Craig Lancaster - Edward Adrift

He leaves the bottle in the toilet water and slams through the stall door, almost hitting me in the face as it swings open.

“Shut up, Edward.”

“That’s another ten dollars for being rude. With that and the s -word you just said, you’re at two hundred twenty-one.”

Kyle’s hands are balled up into fists. “Do you think I care? I’m never paying you, so you can just forget it. You can forget your stupid game, too.”

“It’s your stupid game, Kyle. You’re the one who wanted to do it, and that’s what I’m going to tell your mom when I tell her that you’ve been cheating.”

“‘That’s what I’m going to tell your mom,’” Kyle mocks me in a sing-song voice. “You’re not going to tell her about this, you big tattletale. Don’t be stupid. How do you think that’s gonna look? ‘Hey, Donna, Kyle and I were peeing into bottles.’ You’re an idiot.”

Kyle has really hurt my feelings now. I’m not an idiot. I’m developmentally disabled, not stupid. He’s right that I probably shouldn’t say anything about this to Donna. I suspect that her reaction would be similar to Dr. Buckley’s, if not worse, and while I do not like to trust supposition, I’m not willing to seek out the facts on this matter.

Kyle is already out the door of the restroom. I follow him, tossing my bottle of urine into the trash as I go. I call for him, but he doesn’t look back. He just flips me the bird, which is a euphemism for holding up one’s middle finger. He’s at $231 now.

I jog to try to catch up to him. The whole thing flummoxes me. We were doing so well, and now we’re not. Kyle is sitting in the passenger seat of the Cadillac DTS, and his face is pressed against the window, as if I’m holding him prisoner.

I climb into the driver’s seat and start the car. Kyle doesn’t face me and doesn’t acknowledge me.

Darkness is coming. We have two hours to go on our drive. Michael Stipe is singing about going all the way to Reno. I look to the west, where Reno is. That’s where John Charles Fremont and Charles Preuss went, or close enough. Charles Preuss didn’t like it out there. I don’t like it out here. I wonder why I came, but I can’t stop now.

I put the car into drive and head back to the interstate.

I feel alone. I used to like that. It’s the worst feeling ever now.

I’m glad we’re here for only two nights. This bed is too hard. I cannot blame that for why I am awake at 4:21 a.m., however. My father visited me in my dream again, and now I am flummoxed, because we were not in Cheyenne Wells, Colorado, although I am physically in Cheyenne Wells right at this moment. We were in our old house in Billings, the one I lived in with my parents before I was kicked out after the “Garth Brooks incident.”

It’s hard to remember now that I’m in the conscious world rather than the dream world, but I think I was the same age as in the Cheyenne Wells dreams. I’m going to assume that I was, although assumptions are dangerous things. That, at least, would make the dreams track.

In the dream, I’m nine years old and my father and I are in the front yard, and he is chasing me. I run and laugh and try to elude my father, until finally his big hand clutches the back of my shirt and pulls me in. He wraps me in a bear hug and we tumble to the ground, and I am not scared. I am laughing and having fun, and my father rolls me onto my back and lies gently across my chest, binding up my legs with his right arm so I cannot move.

“One… two… three,” he says, and then he gets to his feet and makes noises like a crowd is cheering for him and says, “And the new champion, Ted ‘The Bear’ Stanton!” He holds his arms aloft and dances back and forth on his toes like Muhammad Ali and makes more cheering noises.

That’s when I get up and I run at him, full force. He says “Oof” as I hit him, and he tumbles to the ground in an exaggerated fall. I lie down across him, the same way he did to me, and I try to bind up his legs, but he’s too big for me. He thrashes and he could surely throw me off, but he doesn’t. I count off “One…two…three,” and I jump up with my arms in the air.

The last I remember of the dream is my father picking me up, even though I was a big nine-year-old, and carrying me around the yard. “The champ,” he says. “Meet the champ, Teddy Stanton!” I cup my hands and hold up my arms for an adoring, imaginary crowd.

And now, here in Cheyenne Wells, I’m lying in a bed that isn’t mine and I can feel tears on my cheeks. I sniffle, and then I hold my breath, until I hear Kyle snoring in the bed next to mine. I wipe my cheeks and try not to cry anymore, but it’s no use. I’m not in control of this, and that is a helpless feeling.

I don’t know what it all means. I cannot even remember if what I saw in the dream happened in my real life. I don’t think it did. I’d like to think I would remember a great day like that. I do know that my father found it much easier to be my friend when I was nine years old than he did later, when I wasn’t so young anymore and as he grew more exasperated (I love the word “exasperated”) with my condition. While he was still alive, I would often wish that we could go back to those younger days, and I certainly do now that he’s gone, but it’s impossible to do that unless you’re in the dream world. We didn’t get a chance to work it out when he was alive, and ever since he died three years, one month, and fifteen days ago, I’ve been trying to work it out with my memories. It would be nice to think that his appearances in my dream are an effort on his part to work it out with me, but that requires way too much wishful thinking for my fact-loving brain to handle.

And yet, if I allow myself that wishful thinking, I wonder now whether my father has been guiding me not to a place but to a conclusion. I will try to explain this. Kyle was nine years old when I met him. I’m nine years old in the dreams about my father I’ve been having. When Kyle was nine years old, relating to him was easy for me. He was a friendly young man who made having fun seem easy, who wanted to be my friend when I didn’t really have any friends. When I was nine years old, my father found relating to me to be easy. I didn’t challenge him the way I did in later years, as I began to learn things and feel things that put me at odds with him (and, it’s important to note, as my condition deteriorated before I got the help I needed).

Maybe the memories of my father are telling me this: I won’t have the same relationship with Kyle that I once had. He’s growing up, he’s struggling in his own way as he does, and it’s unfair for me to expect him to be the kid I once knew. Maybe I have to accept that this is who he is now and be friends with him on those terms—or, if neither of us can handle it, not be friends anymore.

That’s a lot of maybes, which means my information is not at all precise. A lack of precision bothers me. Having only theories bothers me. Not knowing where to look for answers bothers me, too.

I will close my eyes now. I will try to get some rest. Tomorrow, I will start fresh where Kyle is concerned (and I will hope he finally talks to me again, as he didn’t from Deer Trail to here). He owes me no money. He can call his mother or not call his mother. He can walk with me or not walk with me. The choices are his. I cannot make him do anything.

I hope we can find our way back to being friends. I will even try to believe in him. Hope and belief have flaws, because you can attach all of your aspirations to them only to find out later that you were wrong.

I prefer facts. Right now, facts are hard to come by.