600 Hours of Edward

by Craig Lancaster

“It’s not good,” I say.

  “Can I see it?”

  I hand the letter to Donna, who reads it quickly.

  “This is so weird,” she says. “Your father uses a lawyer to talk with you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Why does the lawyer refer to him as your benefactor?”

  “I guess it’s a lawyerly way of putting things.”

  “Why can’t your father just call you up or come by?”

  I shrug. That would be nice. That also would never happen. I shouldn’t say that, I guess. I don’t know what will ever happen, as those things haven’t happened yet, and until then, it’s all conjecture. I prefer facts. The fact is, my father has never just dropped by.

  “What’s it about?”

  “I don’t know. It could be anything.”

  “He seemed like a nice man when…well, that day at the clinic.”

  “He is when he wants to be.”

  “Are you going to go?”

  I shrug. “I have to.”

  – • –

  Donna is preparing to leave. She puts her raincoat back on—the pelting continues outside—and turns and faces me.

  “Are you OK, Edward?”

  “Yes.”

  “I enjoyed hanging out with you.”

  “Me, too.”

  She smiles at me.

  “Edward, can I ask you a question?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would it be all right if I kissed you on the cheek?”

  I’ve never been asked this before.

  “OK,” I say.

  She puts her hands on my shoulders and tiptoes up to me, gently placing her lips against my left cheek. She smells good. I close my eyes.

  After she finishes, she releases me.

  “Thank you, Edward.”

  She opens the door, steps through, and closes it behind her.

  – • –

  Tonight, at 10:00, I settle into the couch and watch Dragnet. The episode, the eighth of the first season of color episodes, originally aired on March 9, 1967, and it is one of my favorites. It is called “The Candy Store Robberies.”

  In this one, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon investigate a string of armed robberies at a chain of downtown candy stores in Los Angeles. For a while, the robberies seem to follow a pattern, but then the robber or robbers—Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon aren’t sure about the number—hit a store that he or they have robbed before. Rolling stakeouts finally break open the case, and two transient men are arrested. It turns out that one of them found a gun, and they have both been using it, hitting the candy stores when they need some cash for liquor. They are actually gentle men, the gun notwithstanding (I love the word “notwithstanding”), and they have become friends because neither can read.

  Their crimes are serious, but Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon have empathy for the men just the same. I think this episode is just as much about friendship as it is about the unraveling of a crime.

  Friendship, I’m finding out, is a good thing.

  – • –

  The sixth green office folder holding letters of complaint to my father gathers another one.

  Dear Father,

  I was most disappointed to receive the registered letter from your attorney, Jay L. Lamb, today. It was a dark moment in what had been, for me, a day of breakthroughs and greater understanding.

  I am left to wonder if you and I will ever have a similar breakthrough. I am inclined to defer to your wisdom on so many things. I wonder if you will ever talk to me yourself or come over and have a Barq’s root beer with me, instead of having your lawyer write to me.

  But wondering is not much different from conjecture. Neither one deals in facts.

  So here is a fact: I will continue to hope that we might do better.

  As ever, I am your son,

  Edward

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29

  I awake with a start at 7:40 a.m. I’m propped up in bed, my forearms flat against the mattress, my elbows holding me up. I can remember only the faintest outline of a dream: My father, ahead of me, walking along a road I don’t recognize. He keeps the same, steady pace, occasionally looking back and waving me to come along. I walk as fast as I can and never catch up to him.

  I find the dream both comforting and threatening. I cannot reconcile these two things in my mind, and as my alertness grows, my grasp on the dream loosens.

  It’s no use.

  I record my awakening time, the thirty-first time in 303 days this year (because it’s a leap year) that I’ve been up at 7:40 a.m. My data is complete. And, as is made plain by the clock, my morning meeting will be upon me soon.

  – • –

  I shower quickly, not savoring the hot water as I generally do. It’s cold today; I could feel that when I threw off the covers and climbed out of bed. How cold, I do not know and won’t know until tomorrow. The Billings Herald-Gleaner awaits on the stoop.

  I step out of the shower and dry off quickly, then slip into my terry cloth robe. I’ll have to eat a quick bowl of corn flakes. I can’t say that I’m particularly hungry, as my appetite is being affected by the fact that I have to be at my father’s lawyer’s office. I also cannot imagine facing that on an empty stomach.

  At the front door, I stop and sweep the newspaper off the porch. I am in a hurry this morning, but I can complete my data. I see that the forecast calls for snow flurries today. It seems that the TV weatherman, Kent Shaw, whose smiling face is on the weather page every day, and I have a similar sense of things. The difference is that he states his forecast as if it’s fact. I know better. I shall wait for tomorrow for the facts.

  I eat spoonfuls of cereal as I thumb through the newspaper. The Billings Herald-Gleaner is the only newspaper I have read consistently in my life, and I like it, although there are some things that bother me about it. I don’t start at the front of the newspaper and look at every page in succession; I would be surprised if many people do, but I can’t really know without taking a scientific survey of the Billings Herald-Gleaner’s readers, and I just don’t have time for that.

  First, I go to the weather page (I have already been there today and recorded yesterday’s high and low temperatures and precipitation, and my data is complete). Then I skip over to Dear Abby (the headline today: “Husband Should Ditch Secretary”), and this is one of the things that bothers me about the newspaper: The page with Dear Abby is in different places on different days. Sometimes, it’s with the front section. Sometimes, it’s with the Local & State section. And sometimes, it is with the Sports section. Every day, I have to check the index on the front page of the newspaper to find out where it is. And that brings up another thing I dislike about the Herald-Gleaner: The index always says something like “4C” or “8A.” The letters mean nothing to me. I want the Herald-Gleaner to tell me what section to turn to, whether it’s Local & State or Sports or the front section. I am flummoxed by the Herald-Gleaner’s fixation on alphabetizing.

  Finally, I turn to the Opinion page. This is my recreational reading, as my father often turns up on the Opinion page—sometimes because a letter writer mentions him, for good or for bad, and sometimes because the Herald-Gleaner editorial board mentions him, and that’s almost always for bad. My father refers to the Herald-Gleaner editorial board as “that full-of-shit, left-wing league of loons.” My father has a creative way of putting words together sometimes. The Herald-Gleaner editorial board, so far as I can tell, has never called my father anything that mean, although I could only guess at what its members say privately about him, and I don’t like guessing. I prefer facts. And it is a fact that the Herald-Gleaner editorial board is generally not supportive of my father as a county commissioner. It routinely criticizes his positions and has, in every election, endorsed his opponent. Today, as it turns out, a small editorial, with the headline “Stanton Misses Again,” takes him to task.

  The Big Sky Economic Development Authority has yet to select a new e
xecutive director, but it made a smart move by moving on from candidate Dave Akers after his drunk-driving arrest while in Billings for his interview with the group. We can only hope that Akers’s most ardent supporter, Yellowstone County commissioner Ted Stanton, realizes the wisdom in moving on and ceases his incessant criticism of fellow board members.

  The Herald-Gleaner has been up front about the ways in which we consider Commissioner Stanton’s stewardship of the county to be lacking, but we would be remiss if we didn’t also acknowledge his keen political gifts and the value of his experience in business and finance. The county’s residents are often well served by that expertise. Nobody is served by his banging the drum—and berating his peers—on behalf of a man who will not get the job to which he aspires.

  – • –

  The waiting area outside Jay L. Lamb’s office is pristine. Unlike Dr. Buckley’s waiting room, which is often in various stages of dishevelment and has such magazines as People and Sports Illustrated, Jay L. Lamb’s is polished and almost antiseptic. The furniture is modern—steel and glass and hard plastic. I find it uncomfortable and unwelcoming. The magazine titles are not the breezy reads favored by Dr. Buckley; they are such things as Kiplinger’s and Inc. and Portfolio. It seems that the biggest story in each has something to do with investing.

  “Mr. Lamb says you can go in now,” says the receptionist, who is perfectly made up, perfectly coiffed, and has perfectly angular facial features. She is a good match with the furniture.

  I stand up and check my watch. It’s 9:03 a.m. I walk through the office door to the immediate left of her desk. As I push it open, I draw in a big breath.

  – • –

  “Sit down, Mr. Stanton,” Jay L. Lamb says.

  I hesitate for a moment, as Mr. Stanton is standing just off Jay L. Lamb’s right shoulder. Jay L. Lamb is sitting behind an expansive glass-topped desk. Then I realize that he is talking to me.

  I sit. The chairs in here are just as uncomfortable as the ones outside.

  “Hello, Edward.”

  “Hello, Father.”

  Jay L. Lamb clears his throat as if to speak, but my father cuts him off.

  “What were you doing at the courthouse Monday?”

  “How did you know I was there?”

  “Cut the shit, Edward. We’ve been over this before. I know things.”

  Yes, but that doesn’t make sense. My father’s job, aside from being at the courthouse, has nothing to do with court cases. We didn’t cross paths when I was there. Lloyd Graeve isn’t a friend of my father’s, so far as I know.

  Wait. Lambert, Slaughter & Lamb, Attorneys at Law. Sean Lambert. Mike Simpson’s defense attorney. That has to be it.

  “I was there with a friend.”

  “Who’s your friend?”

  “My neighbor.”

  “What is your neighbor’s name?”

  “Donna Middleton.”

  “You were at the county courthouse with Donna Middleton, the woman who not two weeks ago asked me to have you stay away from her and her little boy?”

  Now Jay L. Lamb speaks. “On October twenty-first, you were sent a letter warning you about the outburst at Billings Clinic. Your father, in mitigating that situation for you, told you to leave that family alone.”

  “What do you mean by ‘leave alone’?” I ask.

  “You know goddamned well what he means,” my father says.

  “She is my friend. Circumstances changed after that day at Billings Clinic.”

  “I am not interested in what has changed, Edward. I am interested in knowing why it is that you continually defy me, continually land in situations that you must be rescued from, and continually make this situation more difficult than it has to be.”

  “What do you mean by ‘this situation’?”

  “Smarting off is not going to help you here, Edward.”

  “I’m not smarting off. I’m asking you a question. What is the situation?”

  “You know damned well what it is.”

  “I know that you can’t talk to me about anything without your lawyer,” I say, waving my hand dismissively at Jay L. Lamb.

  “That’s not what this is about.”

  “How can it not be about that? Where are we, Father? We’re in your lawyer’s office.”

  “There are legal aspects of our arrangement, Edward, and that’s the reason for the lawyer.”

  “But whether or not I am friends with Donna Middleton is not part of our arrangement. You’re just bossing me around because you can.”

  “I’m trying to protect you, goddamn it.”

  “You’re trying to protect you is what it seems like to me.”

  – • –

  It goes on like that for a while, until my father and I begin to run out of angry words. At 9:22, Jay L. Lamb starts talking.

  “Mr. Stanton,” he says, again addressing me. “I have drawn up a memorandum of understanding. Our wish is that you sign it and your father signs it, and it will constitute the basis of your father’s continuing support of you. You should understand that any breach of this memorandum of understanding could be viewed as a sufficient reason to withdraw that financial support.”

  I ask to see the memorandum. Among the codicils (I love the word “codicil,” although not so much today):

  I am to not have contact with Donna Middleton or her son except as is “reasonably neighborly.” (“Giving a wave from your driveway is OK,” Jay L. Lamb says. “Traveling together, eating together, any sort of extended social interaction is not.”)

  I am to live within my monthly budget of $1,200, not counting household utility costs and property taxes. Any overage is to be paid by me to my father.

  I am to clear with my father all household improvements or alterations before embarking on them. (“You’re not going to paint that garage every damned year,” my father says. “Shows what you know,” I reply. “I paint it every other year.”)

  So long as I adhere to these rules, Jay L. Lamb says, I am permitted to live in the house on Clark Avenue “until the end of my natural life.”

  “Can I ask something?” I say.

  “Go ahead,” Jay L. Lamb replies.

  “This part about living within my budget, does it mean from this day forward?”

  My father’s eyes zero in on me. “Is there something I need to know?”

  “There are some bills coming.”

  “What kind of bills?”

  “I bought some clothes. About five hundred dollars’ worth. I am wearing some of them today.” I have on the tan slacks and lavender shirt that I bought at Dillard’s, plus the shoes and the belt.

  My father says nothing.

  “And two hundred and twenty-one dollars and ninety-five cents from Home Depot.”

  “You bought two hundred and twenty dollars’ worth of paint?”

  “The paint was another purchase.”

  “What the hell was the two-twenty for?”

  “A project.”

  “What kind of project?”

  “A big tricycle.”

  “What?”

  “Like a Green Machine. Do you remember mine?”

  “No. What the hell is this about?”

  “I made it for Donna’s son.”

  “You what?” My father has come around the desk to face me.

  “It’s already done. He has it. No bringing it back now.” I am trying not to smile as my father grows angrier by the second.

  “This, Edward, is why you’re signing this goddamned document.”

  “Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.”

  “You will.”

  “Also, someone hit the car.”

  “When?”

  “Last week, outside Rimrock Mall.”

  “Did you get insurance information from them?”

  “He or she drove off.”

  “Well, Jesus Christ. How bad is it?”

  “It’s hard to tell that anything happened.”

  “Forget it, then. No way I�
��m paying a five-hundred-dollar deductible and seeing my rates jacked up. Now then, is that it?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Then sign the document.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “You can start looking for somewhere else to live and a way to pay your bills, starting today,” my father says. “Because the gravy train will be gone.”

  “Yes, Father, you’re all heart,” I say. “Anyone can see that.”

  It’s like a flash of lightning my father is so quick as he backhands me across the bridge of the nose. I haven’t even comprehended what has happened when I feel the sharp sting spread across my face. My eyes are watering, and the tinny taste of blood seeps into my mouth from my sinuses.

  “Jesus Christ, Ted,” Jay L. Lamb shouts, jumping up and grabbing my father by the shoulders. My father slumps backward and sits down on Jay L. Lamb’s glass desk.

  I rub the back of my right hand across my eyes to clear away the tears that filled my eyes from the force of the blow. Then I dab under my nostrils and see little spots of blood.

  “I strongly suggest that you sign and leave. We’re not going to have this here,” Jay L. Lamb says to me.

  “You’re paid to give advice to him, not me,” I say. “Give me a pen.”

  – • –

  Before I leave Jay L. Lamb’s office, I say one last thing.

  “I saw your good review in today’s Billings Herald-Gleaner, Father.”

  He fixes me with a haggard stare. “Go home, Edward. We’ve had enough bullshit for one day.”

  – • –

  On the drive home, I see that wispy flakes of snow have started to fall, dissolving as they hit the ground.

  I cannot believe what has happened. My father has always yelled at me and ridiculed me. He has never hit me, not until today. My father has broken my heart.

  I hate him. Hate is not a word to be used lightly. I consider this, and then I stick with it. I hate my father.

  – • –

  I can see Donna Middleton in her front yard when I pull up into the driveway at home. I step out of the car, and she gives a big wave and shouts, “How are you?”

  I don’t look at her. I give a half wave back, walk briskly to the front door, open it, and go in.