Craig Lancaster - 600 Hours of Edward

“How long did your father live?” she asks.

I punch up the rough numbers: 24 x 365 x 64 = 560,640.

I tell her the answer.

“And how long have you lived already?”

That’s easy. I know that, as of today, I am thirty-nine years and 300 days old.

I punch up the numbers: 24 x 365 x 39 = 341,640 + (24 x 300) = 348,840.

Holy shit!

I tell Dr. Buckley the answer.

“So I ask you again: What are you waiting for?”

Tonight’s episode of Dragnet , which I start at just after seven—7:04—is the fifteenth episode of the first season, and it’s called “The Big Gun.” It’s one of my favorites.

In this episode, which originally aired on April 27, 1967, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon investigate the senseless shooting of a beautiful young Japanese woman. They find out that her husband had been killed in Vietnam several months earlier and that she has a young daughter, Miko, who apparently is somewhere in Japanese Town with her grandmother.

The shooting gets to Sergeant Joe Friday in a personal way, something that doesn’t happen often. Maybe he’s angry at all of the gun violence in Los Angeles. Maybe he’s shocked that anyone could murder such a pretty, petite woman. Sergeant Joe Friday just wants the facts, but he’s also human.

Eventually, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon zero in on a creepy man named Ben Roy Yoder, who lives with his highly religious aunt. When the police come to serve a search warrant at her house, the aunt castigates them, saying that they would go rooting around in a holy temple.

And Sergeant Joe Friday says that he would if he thought he would find a murder gun there. That’s very logical.

I’m watching Dragnet almost three hours early and might even watch another episode, if I feel like it. I’m also munching on thin-crust pepperoni pizza from Pizza Hut. I didn’t go to the grocery store today. I decided I didn’t have to. Maybe I’ll go tomorrow. Or maybe not.

I’ll do whatever I feel like doing. You live only once.

Tonight’s letter continues a recent theme. It’s not a complaint.

I have written letters of complaint to Dr. Buckley before, especially early in our working together, when what she said to me didn’t make much sense and before my dosage of fluoxetine balanced out and calmed me down a little bit. There were times that I wrote very angry letters to Dr. Buckley—seventeen such times, it turns out, as I retrieve the file with her name.

I am glad she never saw them. I wouldn’t want Dr. Buckley’s feelings to be hurt.

Dr. Buckley:

I want to thank you for my session today. I think it is one of the best ones we have ever had. You helped me to see things much more clearly where my father and Donna Middleton are concerned. You are a very wise and logical woman.

I understand what you said about Donna, and I will give her the space she needs. I do hope you’re wrong, though. I would be very sad if Donna Middleton were no longer my friend.

I am looking forward to talking again next week. Thank you for all you have done to help me.

I have been thinking that perhaps I do have some rituals that aren’t worth the time I invest in them. I don’t think I could give up my tracking of the weather—you can learn a lot about the tendencies of a place by its weather patterns, and I take some enjoyment in seeing how often the forecasts are wrong. But perhaps I could stop counting the number of days that I have been without my father, especially considering that it’s a recent addition to my data sheets. Plus, if I look at it the way Dr. Buckley suggested, I am not really without him. He is with me, in my thoughts and my memories. This is outside the boundaries of the strictly factual world I prefer to live in, but I think I would like to see if I can make it work.

I am thinking of these things at 8:17 a.m., thirty-nine minutes after I awoke. If you’re challenged by math, that would be at 7:38 a.m., the 228th time out of 310 days this year (because it’s a leap year) that I have gotten up at that time. It is also the third consecutive day that I have emerged from sleep at this most common of waking times, and I take that to mean that I am getting back to my normal patterns. I am relieved by this. I have been discombobulated for too long. (I love the word “discombobulated.”)

A few minutes ago, I peeked through the front-window curtains and watched Donna Middleton load Kyle and his backpack into the car—for the ride to school, I presume. It was hard to stifle the urge to go outside and see if I could get Donna’s attention in the hope that she would talk to me, but I remembered what Dr. Buckley said. Donna Middleton needs time and space. And though I have only 280,000 or so hours of life remaining—assuming that I live a life of average length, and I don’t like assumptions—I am willing to spend some of them letting Donna Middleton decide what to do.

Now I am sitting at the dining room table for another of my nonnegotiable rituals: I am eating my corn flakes and reading this morning’s edition of the Billings Herald-Gleaner. I see by the big headline on the front page of the newspaper that Barack Obama won. The headline says, in all capital letters, “OBAMA’S TIME.” I am not impressed by that headline; it sounds like a beer commercial. I have half a mind to write a letter of complaint to the newspaper editor, but then I think again and realize that another of my rituals has run its course. I think I am going to see if I can get out of the unsent-letter-of-complaint business and try just dealing with the frustrations as they come. If they require complaint, I’ll complain. If I can let them go, I will try to let them go, even though I know that will be difficult. A bad headline in the Billings Herald-Gleaner , while irritating, is the sort of thing I need to try to let go.

The newspaper also has a story about my father’s now-empty seat on the county commission. He died so close to the election that there wasn’t time to line up candidates for the job and put them on the ballot, so the county leaders have decided to have a special election in January to fill the spot. The Billings mayor, Kevin Hammel, says he is going to run for the position. As he has just been roundly beaten for the position of state schools superintendent—another story in this morning’s Herald-Gleaner —he should have the time. I don’t like his chances of winning, although that is merely an informed opinion and not a fact. I prefer facts.

I also see that my old boss in the court of clerk’s office lost her race. I bet that Lloyd Graeve and the rest of the people who work there are celebrating this morning.

I glance at all the news I want to read and check out other parts of the Billings Herald-Gleaner —especially Dear Abby, who answers a letter from a fifty-nine-year-old man whose eyes are so bad that he can’t see his girlfriend when they’re having intimate relations. A good headline for that Dear Abby column would be “Love Is Blind,” but of course the Billings Herald-Gleaner didn’t do that. They have terrible headline writers at that newspaper. But I will let it go.

By the time I’m done reading, it’s 9:05 and I have to hustle or I’ll be late to my parents’—my mother’s—house.

The living room of my mother’s house is uncharacteristically cluttered today. She has been bringing down armfuls of my father’s clothing and sorting it into piles.

“What’s this, Mother?” I ask after she lets me in the front door.

“I’m giving your father’s clothes to charity. Go through them and take anything you want.”