Edward Adrift

by Craig Lancaster

  “Edward?”

  Kyle’s voice is soft. I’m surprised to hear it.

  “Yes?”

  “Can I tell you something?”

  “Yes.”

  I hear rustling in the bed next to mine as he shifts his weight under the covers.

  “I just want to say thanks for letting me come with you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I listen as he flops over in bed, and soon I can hear that he’s asleep.

  Maybe Kyle is still a sweet young man. I hope so. He’s sending conflicting signals—that much is certain. If he were on Jersey Shore, they would probably call him “The Enigma.” (I love the word “enigma.”)

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2011

  From the logbook of Edward Stanton:

  Time I woke up today: 7:38 a.m. A very familiar time for me. The 209th time this year I’ve been awake at this time.

  High temperature for Tuesday, December 13, 2011, Day 347: 32 (according to the Rock Springs newspaper). Nine degrees warmer than the high the day before.

  Low temperature for Tuesday, December 13, 2011: 20. Same as the low the day before.

  Precipitation for Tuesday, December 13, 2011: a trace amount.

  Precipitation for 2011: 19.40 inches

  New entries:

  Exercise for Tuesday, December 13, 2011: Kyle refused to walk with me, so I didn’t do it. I’ve decided that we will walk at lunch, even if it costs us time on our 517-mile trip to Cheyenne Wells.

  Miles driven Tuesday, December 13, 2011: 490.8

  Total miles driven: 1,203.8

  Gas usage Tuesday, December 13, 2011: Filled up in Boise: 9.747 gallons at $3.0199 per gallon, for a total of $29.43. Filled up in Brigham City, Utah: 13.209 gallons at $3.2399, for a total of $42.80. I am giving up on trying to project my gas usage and costs; the variables in price and consumption are too great. I will, of course, continue to write down the actual amounts as I accumulate them.

  What Kyle owes me for the music he purchased: $215. He called his mother this morning and told her he loves her, and I credited $10 to his account. After he handed the phone back to me, Donna said, “What did you do to him?” She meant that I had done well, I think. That made me feel good.

  Addendum: I am excited today. It will take many hours, but I will see Cheyenne Wells, Colorado, and that makes me happy. However, my happiness is kept in check by my reminding myself that it’s highly unlikely that I will arrive in Cheyenne Wells and the townspeople will congregate (I love the word “congregate”) around me and say, “Edward, we are so glad you came. We’ve been waiting for you.” Life doesn’t work that way. Yes, my father has been showing up in Cheyenne Wells in my dreams—although he did not last night, as far as I remember—and, yes, I have begun to wonder whether that means he wants me to find something there, but I have to remind myself that I am someone who trusts facts above all, and this idea that my father is guiding me toward something is not a fact. It is a fantasy. I have to remember that so I am not disappointed.

  I am glad Kyle is with me on this trip. I wasn’t sure I would be, but aside from a couple of small problems, it’s been good to be with him. I hope that continues.

  After I stop the car for the second time on the 107-mile stretch between Rock Springs and Rawlins, Wyoming, so I can pee, Kyle asks me this question:

  “Why do you pee so much?”

  I think it is reasonable for him to ask, given the frequency of my urination. So I tell him. “I take drugs that cause me to pee. It’s so my body doesn’t retain water. It’s part of my treatment for my type two diabetes.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “It’s called a diuretic.”

  “How many times do you pee a day?”

  This is an astounding question, and I instantly feel foolish for not having an answer. I really should be tracking this on my data sheets.

  “A lot,” I say. “In the first four hours after I take my pill, it’s especially frequent. Also—I hope this doesn’t gross you out—but it’s much more pee than it has ever been before. I can’t prove this empirically, because I never bothered to measure my pee before I started taking this pill. That would have been gross. But I can tell.”

  It now seems to me that we’ve gone about as far as we can with this subject, but Kyle keeps going.

  “I bet I can pee more than you,” he says.

  I laugh. This is ha-ha funny. “No, you can’t.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  “Kyle,” I say, “you’re being silly. I’m older than you, I’m bigger than you, and I’m sure I have a bigger bladder than you do. There is just no way you can pee more than I can, unless you have a bad medical condition, in which case we should get you to a doctor.”

  “If I pee more than you, will you erase what I owe you?”

  This question flummoxes me. On one hand, I don’t want Kyle erasing his debt by any means other than being nice to his mother and being sociable with me. On the other hand, this idea that he could pee more than I can is anatomically laughable. I counter with my own question. “This is purely hypothetical, because there is no way you can pee more than I can, but if you do, will you still call your mother and still take walks with me?”

  “I guess.”

  “I want a yes, or it is no deal.”

  “Yes, OK, I will.”

  I take my right hand off the steering wheel and offer it across the seat to Kyle, who shakes it.

  We’re strange.

  Kyle and I agree that we will store our pee in empty water bottles for comparison’s sake, and he drinks the contents of two to make room. He wants to drink three bottles of water, but I tell him that he can’t because I don’t want him to get water poisoning, and he laughs at me as if I’m making something up.

  “Water isn’t poison.”

  “Well, no, it isn’t technically,” I say. “But if you drink too much water, it can kill you.”

  “No, it can’t.”

  “Yes, Kyle, it can.”

  I wish he wouldn’t do this to me. I don’t make things up; it’s against my nature as a fact-loving person. I proceed to tell him about a story I read in the Billings Herald-Gleaner, long before I worked there. It seems that a radio station in Sacramento, California, held a contest called “Hold Your Wee for a Wii,” in which it challenged a woman to drink as much water as she could to win a video game console. She didn’t win the game. She died.

  “You’re lucky,” I tell Kyle. “You got your Wii from Santa Claus.” I don’t like telling Kyle a piece of fiction like this, but I also don’t think it’s my place to tell him the truth about Santa Claus if he doesn’t already know it. That’s up to Donna and Victor.

  He already knows it.

  “Yeah, right,” he says. “Santa Claus is my grandpa. You’re stupid if you believe in Santa Claus.”

  “Now you did it,” I say. “You are back up to owing me two twenty-five.”

  “Wait a minute!”

  “You called me stupid.”

  “No, I said you’re stupid if you believe in Santa Claus. Do you believe in Santa Claus?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’re not stupid.”

  I don’t say anything for a few seconds. I don’t like being outsmarted.

  “You owe me two fifteen,” I say.

  Kyle slaps the leather seat happily.

  We’re driving past Rawlins on the interstate now, and I do something I’m not supposed to do and look away from the road and at Kyle, just for a second.

  “What?” he says.

  “When did you find out that Santa Claus isn’t real?”

  “Two years ago. I found where Mom hid all the presents.”

  “Did you tell her?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. She likes Christmas and stuff. Anyway, I think she knows that I know.”

  “How?”

  “She’s not making a big deal out of it this year.”

  “Do you kn
ow what you’re getting?”

  He laughs, only it’s not a ha-ha-funny laugh. “Probably nothing, the way things are going.”

  “They’ll get you something.”

  “I guess.”

  “Do you know what I want for Christmas, Kyle?”

  “No.”

  I feel my cheeks getting hot, which is strange. And then I realize that I’m embarrassed to say what I’ve been thinking. But I do it anyway.

  “This trip with you.”

  He doesn’t say anything. I make sure my eyes stay fixated on the road. I’m afraid that I’ve embarrassed him or made him uncomfortable, so I don’t want to make it worse by looking at him.

  “Edward?”

  “Yes?”

  “When did you find out about Santa Claus?”

  I’m glad he asked me this question. I remember it exactly. It was December 24, 1975. I was six years old. I tell him this, and then I tell him why.

  “I remember Christmases by the best gift I got each year. For example, in 1975, I got a five-speed bicycle, and the year before, I got a G.I. Joe, and the year after I got Connect Four. So that’s how I remember what year it was. But the way I figured out there was no Santa Claus was I heard my father say ‘cocksucker’ late that night while he was trying to put my five-speed bicycle together in the living room after I had been sent to bed. I don’t think Santa Claus would say a word like ‘cocksucker,’ and even if he would, he wouldn’t sound like my father.”

  Kyle laughs and laughs at this story, and I laugh, too, because it is funny. As I think about it now, I realize that my father and Scott Shamwell, the pressman at the Billings Herald-Gleaner, are a lot alike in that both like to curse in loud and creative ways. Maybe that’s why I like Scott Shamwell so much—because he reminds me of my father in the best ways and doesn’t remind me of him at all in any of the bad ways. It’s a good theory. Theories are fine, but I prefer facts. The facts are that I like Scott Shamwell and I miss my father.

  Kyle taps me on the shoulder, and I look over at him.

  “That’s two more bucks to my account,” he says.

  “Why?”

  “You just said—” Again he stops himself. He’s better at this than I am. “You said c-sucker twice.”

  Well, shitballs, I think (but don’t say). I guess we’re down to $213.

  We’re at mile marker 228 near Sinclair, Wyoming, when we have our first chance to go head-to-head on peeing.

  “Edward, you better pull over,” Kyle says. “I have to go.”

  Once we’re parked he gets out of the Cadillac and runs to the bathroom, empty bottle in hand. I’m following with my own bottle but not running, because that only aggravates my urge to go.

  I’m at a urinal, trying to aim my tallywhacker at the small opening of the bottle and having a difficult time of it.

  “Dammit,” I say as I splash a little urine on my hands.

  “That’s another dollar!” Kyle yells from the adjacent stall.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I say. “Two hundred twelve.”

  Finally I get everything coordinated, and my bladder empties into the bottle, the stream of urine making a drumming sound against the plastic. A fat man on my left, who’s wearing a mesh baseball cap, looks at me, and I look back at him. He frowns.

  “It’s a contest,” I say.

  He shakes off his tallywhacker, zips up, and leaves without saying anything—or, more importantly, without washing his hands. That’s gross.

  Back at the car, I hold the bottles up for comparison. I have to give Kyle credit. The boy can pee prodigiously (I love the word “prodigiously”).

  “OK,” I say. “You beat me on that one. To be fair, though, you just had a lot of water, and I’ve been peeing a lot all day. Let’s see if you’re still beating me at the end of the day.”

  “No way,” he says. “That’s it, it’s over. I don’t owe you a dime. We didn’t say anything about doing this more than once.”

  Kyle is probably correct in his contention. Our agreement on the peeing contest was reached informally, and I never bothered to write down an extended deal. Still, I want to keep going. I don’t want him to beat me.

  “Are you afraid you can’t keep peeing better than I can?” I ask.

  “I’m not afraid of anything.”

  “You sound afraid,” I say. “You sound like a chicken.” I set the bottles down on the leather seat and put my thumbs in my armpits and flap my elbows. “Bock-bock-be-gock!”

  “You’re being immature,” he says.

  “Come on, chicken.” I flap my elbows some more, and finally Kyle laughs.

  “OK, dude, you’re going down,” he says.

  We high-five, and I feel as happy as I have in a long time. It’s as if the Kyle I remember from Billings, the one who was nowhere to be seen in Boise, is back with me. I hope he washed his hands.

  It is 2:47 p.m. when we park at a McDonald’s off the interstate in Denver. I implore (I love the word “implore”) Kyle to pick a different place, but he’s insistent that he wants McDonald’s, and I am reluctant to do anything that stops our good momentum.

  The shopping center holding the McDonald’s has many stores and good pathways for walking, and I tell Kyle that after we eat, we need to walk. He doesn’t appear keen on this, until I remind him that his debt will be down to $202 if he walks with me.

  At the restaurant, Kyle orders a Big Mac, large fries, and a large Coke. I order a grilled chicken sandwich, no fries, and an unsweetened iced tea. It’s not an ideal diabetic meal, but it’s better than what Kyle has.

  I’m the first to notice that six men in this restaurant are wearing Denver Broncos jerseys with Tim Tebow’s name on the back. I’m usually the first to notice such things. I point it out to Kyle.

  “That’s because Tim Tebow’s the best,” he says.

  This is so far beyond absurd that I cannot believe it.

  “He’s the best what?”

  “He’s the best quarterback in the NFL.”

  “Kyle,” I say, “that is a laughable contention. I know you are a Denver Broncos fan, but you’re being ridiculous.”

  “Who’s better?”

  I laugh a ha-ha laugh. I even snort a little bit, which is strange. “Aaron Rodgers is better. Tom Brady is better. Drew Brees is better. Ben Roethlisberger is better. Tony Romo is better. Lots of other guys, too. I can prove this statistically.”

  “Tony Romo! That’s a laugh!”

  “He is, Kyle.” It’s a strange feeling. I know that I’m being defensive because Tony Romo is the Dallas Cowboys’ quarterback, and the Dallas Cowboys are my favorite team. But I am also correct about this. Also, my voice is getting loud.

  “Tony Romo is a punk,” Kyle says.

  “He’s better than Tim Tebow.” I’m being really loud now, and people are starting to look at us. Three of the men wearing Tim Tebow jerseys begin walking toward our table. I ignore their approach and keep arguing with Kyle. “Do you know what Tony Romo’s completion percentage is? It’s sixty-six-point-three percent. Do you know what Tim Tebow’s is? It’s forty-six-point-five percent.”

  One of the jersey-wearing men, a guy who looks to be in his mid-twenties and is so large that he probably shouldn’t be eating at McDonald’s, says, “Tim Tebow wins. A lot more than Tony Romo does.”

  “OK,” I say, “but you have to acknowledge the fact that one player can’t do everything. Tim Tebow has a better defense than Tony Romo does. That makes a difference.”

  “All I know,” says another man with a Tebow jersey, “is that the Broncos were one-and-four before Tebow started playing. They’re seven-and-one since he got in there.”

  Kyle looks at me with a big smirk on his face. “Yeah!” he says.

  “I’m not talking about wins and losses,” I say. My eyes are moving back and forth between the two men who have rudely injected themselves into my discussion with Kyle. “The debate is quarterback ability. Tony Romo is better than Tim Tebow.”

  Everybody arou
nd us groans, and now the third man wearing a Tim Tebow jersey jumps in. “What’s the point of being a quarterback other than to win?”

  “I’m just—” I say, but I’m cut off, because now the second one is back at it.

  “You’ve got big balls, bad-mouthing Tim Tebow in Denver, dude.”

  A chorus of “Yeah” goes up in McDonald’s. Kyle is sitting there with a shit-eating grin on his face. I’m not even sure where that saying comes from. Why would anybody grin after eating shit?

  I try to talk, but everybody in the restaurant boos me, and a couple of people—including Kyle—throw french fries at me.

  This sucks.

  On our seventh lap around the big shopping center parking lot, Kyle, who is walking a couple of steps behind me, says, “Will you buy me a Tim Tebow jersey?”

  I stop, turn, and stare at him. I am incredulous.

  “You must be kidding. After what happened in there? You have big balls.” I didn’t like the men in the Tim Tebow jerseys, but I like this saying that one of them introduced me to.

  “You owe me a buck,” Kyle says.

  “‘Balls’ isn’t a curse word.”

  “So I can say ‘balls’ as much as I like?”

  Kyle has me cornered. I don’t think I should lose a dollar on a word like “balls.” On the other hand, I don’t think Donna will be pleased with me if I send her son home and he’s saying “balls” all the time. I think she will be especially angry if she finds out that I gave him permission to say it.

  “OK,” I say. “Your debt is now down to two hundred and one.”

  “What about the Tim Tebow jersey?”

  He has incredibly big balls.

  “No.”

  “If I’m good the rest of the trip?”

  “Maybe.”

  “If I call my mom twice a day?”