PRAISE FOR 600 HOURS OF EDWARD
“It’s a spare, elegantly crafted whizz-bang of a book that, on its surface, is as quiet and orderly as Edward Stanton, but underneath, also like Edward, a cauldron of barely repressed rage and desire seeking escape.” —Missoula Independent
“Craig Lancaster has created a wonderful character and put him in a memorable story.” —Bookmonger
“This endearing hero deserves the fine ending the author has bestowed on him. The final pages leave the reader wanting to know what happens next for Edward, in his newly acquired red Cadillac.” —Lively Times (MT)
“This is a wonderful book. Mr. Lancaster’s journey…into the imaginative pages of fiction was one well taken, for himself, for readers and certainly for the lovingly created Edward Stanton.” —Montana Quarterly
“…A nearly perfect combination of traditional literary elements, mixing crowd-pleasing sappiness with indie-friendly subversion, a masterful blend of character and action…” —Chicago Center for Literature and Photography
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2012 Craig Lancaster All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by AmazonEncore
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781612184104
ISBN-10: 1612184103
This book is for Angela Dawn, who believed that I could do it then and believes in me still.
Our story goes on and on, sweetheart.
CONTENTS
START READING
MONDAY, OCTOBER 13
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 19
MONDAY, OCTOBER 20
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 26
MONDAY, OCTOBER 27
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
EXCERPT FROM EDWARD ADRIFT
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
To whom it may concern:
This is a story of how my life changed. That is what one could call a dramatic statement. It’s like when people find God; they say, “I found God, and it changed my life.” I did not find God. I am dubious that anyone can. When someone says he has found God, he doesn’t mean it in the way that one would say he found a penny or something else tangible. He is talking about inner peace or something like that, I suppose. I don’t know. I haven’t found God, and I don’t like supposition. I prefer facts.
Even without God, my life did change, and Dr. Buckley suggested that I write about it. She said that writing about it would be a good project for me and one that might even help me understand how it happened and why. Dr. Buckley is a very logical woman, and I always need a new project.
In looking back, I can fit what happened into twenty-five days, or six hundred hours. I prefer to think of it in terms of hours, as I live my life as much by a clock as a calendar. I will tell it as it happened, from where I viewed it. Others may have seen it another way. They can tell their own stories if they want to.
I’ll start with the last day that everything was normal, or what I believed normal to be. That’s the problem with belief: if you rely on it too heavily, you have a lot of picking up to do after you find out you were wrong. I prefer facts.
Regards,
Edward Stanton
MONDAY, OCTOBER 13
My eyes flash open. I wait a moment for the dull blur of morning light to come into focus, and then I turn my head ninety degrees to the left and face the clock: It is 7:38 a.m. I have been awake at this time for the past three days, and for eighteen out of the past twenty. Because I go to bed promptly at midnight, I am accustomed to stirring at 7:38, but occasionally, I will wake up a little earlier or a little later. The range isn’t large—sometimes it’s 7:37, and sometimes it’s 7:40, and it has been 7:39 (twenty-two times this year, in fact), but 7:38 is the time I expect. It has happened 221 times so far this year, so if it were you, you would expect it, too. (You’re probably wondering how frequently I’ve been up at other times: fifteen for 7:37 and twenty-nine for 7:40.) Although I do my part by going to bed at midnight sharp, the variances occur because of things I can’t control, like the noise made by my neighbors or passing cars or sirens. These things frustrate me, but I cannot do anything about them.
I write down the time I woke up, and my data is complete.
You’ve probably done the math and know that it’s the 287th day of the year. The reason, aside from the sheer scientific fact that Earth has rotated on its axis that many times, is that it’s a leap year. I have to take the leap year into account in my calculations, but that’s easy for me to do, as it comes up only once every four years.
I can tell when my feet touch the floor that the house is warm, warmer than it usually is for October 13, and this has nothing to do with the leap year. The house has hardwood floors, which are good for reflecting whether it’s hot or cold. I have read about newer houses with something called radiant floor heating, where the floors are the source of heat for the home, but this house doesn’t have that. While I am intrigued by the notion, I have to remember that this house was built in 1937, and the cost of retrofitting it for radiant floor heating would be prohibitive. My father could afford it, and it is, in fact, his house and not mine, but he never would do it. He’s never here, and so it probably doesn’t make any difference to him that radiant floor heating would be a lot more economical. It should matter to him, as he pays the heating bill, but my father sometimes is not a logical person. I can’t worry about this now, although I have half a mind to write him a letter and tell him that he is being foolish for not thinking of radiant floor heating.
I walk across the hardwood floor of the house, open the front door, and pick the Billings Herald-Gleaner off the stoop. According to the front page, the temperature will reach seventy-two degrees today in Billings, and that is as I suspected when my feet touched the floor: It will be warm for October 13. It’s far warmer than last October 13 (fifty-six degrees). Of course, I won’t know for sure until tomorrow’s newspaper comes, the one with the official temperature for today. The number on the front page today is just a forecast, and forecasts are notoriously off base.
I flip over to the back page of the Local & State section and look at the weather data from yesterday, Sunday, October 12, the 286th day of the year (but only because this is a leap year). The weather data is always on the back page of the Local & State section, and while it does bother me that the Local & State section is sometimes Section B and sometimes Section C, I have learned to cope with this inconsistency, as I have no choice. I once wrote to the editor to complain about it, but I did not receive a reply.
The high temperature yesterday was fifty-three and the low temperature was thirty-one, and those are much more in line with the ten-year trends that I have recorded in my noteboo
ks. I write those numbers down, and my data is complete.
– • –
My father bought this house eight years ago. Actually, it was eight years and eighty-six days ago. He bought it for me to live in because I had become “a distraction whose presence was proving divisive in the family home.” My father didn’t write those words; his lawyer did. I have never heard my father refer to the “family home” before or since.
The reason I know that his lawyer wrote the letter is that it arrived on the lawyer’s letterhead. I do sometimes talk to my father face-to-face, but many times, it is followed up with a letter, sometimes on his letterhead and sometimes on the lawyer’s. I have not figured out how to predict which letterhead I will receive, although I can always predict the letters. I don’t trust predictions anyway. I prefer facts.
I live in this house alone. When my father bought it for me, he made it clear that I was to have no roommates without approval. I don’t know why my father worried about it. A roommate would probably mess up my routines and fool with my weather data. I know how roommates are. I have seen the television comedy Perfect Strangers, although not in many years, as it was canceled in 1993. I liked Balki Bartokomous. He was very funny. If I had a roommate like Balki, though, I would have to keep watch over my weather data. His rambunctiousness (I love the word “rambunctiousness”) would wear on me if he started fooling with my data.
– • –
The two-drawer filing cabinet in my bedroom holds one of the most important collections I have. Inside are my letters of complaint. I have them filed in green office folders under the name of the person I am complaining to, and in those files, the letters are arranged by date.
You are probably thinking that it is odd to keep copies of letters of complaint, and you would be right if not for the fact that these are not copies. These are the actual letters of complaint, and they will never be sent.
The letters are Dr. Buckley’s idea. I don’t know where she got it, but it’s a great one. Eight years ago, after my father and his lawyer persuaded Garth Brooks to drop the restraining order against me, my father bought this house for me. He seemed to suggest that the “Garth Brooks incident,” as he still calls it, was what caused him and my mother to decide that I could no longer live in the “family home.” I think that my letters of complaint to Garth Brooks were entirely justified. If you look objectively at country music, you cannot come to any conclusion other than he ruined it. He also ruined a lot of pop music, especially when he pretended to be that Chris Gaines person and when he covered that song by Kiss. I merely wrote to him and let him know about the damage he was doing, because I thought that maybe he didn’t know and would stop if he did. I had to write to him forty-nine times before he wrote back, but it wasn’t really him. It was his lawyer.
After that, I came to live here, and I had to start seeing Dr. Buckley. I have seen her every Tuesday of every month of every year since then. She encouraged me to continue to write my letters of complaint, but she suggested that I not send them so I do not have trouble with other people. I will admit that it didn’t make a lot of sense to me at the time, but it really does work. Writing the letters makes me feel better. I find that after I write one and file it away, I soon no longer wish to send it.
Dr. Buckley is a very logical woman.
– • –
Every night at 10:00 sharp, I watch Dragnet. I watch only the color episodes of Dragnet, the ones that were made between 1967 and 1970. Dragnet does not appear on television anymore, so I have to watch the episodes that I recorded on videocassette in 2000, when the TV Land network was still showing it. I have all ninety-eight color episodes on videocassette.
Because today is October 13, the 287th day of the year (because of the leap year), I will be watching the ninety-first episode of the series, “Burglary: The Dognappers.” This will be the third time this year that I have seen this episode, which originally aired on February 26, 1970.
Here is my method for watching Dragnet: On January 1 of every year, I start with the first episode of Dragnet. I then watch the episodes in succession, one each night, until I reach the end, and then I start over.
Because the 365 days in a year—or 366 days in a leap year—are not cleanly divisible by ninety-eight episodes, I will watch each of the episodes at least three times a year, and I will watch the first seventy-two episodes four times. Because this is a leap year, I’ll watch the first seventy-three episodes four times. You would think that I would know the first seventy-two (or seventythree) episodes a little better than the others because of the disparity (I love the word “disparity”) in watching them, but I have no proof that’s true. Perhaps I should see if I can find the scripts and run some calculations on how many of the words from the first seventy-two (or seventy-three) I know, as opposed to the last twenty-six (or twenty-five). That will be a good project for another time.
“Burglary: The Dognappers,” the nineteenth episode of the fourth and final season of the color episodes, is one of my favorites. In this episode, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon work a case involving people who steal dogs from cars and then return them to the owners for reward money. You could make a credible case that every Dragnet episode has a moral component, but this one does especially. It’s not right to steal. Also, people love their pets, if they have them. I do not have pets.
As always, in this episode, Sergeant Joe Friday is a very logical person, and while Officer Bill Gannon isn’t as logical, he can be funny. I like them both.
– • –
After Dragnet, I get things ready for the next morning. I double-check my wake-up time and weather data and then put my notebook on the end table beside the bedroom door so I can find it first thing after I wake up. I also put three pens beside the notebook, because I don’t want to be in a situation where I can’t write down the time I wake up and the temperatures from the previous day. One backup pen is just asking for trouble, so I make sure I have two.
The last thing I do before going to sleep is I write my letter of complaint. It’s hard sometimes to wait until the very end of the day to do this, but it jumbles my day up too much when I write my letter of complaint at the moment that someone makes me mad. If I’m not careful about the timing, for example, I could miss the 10:00 p.m. start of Dragnet, and that would just foul up everything. Also, writing the letter at the end of the day allows me some “separation time” between the incident that made me angry and my response to it. Dr. Buckley says that I can avoid many bad situations by learning to use “separation time.” She is a very logical woman.
As you might expect, I’m going to complain to my father. I already have five green office folders that hold letters of complaint to him. Soon, I may need six.
Dear Father:
I think you have erred in not considering radiant floor heating for the house that I am living in. I have read many articles about this type of flooring, and it is my understanding that by utilizing pipes in the concrete floor that carry hot water, you can significantly reduce your energy costs. As you know, in Montana, winter can be very cold. I think that radiant floor heating would bring substantial savings, although I will concede that there is an upfront cost of installation that must be considered.
I also must concede that perhaps you have thought of radiant floor heating and simply have not communicated those thoughts to me. I would ask that you show me the common courtesy of letting me know what you’re thinking in regard to this issue, for if you decide to install radiant floor heating, I will have to adjust my life to accommodate the intrusion of a contractor.
Finally, I would urge you to not use the unseasonably warm weather we have been having as an excuse to disregard the heating apparatus of this house. I have ten years’ worth of weather data that show conclusively that we will, at some point, come in for some cold weather. That said, I do not like to rely on predictions. I shall wait for the facts to bear this out before contacting you further.
I appreciate your consideratio
n.
With regards, I am your son,
Edward
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14
The sound of a lawn mower jolts me awake. I turn to face the clock, and it reads 7:28. This is an oddity. Every previous day this year, I have awoken at 7:37, 7:38, 7:39, or 7:40. Now, on the 288th day of this year (because it is a leap year), I am awake at 7:28. Further, I am all but certain that I have never awoken at this particular time. I will have to check my data, as I don’t like to trust assumptions. I prefer facts.
I retrieve my notebook from the end table and grab a pen. I record my waking time, and my data is complete.
At the front door, I bend over and retrieve the Billings Herald-Gleaner from the front stoop. I can now see the source of my early awakening: The woman across the street, the one who moved in on September 12 (the 256th day of this year, but only because it is a leap year), is mowing her front yard. I have seen her a few times since she moved in, but this is the first time I have seen her mowing her front yard. A boy lives with her, and I assume that he is her son, although I don’t like to assume. He looks to be eight or nine years old, but I’m not comfortable with such conjecture. If I could find out the boy’s birth date, I would know for sure and would feel more comfortable about the situation. There is a big difference between the ages of eight and nine, and in this case, I just don’t know. This frustrates me.
I have not seen a man over there, and so I wonder whether my neighbor has a husband or her boy has a father. I would be sad to think that he doesn’t, but having a father isn’t necessarily a good thing. I have one, and while he did buy this house for me to live in, he also has his lawyer send me a lot of letters and may not have given any thought to radiant floor heating.
I see now that the woman across the street has stopped pushing the lawn mower and is waving at me. I think it would be better if I looked at the weather information and recorded it inside. I close the door. Soon, my data will be complete.
600 Hours of Edward Page 1
