS—DON’T MISS A BEAT. NOW ON ANDROID!

  “Is this Madame Georgia Saintbury?” The man spoke from within a sealed helmet.

  “Madame,” Mom snickers.

  “Yep,” I say.

  “Don’t think you can just pick up a dead—” It’s Tina, and she’s taking pictures. A dozen hands heft an old woman who probably weighs all of a hundred pounds on account of the dwindles, and they carry her like Gandhi through the door of the helicopter.

  We all walk with them, boots squelching, but they don’t let us in. She’s laid on a table in the belly of the ship. Someone runs a circular saw as the rear hatch slowly closes.

  “They’re not going to . . . what I think they’re going to . . . ,” Tina whispers.

  Mom says, “Freezer people. Wait a second . . .” And she bangs on the ship and shouts, “Hey! How much this all costing?”

  “Grandma’s dime,” Uncle says, and Mom whirls on him like a snake strike.

  “She’s dead, Jamie—that money’s ours now.”

  Uncle Jamie backs up a step.

  The freezer people take an hour. I stand in the mud, listening to sawing and shouting inside, feeling a little like Grandma’s been abducted by aliens and she’ll step out of there smiling but with dead eyes. Tina offers me a coffee and I take it, but really only so I can hold something she held. In my head I keep hearing the crack of Grandma’s spine.

  Doc Kingfish, the local family doctor who also works as the coroner, arrives, but he’s not allowed into the ship until they walk out hefting what looks like a slow cooker. Frost ghosts from the lid and coats the stainless steel. The alien-guy holds it out wearing gloves. A cord dangles from the bottom. “Need to plug this in,” he says. “Quick.”

  “She didn’t pay for storage?” Tina asks.

  The sides are so cold they burn, and I grab two of Ma’s cleaning rags for my palms to hold it.

  “Is it . . .?” Tina asks, reaching out but not touching the container.

  “Madame Georgia Saintbury,” alien-guy says. “The important part. Don’t forget to plug her in.”

  It’s not all of her; in this canister floats my grandma’s brain. It’s no accident that I’m the one holding it. Other than Uncle Jamie, I’m probably the only soul in the park who thinks it’s worth keeping, with the exception of Grandma herself.

  I carry it to the spot she’s prepared for it: a giant, fiberglass version of herself. The park mascot. She had it made ten years ago and has been talking about her immortality ever since, drinking champagne and eating caviar just to get a rise from her daughter. Twelve feet tall, with each breast the size of my head, it’s more Barbie doll than Grandma, but she insists it’s how she looked before gravity struck.

  Two generators in a concrete shell beneath her feet will fire up if the power ever goes out, which it does a lot here. On a stepladder, I slide the brain into the back of Grandma’s head and pull on the cord. It’s three feet too short. “Anyone have an extension? For Grandma’s brain?” I shout.

  No one answers.

  “I need a brain extension,” I call. “Chrissake.”

  From one trailer come snorts of laughter. It’s somehow contagious because, as Grandma defrosts, Tina giggles and Mom’s yelling where she stands over the body bag the aliens are leaving behind. I manage to laugh through some tears. But no one has a cord, so I slog through the mud toward my trailer. The helicopter sends leaves swirling and disappears like it’s never been.

  My door thwacks against the trailer’s side, and my eyes water at the smell, a mix of mac-and-cheese and sour laundry. After a moment, my eyes and nose acclimatize. One bed, an ultra-tiny kitchen with a bar fridge and hot plate and sink, and a table designed for two but reconfigured for my multiscreen computer rig. Beside the table are piled loops of rope, carabiners, and a bag of chalk—everything I need to climb the Big, to figure out what I’m supposed to do in life, you know?—but gaming’s been keeping me busy.

  I drop the hammer in the pile. My thumb’s nearly on the computer’s power button to wake it before I remember Grandma and dip down to pull up the nest of cabling, yanking the plugs from their seats and heading back out into a now-warming day with the power strip. A minute later Grandma’s on the grid.

  A light on the front of the steel canister goes green with lots of bars. “There you are, Grandma,” I say. “Sorry.” I swallow down a thick paste of guilt. “Sorry I wasn’t there. Only playing my games . . . You comfortable?”

  The unit hums in reply. I scrape a sad face into the frost before walking back to Doc Kingfish, a man who knows more than anyone about everyone in town.

  Doc’s leaning over a long black bag with Tina.

  “Someone’s gone and taken the brain,” he says. “Cause of death.”

  “That’s not what killed her,” Tina says, pointing at Big Mountain, though the helicopter has already disappeared behind its peak. “They just did that.”

  “Then maybe the—”

  “The broken back, maybe the broken back,” Tina replies, gripping her forehead. “From when the grizzly was squeezing her?”

  Even now, even with my grandma dead at her feet, Tina’s this bright light for me. I’m not sure how I’ll convince her that I’m her light, but that’s my plan this summer, before it’s too late.

  “The broken back. That’s what I was gonna say.” Doc meets my eye. “Hey, Ray, Pulled Beef open yet?”

  I’d been staring at Tina and jerk away. Pulled Beef is the park’s burger joint, owned by Tina’s father, Salminder. If Tina’s the light guiding me home, then her father’s always been a safe harbor. They arrived to open the restaurant a week ago, as they have every spring. It’s where I spend most my summer flipping burgers.

  “His grandma’s dead. Ray can’t be cooking,” Tina says. I just stand there, suddenly flushing at my lack of clothes. Red welts crisscross my chest and stomach from when I fought through the pine trees.

  “No, I’ll do it,” I say. “People still gotta eat. Just have to clean up and dress first.”

  As I head to the washrooms, I pass my mom. She’s yelling at Grandma’s brain and threatening to unplug her.

  “You’d better have done right by me!” her shout echoes back from the Big.

  I jump at Crystal’s sudden snarl behind me. “That bear’s a man-killer, won’t stop now,” Crystal says. A powerful, scoped rifle is strapped to her back and a jar’s worth of camo-paint is smeared over her face. Sh
e shoves me out of the way. Black army boots trounce through the muck. “Gonna kill that bear before it kills again. That’s what’s right.”

  Right. As if anyone can know what’s really right. But as she clumps into the thick woods, I can’t help a stab of jealousy. She has something she can do. A purpose. I wonder if she feels guilty about the squirrel, like she started it all, but I say nothing.

  I say nothing because I know what really started it all. Last night Grandma and I pulled an all-nighter playing Arcane Dynasty. This morning, she’d huffed off after I killed her onscreen by accident, collateral damage in a fireball spell.

  In the washroom, I splash water on my face to hide all the tears that keep coming. Right before the squirrel, the truck, the dream catcher, the explosion, and the bear, there was Ray. I was the first domino.

  Grandma’s dead, and I killed her.

  Chapter 3

  Mom’s gone off with Doc. They want me to grill them a hamburger brunch. With Grandma’s brain watching from the statue, I’m not quite ready to handle more frozen meat.

  Uncle Jamie’s left staring at the body bag, tears dripping from his nose.

  “Wanna move her somewhere?” I ask.

  He nods at the bag.

  I go and stand at what I hope are the feet. Uncle Jamie slowly moves to pull the other end out of the mud. There’s a sucking sound, and then we hold her sagging body bag between us.

  The walls of Uncle Jamie’s shack are lying on the ground, leaving only a tin roof and four spindly posts. Official opening day’s not until tomorrow, so only three of the camper slabs are occupied, and none of the rental trailers, but Mom won’t want a body in one of those. This far north, ghost stories linger and scare away customers.

  “You could put her in mine,” I say, cringing. “Funeral won’t be long, right? The undertaker will be here soon to pick her up?”