Ray Vs the Meaning of Life Read online

  He nods again and we shuffle slowly to my trailer, following a winding trail upward over a root-snarled path. I’m regretting not stopping at the showers to wash the mud off the bag. As he opens the door, Uncle Jamie winces at the smell, but backs up the stairs. On the count of three, we heave her onto my bed.

  He stares down at her. “Needs fresh air,” he says.

  Uncle Jamie unzips the top. I wish he hadn’t done that. She’s gone chalk white and, where the zipper has pressed, there’s a bruised trail like someone’s biked across her face. Stitches crown her forehead. “Gotta . . . ,” I croak, but Uncle Jamie doesn’t even look up as I burst from the trailer to rest my hands on my knees and breathe. Again I’m jealous of Crystal, out there in the woods, on a mission while I want nothing more than to vomit. I have to get out of this campground, but it lies fifty miles north of the nearest small town and three hundred to the closest real city. I’ve got nowhere to go.

  As I march toward Pulled Beef, on the far side of the campground, I cut through empty lots and across trailer “slabs”—called that because of the hunks of concrete that delineate one site from another—each with their own electrical outlet and a fire pit. The campground can hold a hundred RVs and as many tents as campers can find a dry patch. The muddy road follows an S-shape through the park. I’m not really sure how far back it goes; there’s no fence or anything, just keeps on through birch and pine-spotted swamp to Big Mountain. I pass the rusty play structures and a leaf-carpeted pool. My mom keeps reminding me to open the pool despite the iceberg floating in it. I can hear her and Doc talking as I close on the patio.

  “We don’t need a burial or nothing,” my mom says. “The freezer people was what she wanted.”

  Doc explains, “The executor will read the will, and that’ll tell you what Georgia wanted. Surely, she left something for her funeral.”

  “Don’t need a funeral if no one’s going to come to it. Besides, you don’t get two special things when you die. You get one. She picked brain freezing. Two is . . . gratuitous.” I’m creeping up, trying to keep my boots quiet, but I can see she looks pleased with her word choice.

  “The executor carries out the wishes. They control the process, but the will tells it like it is . . . Your ma gets final say.” Doc swallows as if embarrassed. “What . . . uh . . . what do you think you’ll do with a million dollars anyways?”

  “A million dollars, you really think?” my mom asks Doc in a way that says she’s been counting the money for a decade.

  “Sure I do. Plain old land has gone for that near here, let alone a fully operating business. I’m on the Town Council, you know? We’d put your name in lights if you’d donate—”

  “Mom will want me to keep the park for her, so she can take it back when she thaws.” Doc gives her a searching look, and they both break into laughter. “Naw . . . Always wanted to travel, I have. A big new trailer maybe, and—” Her wistful eyes settle on mine, narrowing. She smiles with a smarm she reserves only for me. It never reaches her eyes. It’s sweet and sour at the same time, like Chinese chicken balls covered in syrupy red sauce. “Kids’ education’s important too, isn’t it, Ray? Crystal might want to go to college for something.”

  I’m pretty sure if Crystal came into money she’d just buy bigger guns. “I could go to college?”

  “You remember who let you borrow that trailer of yours, don’t you, hun?”

  I stuff my hands into the pockets of my jeans. “What do you mean?”

  “The trailer where you sleep. The one you got after you decided you were too good to help around the park so much.”

  I swallow. Grandma is resting in my bed now.

  And it hits me like a tree no one saw falling. Snap. My grandma was the only thing that kept me in my trailer. When I left home, my mom told me in no uncertain terms—when Grandma’s gone, you is gone. Now that’ll happen whether my mom goes and sells the park or not. I shudder at the thought of staying as much as the thought of going. I’d rather not think about any of it at all. “She’s still warm, Mom. Grandma’s still warm.”

  Her face screws up. “Never was, Ray. Never was. Now get on that grill and no more video games.”

  “I wasn’t playing—and I have dozens of people watching me play . . .” But it’s no use, she’s turned back to Doc.

  “When can I get the will?” she asks.

  “I’ll send a note off to the lawyer, and she won’t make you wait on it. You’ll have the will tonight.”

  Grandma’s fiberglass head pokes above a trailer roof. In the morning sun, its shadow stretches clear across the patio.

  Pulled Beef is an ancient Winnebago with a hole cut in the side that opens to become a food counter. Inside’s all set up like a kitchen. Although it’s on wheels, the tires sagged long ago and the rims are sunken so deep in the ground that the trailer almost rests on the chassis. A chalkboard menu has one thing written on it.

  Burger $5.

  The door’s unlocked.

  After I shut it, I lean against the steel frame, the whole trailer squealing beneath my weight, and bite my lip. Salminder stands there, giant bulb of his sky-blue headgear nodding, smile like a searchlight, even nearly buried in a wiry beard shot through with gray.

  “I’m sorry about Grandma Georgia,” he says and embraces me. I’m like a sapling whereas he’s a wide tree stump, so my chin rests in his turban. “Tina told me.”

  He doesn’t have to be here. Grandma had never been nice to him. Probably because he took over the camp cooking when she stopped baking her apple pies. Pies, burgers, all the same to me, but Grandma never ate a burger. Not a one.

  “I’ll miss Grandma,” I say, leaving unspoken that no one else except Uncle Jamie will.

  “She seemed happy.”

  “Yeah, happy as a crow picking apart a fish head.”

  “A person’s life is long and the ending of it doesn’t tell the tale. Unfortunately, it is what we most remember,” Salminder says.

  “New diet?” Even with the beard I can tell he’s lost weight.

  “Wouldn’t wish it on anyone,” he says and begins unwrapping the stainless-steel bins of condiments as I fetch beef patties from the chest freezer. The steel and meat remind me of Grandma’s brain, and I’m really struggling to hold everything down. It’s barely eleven o’clock. Grandma’s dead. Her brainless corpse is lying on my bed. Mom’s counting her money. And I have to figure out where I’m going to sleep when I get kicked out. But, if I shut my eyes, all I see is the image of Grandma’s dead video game avatar burned into my retinas.

  The grill ignites with a thump. I open the counter window, ready to smile at my customers. I doubt very much that the smile reaches my eyes.

  Chapter 4

  We all know why we’re around the bonfire. Wood crackles and pops. White smoke always seems to blow in my direction, but it can’t force me from Tina’s side. Maybe if it had been a funeral pyre like my mom wanted, but the doc said it was illegal to burn a body or to bury it ourselves. I’d been hopeful. In my trailer, dead Grandma smell is overtaking Kraft Dinner odor. Mom decided she could wait for the undertaker—after all, what’s a few thousand dollars when she’d soon inherit a million?—but she avoided my questions about when the undertaker would arrive.

  That’s what I’m waiting on, but everyone else awaits the will. The lawyer said she’d drive it up from town, that’s a good hour, and it’s been at least that. Salminder’s here with Tina, her hair the color of molasses and shining with the moon. She’s sixteen now. With her being a year behind me, I don’t see Tina around school much, but the gap in our ages has somehow narrowed since last summer. Then she was all braces and gangly limbs; now she’s grown into herself. My body’s taking its sweet time. Until recently I’d always seen us as equals, but now . . . she’s leveled up. I should have told her how I felt about her long, long ago.

  Uncle hasn’t washed since the explosion and sits silent, throwing tiny packets of powder into the fire. They fizzle and flare, some cop
per-green, others magnesium-white. In the chill, we all huddle too close to the flames, sipping hot chocolate and Mom, her whiskey. Crystal’s still on the bear’s trail, but everyone else’s here, even some rare park tourists—a couple from Montana who speak with a twang, and a pair of newlyweds starting everything off wrong with a dead grandma in a muddy RV park. The man keeps sobbing as though it was his relative in my bed. At least they don’t need to worry about Grandma stopping their cavorting.

  Mom smiles and her eyes shine. “Remember how Grandma didn’t like to waste nothing?” She looks around and comes to stare at her brother. “Remember, Jamie, how she used to pick mushrooms in the forest, cook ’em up and watch us eat to see if she should, too?”

  Uncle Jamie shakes his head. “Wasn’t like that. She jes’ wanted to make sure we was full first. Brought home a whole deer once though.” He slaps his knee. “Now that was something. Found it on the side of the road.”

  “Liked her food, that one,” Mom adds. “Surprised the bear got her. Remember the turkey?”

  Uncle Jamie snorts, and they smile at one another, sharing the joke before coming ’round to tell us. I’ve heard this story a dozen times if I’ve heard it once.

  “Thanksgiving, ten years ago now,” Mom says, face turning up to the stars in recollection. “We was letting the turkey thaw on the trailer counter when some hungry little black bear gone and let itself in. Grandma was having a nap. When she woke and hollered, the bear took the whole bird and skedaddled. I was just washing up when the trailer door opened. First out came the bear thief, and then Grandma naked as a babe—flying. She jumped the steps and landed on the bear’s back. Never knew a bear could make that sound. Squealed like a pig.”

  “Grandma tackled a bear?” Tina asked. “Naked?”

  “Liked her food,” Mom replies. “Got the turkey back.”

  “Grizzly, the bear that got her,” Uncle Jamie says quietly. “No grandma’s a match for a grizzly.”

  “’Twas like the woman was missing this part of her brain,” Doc says, tapping his frontal lobe. “If you don’t mind my saying.”

  I pat him on the shoulder, letting him know it’s okay.

  “Told the truth,” Uncle Jamie agrees. “Knew where you stood with a mother like that.”

  “Her nickname for me was RB. ‘Ray the Bastard,’” I say. “I liked that.”

  “Good pie, too,” Mom says, “Tough, mean old bird, though. Weren’t you, Ma?”

  Half of us check over our shoulders to peer at Grandma’s brain, but the firelight doesn’t reach that far.

  That sucked the life from the conversation, and only the pop and hiss of escaping water breaks the silence until headlights weave down the drive. The shiny new pickup truck slides to a stop, but the driver leaves the engine on. Sam Peregrine, wearing a beige pantsuit, steps onto the glowing running board of her truck and sniffs. She pauses to glance down at the mud and then hops to a drier patch. A bundle of manila envelopes is stuck in her armpit.

  “’Bout time,” my mom says loud enough.

  Without a word, Sam Peregrine hands an envelope each to my mom, my uncle, and me, and then peers around. “Crystal’s off hunting,” I say, and Sam Peregrine’s head bobs.

  “Aren’t you going to read it to us?” Uncle Jamie asks.

  Sam smiles. “They just do that for movies and books.”

  “Don’t want her reading,” Mom says. “Charges by the minute that one.”

  They squint at one another.

  “Those are copies of Georgia Saintbury’s Last Will and Testament,” Sam Peregrine says. “The original has been filed with the court and everything’s legit. I am trustee, and executor. If you have questions about the estate, we can get to them when I’m back from my holidays.”

  “Would you like to stay for a tea?” Uncle asks.

  Sam Peregrine’s puckered beak unfurls into a smile. “Thanks, Jamie—”

  “Not a two hundred dollar tea, you won’t.” My mom and the lawyer return to squints.

  Before Sam Peregrine turns away, smug satisfaction spreads across her face. It might have been a trick of the firelight, but I swear she winked at me.

  Tina leans in toward my envelope. I catch the furrow between her eyebrows. It’s not only my life being decided tonight, it’s hers too. If Grandma’s park gets sold, Pulled Beef gets sold along with it. I’m more interested in the press of Tina’s shoulder on mine.

  Mom wrestles with her seal. Uncle Jamie sits sadly, taking his time with his letter. I can’t think for the smell of Tina’s hair; it’s like lilacs in full bloom. I just hold my copy, surprised I have anything to open at all, but knowing I must be named somewhere in the will.

  My mom’s eyes first widen and then they narrow, starting back over at the top of the page. As she reads, her shoulders keep riding up toward her ears. Uncle Jamie twists so that the firelight shines on his copy. Sam Peregrine’s already back in her truck and turning it around.

  My mom starts screaming. “No, no, no! That bitch, that bitch!” And then she’s scrambling toward Sam Peregrine’s red taillights. As the truck disappears along the winding, tree-shrouded drive, Mom veers toward the statue of Grandma.

  “Oh no,” I say, and I’m scrambling after her because I’m guessing what she’s planning to do, but when she glances over her shoulder and sees me, she stops, lifts the envelope like it’s a hatchet, and starts yelling.

  “You bastard, you bastard!”

  And I have no idea what I’ve gone and done this time.

  Chapter 5

  I skid in the muck, arms out for balance, coming to a stop between her and the campfire. “What are you talking about, Mom?”

  She stands, face red from the glow of the flames, and hatchet chops the will at me. Grandma looms dark and busty at her back. I turn to Uncle, but his pages fold limp over his hands and he stares, as if I might be more than I seem.

  “Fire,” Mom gasps. She holds the will out as she races forward to plunge the pages into the flames, smiles crazily as they catch, and then shrieks when she sees Uncle’s will and grabs it, flinging the papers into the fire where they too ignite. She cackles until her gaze burns on me and my envelope.

  I twist and sprint, skating in the mud.

  “Muriel!” It’s my uncle shouting for my mother. “It don’t matter.”

  But I hear her huffing close behind. She’s strong; decades of cleaning trailers and washrooms has given her a special kind of fitness. The will’s crumpled and muddy in my fingers. I’m running for my trailer. After hundreds of nighttime bathroom trips, I know every root along my path and my mom stumbles as I fly, hit the trailer, and open the door to such putrescence that I fall back. My mother’s there, ready to grapple me.

  Something big rustles at the edge of the forest. “Bear!” I cry before I can filter everything that’s happening.

  “What’s he done?” a voice asks from the tree line.

  Mom fumbles for the bear spray she keeps clipped to her belt.

  The figure moves closer and levels a gun barrel at my chest. I see the face. Crystal’s pointed chin and curled lip stick out.

  “Crystal,” I say. “Scared the heck—”

  “What’s he gone and done?” she asks again, the gun moving steadily closer. She doesn’t often miss, and from this range missing isn’t possible.

  “Lower the gun, Crystal. Come on now,” I say.

  “The will, he has the will.” Mom points to me.

  Crystal sidesteps hunter-like into the trailer’s clearing and snatches the will from my outstretched hand. With the gunstock tucked into her armpit, she tears the envelope open and brings it close to her face in the low light.

  She only reads a moment. Crystal’s not the quickest of readers but, whatever she read, it’s enough. The will slips to the pine needles. The gun barrel lifts. “Didn’t he just cry about a bear?” she asks.

  I frown, not understanding.

  “Bear!” she shouts. “Right, Mama?”

  “What are yo
u talking about?” I yell back.

  I catch the alarmed squeaks of the newlyweds.

  “You see a bear? Tough to tell in the dark, right? Mistakes happen,” Crystal says without inflection.

  “Oh—” My mom covers her mouth.

  “I’m not a bear. It’s me! Ray!” Cold panic rolls over my chest as I scream. “Help!”

  Crystal’s waiting for my mother’s signal.

  There’s a moment, too long of one, before my mother’s shoulders sag, and she shakes her head.

  “Don’t.” Uncle Jamie’s on the trail. “It don’t matter.”

  The gun barrel drops a foot, and I swallow. “What does the will say?” I ask. “Tell me.”

  “Says my park’s yours,” my mom replies and then hocks spit onto the ground.

  “The park . . . ,” I say. “Sunny Days?”

  “All of it,” she says. “Yours.”

  “Don’t make any sense.” Crystal’s fingers twitch around the gun trigger. “You never did nothing but flip burgers.”

  “There has to be a mistake,” I say, agreeing with them. I tiptoe over to Crystal and pinch the will from the ground without taking my eyes from her.

  Then I read.

  Dear Living Folks,

  If you’re reading this, then I have been temporarily inconvenienced by what is presently known as the condition of ‘death.’ When I am resurrected these here papers will be null and void and I get everything back. That’s the deal. Until then this is what I’m thinking. Since the lawyering says I have to give it to someones, I’m thinking that none of yous have done nothing with your lives and yous gonna lose me my investment. Muriel and James, it’s too late for you. And Crystal—you too, the way you’re headed. So, to ensure there’s something left over when I am thawed out, I’m doing this:

  This is my Last Will and Testement.

  To my daughter, Muriel Saintbury, I leave nothing ’cept my tea set and my dentures—I’ll have real teeth in the future.

  To my son, James Saintbury, I leave nothing save my book collection. Maybe you’ll learn to read better than me.