The End of FUN (23 page)

Crazy how something can just stare you in the face and you don't even know what it is. But now I did. The RMS
Mary
. No need to rip away the backing or anything like that, because when I lifted the picture from its nail on the wall and flipped it over, it was right there, a small envelope taped to the back of the canvas, a single name written along the flap:
Aaron
.

It was a thin envelope, no wad of cash stuffed inside—but maybe a cashier's check? As I tore open the flap, I mustered all the faith I had. Faith in treasure. Faith in success. Faith in—

But no. Nope. Nada. There wasn't any treasure. There was just a note, a short one, five words written out in my grandpa's neat block print:

And that's all it said.

“
The will is the key?
The hell is that supposed to mean?”

Katie examined the paper. “Maybe he's talking about
will
as in
willpower
? As in,
you've gotta believe
? Or maybe”—she paused—“maybe he's talking about the will itself? Like his final will and testament?”

“But the will told us to look
here
, and now you're telling me that this is saying to look at the will again? That doesn't make any sense!”

Katie ignored me as she read through the will, tracing her fingers along the words.

“What about this?” she said at last.

“What?”

“This part. Right here.” She put her finger on it and read: “‘
The remaining one half
½
of my boddy to be crematedd to ashes, these then to be loaddedd into shotgun shells andd honorably ddischargedd from my Remington .410 in the four carddinal ddirections from some appropriate hill or vantage point, preferably at ddusk. My tombstone to readd: ‘It Couldd Have Been Wondderful Andd Sometimes It Was.
' If the will is the key, maybe you need to think about fulfilling it. It
is
part of the contract, after all. Get it?”

I didn't.

“Well, a will is a contract, right? Between the living and the dead. And before your grandpa fulfills
his
end, maybe you've got to fulfill
your
end. Maybe
that's
why you haven't found any treasure yet.”

“You think he's holding out on me? Like, from beyond the grave?”

“Well, I don't know.”

“That's crazy! Now you're getting into some mumbo jumbo hocus-pocus crap. How could me shooting his ashes off lead me to the treasure?”

“I'm not sure. It's all I've got right now.”

It wasn't much, or anything at all, really, but after she left that afternoon I couldn't get it out of my mind. Fulfill his last wishes. I couldn't just inscribe a tombstone—that would take time—but I could shoot him out of a gun. No way was it going to lead me to the treasure, but OTOH, it
was
his last wish, and what else did I have going on? Not a whole hell of a lot. But where was the gun?

Back down to the basement I went, doing my best to keep my eyes off the dark stain on the floor.

And there it was. Leaning up against the wall behind the door. The same .410 I'd held as a child. Dad must've set it there after he found Grandpa. I cracked it open, and a single, empty cartridge popped out.

Here it was. The fatal bullet. Cartridge. Whatever. I looked at the empty cylinder where the payload went, all those tiny pellets he'd fired through his brain.

There was a metal cabinet in the corner, and in it I found the other thing I needed—a box that said LoadAll. Back when I was 10, he'd showed me how it worked, how to load the shells with powder and shot—and I wished I'd paid a little better attention because after I took it upstairs and got it clamped to the table, I couldn't figure it out. YAY! for the LoadAll—an ancient, rickety contraption, nothing like the smooth precision of a Sharpshot
®
Precision II shell reloader with comfort handle and convenient carrying case.

But eventually I got it to work.

Most of the work was already done for me, actually. Inside the box were some empty shells, already primed, plus some wadding, powder, and shot. I replaced the shot with my grandpa's ashes. That was the tricky part: as I was working I spilled some of the ashes onto the table. I tried sweeping them into my hand, but they got all mixed up with the dust on the table.

Working as carefully as I could, I loaded my grandpa's ashes into four shotgun shells—and then five, because there was enough of him left over. I held the five shells in my hand. Hefted them up and down. Felt the strange weight of them. You never expect to hold your grandpa in your hands. You just don't. And yet here he was. Half of him, anyway.

So once again, like back when I was 10, I took my grandfather's .410 and a pocketful of shells and started out into the brush. I headed toward Coyote Heights, in the same general direction I'd headed all those years ago. Only, it was different now. The junk pile was gone, the brush was gone, and it had become a failed golf course development. The snow had melted—the weather was really weird that spring—but it hadn't done much for the grass, all yellow and matted like the back of some mangy dog. Abandoned. I stood on the paved path, looking up toward the hills, with the sun low at my back.

I hadn't quite realized the extent of it. I mean I knew the golf course was
big
, but this thing seemed to go on
forever
, spreading out along the contours of the land like some ancient god had come and dumped out an enormous bucket of yellow paint. Once, this had all belonged to my grandpa. Before that, it was the railroad's, and before that it was probably the Paiute Indians'—except they used to say no one owned the land.

Well, I'll tell you what: this land had been
owned
. A couple model homes sat vacant—For Sale signs and fluorescent stakes divvying up the bulldozed, quarter-acre lots. To the south, the rectangular buildings of the unfinished resort towered above the flat like a sad castle.

YAY! for Coyote Heights. Its 200-room luxury hotel, 18-hole PGA-level golf course, and fine dining options would surely have been a sight to behold, like for reals, had they ever finished them.

OK.

Preferably at dusk
, he'd said.

We were getting pretty close to it.

Some appropriate hill or vantage point
.

I climbed the tallest hill I could find, out by the 14th hole. The sun was lower now, not quite dusk but pretty close. I opened the gun and loaded a shell.

Four cardinal directions.

I raised the gun to my shoulder and aimed the barrel in a more-or-less southerly direction, toward Arizona. I squeezed the trigger, or tried to, but it wouldn't squeeze. What?
Right
. The safety. I pressed the little button and aimed one more time….

But before I fired him off, it seemed like I should say something. I wasn't normally one for prayer, but in that moment prayer is what seemed appropriate, though it took me a while to think of what to say.

Dear God,

Hey, it's Aaron O'Faolain. I'm out here today fulfilling my grandpa's will. My catechism teacher once told me that people who commit suicide don't go to heaven. I don't believe in heaven, so I didn't really care, although it did seem kind of cruel to me. Like, I knew this guy in junior high who killed himself, Greg Carlton—remember him? He was a good guy, but he was gay and had really bad acne and people gave him endless shit for it. You wouldn't believe how cruel kids can be. Or maybe you would.

And then you've got all these OTHER people saying you don't make it to heaven unless you've accepted Jesus into your heart. Well, IMHO people just like to make up stupid rules to put other people down. We're all just looking for a little guidance down here….

What I'm saying is, if there IS a heaven, I just want you to know that I humbly submit that you let my grandpa in. And Greg, too. He was a good guy, my grandfather was—and so was Greg. You've got to understand: life here on Earth is pretty crazy. Everyone's running around pretending like they know what's going on, but the truth is, we're all just scared. No one wants to die…except I guess sometimes they do. We're just looking for, like, a little meaning, you know? It's confusing sometimes, being a human.

Anyway. Thanks for your time.

Amen.

I raised the gun again, aiming south, and pulled the trigger.

BLAM!

The recoil punched my shoulder, a cloud of dust erupting from the barrel and hanging in the air for a moment before the wind took it. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust—that's just some shit they say at funerals—you forget that it's
true
. I opened the shotgun to remove the empty shell—or tried to, but for some reason my hands were shaking. I took a couple deep breaths.
Calm down
.
It's just, you know, YOUR OWN GRANDPA
.

I loaded the gun, turned east, toward Utah, and raised the gun again. Far in the distance, pale blue mountains rose to the sky.

BOOM!

More dust in the wind. Somewhere, way off in the distance, a dog began to bark.

I loaded another shell, aiming north this time, toward Idaho.

BOOM!

The cold wind blew in from the west, scattering my grandpa's ashes, and I waited for it to die down, then fired off a shot toward California, aiming high to avoid any blowback.

BOOM!

The explosion echoed into the distance, the sound fading until it joined the wind. Dust floated, vanished. There was one shell left: the odd, fifth shell. Where was it supposed to go? I wasn't sure. I aimed at the sky, where God the Father and Mary and Jesus and all the rest of them sit upon their thrones of glory or whatever, but for some reason I couldn't bring myself to fire again, so I just slung the .410 over my shoulder and headed back to my grandpa's.

Back at the house it was getting dark, so I turned on the lights and sat back down again—and YAY! for Philips
®
full-spec Illumiwatti
™
Soft White Light Bulbs—which is not what my grandfather had in his floor lamp, but nonetheless he had some kind of bulb in there, and light is light, and as I was holding up the will to examine it again, I noticed something.