Craig Lancaster - 600 Hours of Edward

G. D. Spradlin is one of the more recognizable actors on Dragnet , and he went on to be a character actor in many shows and movies over the years. He has a very distinctive face: It’s kind of round, and he has crinkled eyes and a perpetually pursed mouth—the kind of mouth that “looks like a chicken’s asshole,” as my Grandpa Sid used to say. He has a raspy Southern accent, the kind that Grandpa Sid had, too. If you ever saw the movie One on One , starring Robby Benson as a basketball star, then you know who G. D. Spradlin is. He played the coach, and his mouth looked like a chicken’s asshole for most of that film.

I would have liked to write to G. D. Spradlin about his experiences on Dragnet , but he was well known enough that I never found out his address. I looked him up on the Internet a couple of years ago, and he seemed to still be alive, although he hasn’t worked in a long time. He would be old now—eighty-eight, according to the Internet.

That’s how old Grandpa Sid would be, too, if he were still alive.

Time flummoxes me.

I’m awake at 7:38 a.m., the 223rd time out of 294 days this year (because it’s a leap year). While I seem to be tacking back to normal, if in fact normal can be defined, I don’t feel normal at all. I don’t want to leave my bed. Michael Stipe’s headache gray is settling over me, the residue of my late-to-bed-early-to-rise act yesterday.

I drift away.

I’m not a part of the scene I’m witnessing. Joy, my online paramour (I love the word “paramour”) from Broadview, is standing in a parking lot that is filled not with cars and pickups and SUVs but with a throng of people who stand around her.

Joy is holding a huge controller in her hands, something that looks like a TV remote, only much larger. It has buttons and a joystick. She holds it over her head, and the crowd behind her cheers. The gathered people then start chanting: “Show it! Show it! Show it! Show it!”

Joy turns away from the crowd, lowers the giant remote control, and starts punching buttons. Above her and the crowd, pressed flat against the side of a building, a giant plasma TV screen flickers awake. And there I am, ten times as big as life, sitting at my computer desk. I am naked. Worse than that, if anything could be worse than that, I am cooing as I type on my computer: “Oh, Joy. You are my little chickadee. You are my sweetie.”

In unison, the crowd belts out a thunderous laugh, and Joy turns around, a smile drawn across her face, her dimples carving holes in her cheeks, her eyes alight.

The crowd turns around, too, and they’re all pointing and laughing.

I look down and I am no longer on the plasma screen but in the parking lot, naked.

I look up in horror, and Donna Middleton is in the middle of the front row of hecklers, laughing at me.

I’m awake again at 10:26. My data is all fouled up, of course. I’m entering uncharted territory here, and so I improvise. I reach over, grab my notebook and a pen, and record two times:

First awakening: 7:38.

Second awakening: 10:26.

I don’t feel rested or happy.

After recording my weather data—a high of fifty-five yesterday, a low of thirty-four, a forecasted high of fifty-seven today (I’ll know for sure tomorrow)—and consuming a bowl of corn flakes and eighty milligrams of fluoxetine, I am ready for the day.

I must give the ten-day forecast its proper due: It has been on the money, allowing me to take another run at painting the garage, which is long overdue. That horrid mocha chino has been on it for three days now, and I will not countenance (I love the word “countenance”) another day of the garage’s being a neighborhood eyesore. If I hustle, I can overcome the time I have lost to extra sleep and bad dreams.

To do so, I resolve to not check Montana Personal Connect until this evening, after I’m done. I’m anxious about Joy’s reply—and, I have to admit, freaked out (I love the phrase “freaked out”) now that she has invaded my dreams, although I know logically that there are no giant TV remotes, no plasma screens on buildings in Billings, and that I never, under any circumstances, type on my computer when I am naked. There is some explanation for these dreams, and I will look to Dr. Buckley to provide it.

I have read that everyone dreams, and that even animals dream. There is a whole field of study, called oneirology, that is dedicated to examining dreams. The statistical probability that, before the past few days, I did not dream is beyond remote. But I do not remember dreams before the past few days; the ones lately I cannot seem to forget.

One of my favorite R.E.M. songs is called “I Don’t Sleep, I Dream.” It contains words about dreams that an oneirologist would probably find fascinating. I’m not sure what it’s all about. Michael Stipe uses words in fascinating and strange combinations. I don’t know, for instance, why he says “hip hip hooray” in that song or what a cup of coffee has to do with anything. I think not knowing is probably part of the point for someone like Michael Stipe. I do know that Michael Stipe sang a lot more about sex on that album Monster than he did before or since. It wasn’t until today, the 294th day of 2008 (because it’s a leap year), fourteen years after that album came out, that I realized the title of this song could now be about me.

By 2:00 p.m., I have made good progress on the garage. The bronze green is covering up the mocha chino, and I like this color a lot better. It’s the best of the three. I think I will be able to stick with this, at least until the year after next, when it will be time to paint the garage again.

I take a break from painting before I get to the garage door. I open the garage and look at The Big Project, gleaming in freshly painted glory. I dab at the body of it with my left forefinger, testing the paint and lacquer. It seems to be dry. I think it’s ready.

I roll it into the front yard.

Kyle is a predictable boy, at least in terms of coming and going. I’m working the same corner of the garage eave, at the same time, when I hear his voice. This reliability is comforting to me.

“Whoa! What’s that?”

I climb down off the ladder, grinning. “You don’t know?”

“No. It looks awesome! What is it?”

“It’s for you.”

“Really? But what is it?”

I start telling Kyle a story. When I was a little younger than him, for Christmas 1977, my parents got me something called a “Green Machine.” They tried to tell me that it had come from Santa Claus, but the idea of Santa Claus never seemed logical to me, and by then I knew the truth. By then, I was tolerating their pretending that a fat man in a red suit could live in a place as inhospitable as the North Pole and deliver toys to kids all over the world in one night. The whole notion is preposterous.

I leave out the fallacy of Santa Claus in telling my story to Kyle, though. It’s not my place to tell him such a thing. He’s a smart boy. He probably already knows that it’s not true.

I tell him about the Green Machine. I say it was the greatest Christmas gift I ever received.

It was like a Big Wheel in that it had a big wheel up front, but it was unlike a Big Wheel in every other way. You didn’t steer the big wheel. You had two levers that controlled the rear axle, which would swivel the smaller back wheels. You would sit recumbent style, pedaling the big front wheel, swiveling the back wheels and tearing around all over the place.