Craig Lancaster - Edward Adrift

I’m also embarrassed about something else—the Dallas Cowboys played last night, and I completely forgot about it. If you had told me before this trip that I would forget about a Dallas Cowboys game, I would have politely but firmly disagreed with you. But now there’s proof. The one plus, I guess, is that the Dallas Cowboys won against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That’s good, but it’s not surprising. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are terrible.

Sheila Renfro is acting weird. She seems annoyed at me because I was trying to make sure all the data got recorded properly in my notebook. She kept telling me “I know how to do it,” which was completely beside the point. I know she knows how to do it. My point is that I’ve been doing it longer than she has, and thus I know better.

Finally, Sheila Renfro left. She didn’t say where she was going, just that she would be back in time to get me loaded into her truck after I am released from the hospital. But she did take my notebook with her, which is damned dirty pool. (When I say “pool,” I’m speaking of billiards, not a swimming pool. Besides, if I were speaking of a swimming pool, that sentence would have required the indefinite article “a,” as in “That is a damned dirty pool.” The absence of the “a” is a giveaway as to the nature of the noun “pool.” I hear people say that grammar is difficult to understand, but it’s really not if you just pay attention.)

When I awake from my nap at 10:37 a.m., a uniformed police officer is standing at the side of my bed. This alarms me. I’m not a fugitive from the law, so I have no reason to fear cops, but my past interactions with them have not been good. This is another instance of what Dr. Buckley would call a conditioned response.

“Are you Edward Stanton?” he asks me. This is a dumb question. My name is written on the dry-erase board over my bed. Still, I am self-aware enough to not tell the officer that he’s being dumb. Nobody likes to hear that. Policemen take it particularly personally.

“Yes,” I say.

“This is for you.”

He hands me a slip of paper, which I take in my right hand—I’m learning to avoid using my left arm, which will aggravate my broken ribs—and hold close to my face so I can read it.

I’m being ticketed for my crash on the interstate. The ticket says I was traveling too fast for the conditions and that I was driving recklessly when I ran into the back of the snowplow. The ticket also says I owe the state of Colorado $562. I’d never received a traffic ticket before this trip, so I don’t have the means of comparison, but this seems like a lot of money. I’m fucking loaded, so I can afford it, but that doesn’t mean I can just blithely (I love the word “blithely”) part with $562.

“This is a lot of money,” I say to the policeman, who introduces himself as Officer Jonathon Hunter of the Colorado Highway Patrol.

“It is,” he agrees. “We like to make speeding and reckless driving unpopular violations.”

I giggle, and Officer Jonathon Hunter looks at me quizzically, so I stop. I do not want any more trouble. Policemen also do not appreciate being laughed at. I know this from experience.

It’s just that Officer Jonathon Hunter’s statement reminds me of something Sergeant Joe Friday said in an episode of Dragnet . It’s called “The Bank Jobs,” and it’s the fourth episode from the second season, and it originally aired on October 5, 1967. In this episode, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon are investigating a series of bank robberies in which a man makes random women help him with his crimes. After Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon clear one woman of wrongdoing, she has a question. She has red hair and inspires sultry (I love the word “sultry”) music on this episode of Dragnet , but no-nonsense Sergeant Joe Friday doesn’t seem to notice that. When she asks what the penalty is for bank robbery, Sergeant Joe Friday tells her it’s twenty-five years for each offense. She says it hardly seems worth it for a few hundred dollars.

“That’s the idea. They want to make it an unpopular crime,” Sergeant Joe Friday tells her. Sergeant Joe Friday is a very logical man.

And now you can see why I giggled.

Officer Jonathon Hunter puts his sunglasses on and says, “You can pay that at the DMV, or you can mail it in, or you can appear on the court date and contest it.”

Officer Jonathon Hunter is very businesslike. I appreciate that. Maybe he learned something from watching Sergeant Joe Friday, like I did.

“Thank you, Officer Jonathon Hunter,” I say, and he again looks at me quizzically. Then he leaves.

I wanted to ask him what he thinks of Sergeant Joe Friday, but in the end, I’m glad that’s over with.

When Sheila Renfro comes back to the hospital room, she is wearing clean clothes and she looks as though she has had a shower. I guess I hadn’t noticed that she had been wearing the same clothes and pulling her hair back into the same ponytail while I’ve been in this place. I’ll go ahead and admit it, as there’s no denying the situation: I got preoccupied with my own problems, and I didn’t pay as much attention to my friend as I should have. That was wrong. I decide I need to rectify this.

“You look nice, Sheila Renfro,” I tell her, and she smiles again. I am getting better at making Sheila Renfro smile. I’m proud of myself and happy for her. After what I’ve been through on this trip, I’m starting to appreciate the value of happiness.

“Are you ready to go, Edward?” she asks me. “I got some nice bedding material for you to ride in the backseat of my Suburban, and I got some clothes for me, and then I gassed up at a truck stop and took a shower.”

“You smell like Irish Spring,” I say.

“I like Irish Spring,” she says.

“So do I.”

Sheila Renfro smiles again.

I’m pretty talented sometimes.

Sally makes me ride in a wheelchair all the way to the loading area, which is silly. I didn’t break my legs. They still work, and I tell her this.

“Sorry, Edward. Regulations,” she says.

That, of course, changes everything. A society can’t function unless its members obey the rules. It seems to me that we have a nation full of people who think rules are for other people. This is not an idle observation on my part; I’ve been watching closely. Despite my better judgment, I continue to try to understand politics in America, since I live here and have been entrusted with a vote for more than twenty-four years. I’ll point out here that I’m emphasizing the word “try.” I’ve begun to think that no one understands politics in America except the politicians. I have a fact-loving brain. I think that’s well-established by now. Politics, it seems to me, celebrates the absence of facts rather than the existence of them. I cannot comprehend that. We’re going to elect a president in a little less than a year, and I expect facts to be so marginalized (I love the word “marginalized”) by then that we’ll have to rename our country the United States of Happy Horseshit.

I could say more about this, but I’m done now. I didn’t mean to go off on a political tangent. My point is, I don’t fight Sally about the wheelchair. I follow the rules.

Sheila Renfro has made me a paradise in the back bench seat of her old Suburban. I have a foam bedlike base to sit on and a big beanbag wedged into the corner, where the seat meets the door, so I can remain in a reclined position and ease the stress on my ribs. I have lots of blankets. It’s perfect.

From where I sit, I can see the back of Sheila Renfro’s head, and it’s very easy to talk with her, so I don’t feel left out of the action at all. The Suburban is really old—“It’s my daddy’s nineteen seventy-two model,” she tells me—and thus doesn’t even have a CD player, much less an adaptor that will play songs from my bitchin’ iPhone. As we work our way through Denver, Sheila Renfro sings along with Merle Haggard on an old-time country music station. Sheila Renfro seemingly has good taste in country music. She prefers the era before Garth Brooks ruined it.