Craig Lancaster - Edward Adrift

It’s 140.7 miles from my driveway to Bozeman, Montana, and it took me two hours and thirty-two minutes to cover that distance. That segment of my trip took longer than I anticipated because I had to stop to pee twice.

The first time was just outside Columbus, Montana, at mile marker 418. The rest area sits atop a high hill that overlooks the Yellowstone River valley. After taking care of my business, which is a euphemism, I walked along the sidewalk and took in the view. On an unseasonably warm December day like this one, with the sky clear and no haze, it was as if I could see forever, which is of course an optical illusion.

As much as I was tempted to sit down in the grass and look at the scenery for a while, I pushed on. I had many miles to go, and I would not want to disappoint Donna, Victor, and Kyle by being later than necessary.

Thirty-eight miles on, near the small town of Greycliff, I stopped again. This peeing business is getting a bit ridiculous, although I suspect that I make it worse by drinking so much water. By the time I got to Greycliff, I was on my second bottle, and I hadn’t yet covered a hundred miles. As unlikely as it seems, I may have to invest in a second case of water.

It’s also possible that I did not maintain a constant 65 miles per hour on the interstate. In Livingston, for instance, 27 miles from Bozeman, the Cadillac DTS was blown aggressively by the wind. And as I came through the mountain pass into Bozeman, I deviated between going faster than 65 miles per hour down hills and slower than 65 on tight turns. The mountain pass between Livingston and Bozeman is a good representation of why I am taking this trip in small chunks. It stresses me out to drive through mountain passes.

Now I am in Bozeman, at a coffee shop on Main Street because I am hungry. I left the house at 7:51 a.m. having eaten only oatmeal and three handfuls of sunflower seeds (which I have now abandoned because they’re messy and I do not like messes), and it’s now 10:23 and I am a bit lightheaded. That’s not good.

I order a sugar-free chai tea which I’m eager to try, never having heard of such a thing, and a granola bar that the nice lady at the counter said would be OK for me to have in my condition.

“I’m diabetic, you know,” I tell her.

“Well, I didn’t know that, but we can work out something just fine,” she says.

I appreciated that, both for her willingness to work around my dietary needs and for her pointing out that she had no way of knowing about my condition. It was silly for me to have suggested she did.

I’m on my second gulp of the chai tea, which is really good and comes in a tall, thin glass that I find visually appealing, when a young man with close-cropped blond hair comes up to me and says, “Oh, you’re a bright boy, aren’t you?”

I look around. I haven’t heard anyone say “bright boy” since I saw the 1946 movie The Killers , in which William Conrad says it several times in the opening scene.

“Me?” I ask.

He points at my sweatshirt. I look down. It reads: University of Montana, 2001 National Champions.

“Yeah, you,” he says.

“Well, I am pretty smart sometimes,” I say.

He pokes me in the chest with his finger, and it hurts.

“It’s not smart to wear a Griz shirt in Bozeman.”

I look past the young man to the counter, but the woman who gave me the tea and the granola bar doesn’t seem to notice. He and I are alone in the back of the coffee shop.

“I don’t care about the University of Montana Grizzlies,” I say. “I’m a Texas Christian University fan.”

This makes him angrier.

“So you’re just fucking with people then?”

“No.”

“It seems like you are.”

“Conjecture can be a risky thing,” I say. “It seems that you’re assuming the reason for my wearing this sweatshirt, and as it turns out, you’re incorrect.”

My father received it from a friend of his, a University of Montana supporter, and I got it from my mother when she was sorting out my father’s clothes to give away after he died. I wore it today because I was thinking of him.

“You’re a real smart-ass, aren’t you?”

“No, just smart.”

What happens next is so abrupt I have no way to prepare for it. The angry young man hits me square in the nose with his fist. Intense pain spreads across my face, and my eyes begin to water. I almost fall off the chair I’m sitting on, but I catch the edge of the table with my left hand and hold myself up. I taste something tinny in my mouth, and I touch my nose. It’s bleeding.

“Fuck you,” the young man says, and he turns and heads for the door.

The woman who was working the counter runs past him the other way to check on me.

“Are you OK?” she asks.

“I’m bleeding.”

I want to cry, and I probably could because my eyes are watering, but I don’t want to do that in front of this woman.

“Let me grab something,” she says.

She runs back to the counter and runs a washcloth under the hot water. She then brings it to me.

“Tilt your head back,” she says.

I do as she tells me. She gently passes the washcloth over my nose, which still hurts. When she lifts it, I can see that it’s inundated (I love the word “inundated”) with blood.

“I’ll be right back,” she says.

As she leaves me again, I call out, “Who was that? Why did he hit me?” The first question is real; the second one is rhetorical. There is no good reason for hitting someone square in the face like that.

“I don’t know,” she shouts to me across the room. She holds up a hand to a couple waiting at the counter, to tell them she’ll be back in a moment.

“Here,” she says, handing the clean washcloth to me. “Keep your head back and hold this on your nose.”

“I didn’t do anything to him,” I say.

I’ve begun to cry. I can’t help it.

“I know you didn’t. Do you want me to call the cops?”

I don’t like the police. I’m not going to get into it with her, but the truth is, the cops were called on me a few times before my condition was brought under control with Dr. Buckley’s help, and it’s a conditioned response that I just don’t like to see them.

“No,” I tell her.

“Are you going to be all right?”

“I don’t know.”

“OK. Listen, I have to see what these folks want. Let me know if you need anything.”

“OK.”

After she leaves, I stand up, holding the washcloth on my face, and I make my way to the far back of the coffee shop, where the restroom is. I don’t have to pee.

The single bulb in the restroom casts a dim light. I push my face forward until it’s about an inch from the mirror, and I examine the damage. My nose is inflamed, and I see swelling around the bridge of it. Flecks of dried blood line the edges of my nostrils.

I touch the swollen parts of my face, and pain shoots to the spots where my fingers have been. I will have to be very careful until things have had a chance to heal.

All things considered, though, it seems that the damage is minimal, except to my feelings. All I wanted was a snack and a few minutes to relax, and I got a punch in the face.

I didn’t deserve that. It was wrong of that young man to punch me like that.

But then I remember that deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.

It is 83.15 miles from Bozeman to Harrison Drive in Butte, where my hotel room is waiting for me. The route covers some of the wondrous country Montana is known for—river valleys, mountain ranges (I particularly enjoy the Tobacco Root Mountains, which have a great name), and the sky that is so impressive that the state has been given a special name: Big Sky Country. I take all of this in, but aside from a pee break at the Town Pump in Whitehall, I do not stop. I do not take photos with my bitchin’ iPhone. Periodically, I look at my face in the rearview mirror, and I see that the swollen areas around my nose have not receded much and, in fact, have begun to turn a violent shade of purple. This sucks elephant balls. It’s ruining my trip.