600 Hours of Edward

with people in them typing away on computers or looking down at paperwork. Along the wall to the left, on the north side of the building, are glass offices. In the middle of the big room beyond the glass wall is a small table in a small pit surrounded by what appear to be trees. I can’t tell if the trees are real, though. They look real; some of the leaves are withering. But I also know that manufacturers have gotten very good at making fake things look real. I will have to ask Mr. Withers about this.
    Beyond the trees is a room with glass windows on three sides, a big table, and lots of chairs. Important meetings probably go on in there. To the right are more cubicles and more glass offices along the south wall. The
Herald-Gleaner
is a very active, important-looking place.
    “Edward, my boy!” The booming voice of Mr. Withers comes at me from behind the glass. I would recognize it anywhere. He pushes open a door and tells me to come in.
    “How are you, Edward?” he asks, offering a handshake, which I accept.
    “I’m doing well.”
    “Excellent, excellent.”
    I have seen Mr. Withers only a few times since I graduated from Billings West High School twenty-one years ago. Back then, he was probably younger than I am now, perhaps around thirty-five or thirty-six years old. Now he’s in his mid-fifties, the reddish-brown hair that I remember gone fully gray. He’s a little heavier and a little more crinkly around the eyes, but the voice and the manner are the same.
    “Edward, again, I was so sorry to hear about your dad. He was a good man.”
    “Yes.”
    He claps me on the shoulder. “Well, my boy, come on upstairs with me. We have a lot to talk about.”
    – • –
    On the walk up the stairs, Mr. Withers is telling me about his job at the
Herald-Gleaner.
    “I’m the operations director,” he says. “That means, essentially, that I keep things running around here. That has to do with mechanical things, like the press, and the maintenance of the offices and the grounds. It’s a lot of responsibility. It’s a big place. I’ll show you more of it in a bit.”
    “Why did you leave Billings West?”
    “I’d been there thirty-three years. It was time. I had my full pension, and the principals and regulations were getting harder and harder to deal with. I felt like it was time for a change. You know that feeling, Edward?”
    “Yes.” I have been experiencing it a lot lately.
    “Anyway, here’s my office,” he says, ushering me into a small room that overlooks Fourth Avenue N., one of the busier streets in Billings. “Have a seat.”
    I sit down, and Mr. Withers settles in behind his desk.
    “The reason I wrote to you, Edward, is that I want you to come work for me.”
    I had not expected this, and so I can come up with only one word.
    “Why?”
    “I need someone like you. You’re good with your hands, and you can figure out anything mechanical. This place is forty years old. It needs a lot of maintenance. I figure you’re the guy who can help me.”
    “When?” I am simultaneously excited and scared. It has been a long time since I worked anywhere.
    “I’m thinking I’ll have you work what’s called the swing shift. It’s from the late afternoon until around midnight,” Mr. Withers says. Then, his voice gets a little lower and more serious. “Edward, I know about how you need to be left alone to do work. I know why. This job, you’ll be allowed to do that. You’ll report to me, but when you’re here, you’ll be working on tasks that I assign and that you’ll be able to do yourself. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
    “Yes.”
    “Good,” he says, reverting to his usual cheer. “What do you say we take a look around?”
    – • –
    Mr. Withers takes me all over the
Herald-Gleaner
and explains to me what each part of the building does.
    The north side of the building, he says, is where the advertising and marketing staffs work, selling ads for the newspaper and its website and working on promotions and such. He introduces me to a lot of people, and I can’t remember all of their names.
    On the south side of the building is the editorial staff—the reporters and editors and photographers who cover the news and make a newspaper every night. I expect a frenzy of activity, like you see in movies about newspapers, but it’s a quiet place at this time of day. A lot of people are on phones.
    It turns out that the indoor tree is real. Mr. Withers smiles when I ask about it