Craig Lancaster - 600 Hours of Edward

The pictures I’ve selected span much of my life, but most of them are from the days when I was a young child and my father and I got along famously. As I thumb through the albums, I remove some of the ones I like best: my father and me on the Ferris wheel at the Montana State Fair, my mother and me standing outside a cave at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, my mother and father splashing around in a lake in Minnesota. I decide that these pictures and several others should not be closed up in an album but instead should be framed on a wall. As my walls are empty, I have plenty of room for such things.

In considering where the photos I’ve picked out would look best, I find myself wishing that I had taken pictures of that snowy day in front my house when Kyle was riding his Blue Blaster and Donna and I were throwing snowballs. Photographs, it seems to me, are both moments in time and bits of memory. I have the memory of that day with Donna and Kyle, but I also know that memory is imprecise. If I’d had a camera, instead of just a memory, I could have caught the moments so that they would never escape me. If Donna has decided that she no longer wants to be my friend, I’ll have to desperately hold on to those memories so that they never get away, because I won’t have the chance to replace them.

As the second hand hits 12:00 and another ten minutes have passed, I go back to the front window and look out. They are still nowhere to be seen.

Though I want nothing more than to leave this house and find my friends, I decide instead to quit looking. Staring out the window doesn’t violate the letter of what Dr. Buckley asked me to do in leaving Donna alone, but it does violate the spirit of it.

At 10:00, I start watching tonight’s episode of Dragnet . Though I broke with protocol yesterday and watched Dragnet earlier, at 7:04 p.m., I did it only to make the point that I wasn’t slavish (I love the word “slavish”) to the clock. I also watched a second episode, the sixteenth of the first season of color episodes, called “The Big Kids,” and that also was to prove a point. I wanted to show that I can watch my favorite show whenever I want and for however long I want.

But the truth is, I like watching Dragnet at 10:00 p.m. and only one episode. It works for me. Doing what you want and what feels right strikes me as being more important than doing something just to prove a point. I think Dr. Buckley would agree.

Tonight’s episode, the seventeenth and final installment of the first season of color episodes, is called “The Big Bullet,” and it’s one of my favorites.

In this episode, which originally aired on May 11, 1967, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon investigate a reported suicide at a woman’s house. She tells the officers that her estranged husband came by to visit, locked himself in a room, and killed himself with a gun.

But the clues don’t add up that way. It turns out that the slug pulled from the man’s body doesn’t match the gun he was holding. Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon return to the woman’s house and go through her vacuum cleaner filter, as she has already cleaned the room where her estranged husband died. In it, they find the shell casing for the bullet that killed him. They talk with the woman’s mother, who answered the door when the husband came by, and they come to find out that she shot him—because he shot her Bible.

The lesson, I think, is that we tend to be protective of the people and things we care about. It’s easy to understand why.

In lieu of writing a letter of complaint, which I’ve decided to swear off, I break down my filing cabinet and box up my green office folders full of letters. I am tempted to count the number of letters I have written, but I resist the urge. If I’m not going to write them anymore, the number doesn’t matter. I will box up the letter files and stack them up in the garage tomorrow. They can wait there for a while, until I decide what do with them. Perhaps I will eventually move them back into the house, unable to swear off writing the letters, after all. I hope that’s not the case, but I just don’t know. Anything along those lines is just conjecture, and I prefer facts. Facts are the most reliable things in the world. On that, Sergeant Joe Friday and I agree.

I am not sure where we are. It’s a flat, treeless, straight stretch of highway surrounded by fallow fields. We are in the Cadillac—I in the driver’s seat, my father riding shotgun.

“Rides nice, doesn’t she?” my father says, grinning at me from behind sunglasses.

“Real nice.”

“You know why, right?”

“Why?”

“Because you’re driving a goddamned Cadillac, that’s why!” He lets out a belly laugh.

“But where are we going?” I ask.

“Anywhere you want, Edward. But first, don’t you think you ought to go to…”

The grocery store. That’s what I’m thinking when my eyes flutter open at 7:38 a.m.

A man needs a good breakfast on a day like today, and I am a man, but I have no breakfast. Skipping the grocery store on Tuesday showed that I can be bold and impulsive, but it doesn’t help me today, when I am out of food. If not for the tuna sandwich my mother made me for lunch and my leftover pizza for dinner, I might have remembered to go yesterday. But I did not. That failure is my fault.

I pull on clothes in the dark of my bedroom and then hustle out the door. I can remember 7:38 a.m. After all, I have awoken at that time 229 times in 311 days this year (because it’s a leap year). If I couldn’t remember that, I would have to have my head examined, which I don’t want to do.

I can ensure that my data is complete when I get back home.

It is dark and cold this early in the morning. The late-fall sky is a deep gray, like a gun barrel, and I would guess that it won’t get much above freezing today. I would guess, but I don’t like to. Guesses are conjecture. I prefer facts.

Inside the Albertsons on Thirteenth Street W. and Grand Avenue, though, it’s light and airy, and I enjoy walking the aisles, picking up the groceries I need.

I have decided to try again with different kinds of food. I realize that changing my grocery list didn’t have anything to do with what happened to my father; it was a coincidence. I still would like to see if I can learn how to cook a steak, and so I buy a package of two New York strip steaks, in case my first attempt goes poorly.

I also get corn flakes, as per usual (I love the phrase “as per usual”), and the makings of spaghetti, which remains my favorite food even though I said I felt like I was in a rut. A lot has changed since I said that.

I do try some of the Lean Cuisine meals, but I think it’s OK to get a few Banquet dinners as well, because I like Banquet dinners. I make similar decisions on ice cream and pizza. I get the Dreyer’s vanilla and the DiGiorno pepperoni because I like them. It’s OK to get the things you like. It doesn’t mean that you’re slavish to convention.

I think Dr. Buckley would agree with me on that.

“Don’t think I’ve ever seen you in here this early.” The woman at the checkout stand is talking to me.

“What?”

“You’re early. Don’t you usually come in later in the day?”

“Yes. On Tuesdays. I didn’t this week, though.”

“Forgot?”

“No. I chose not to.”

“Yeah, going to the store can be a real pain sometimes.” She continues sweeping my items across the electronic price reader.