Craig Lancaster - Edward Adrift

“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 know 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.