Edward Adrift

dream.
    In it my father was alive. I frequently have dreams in which my father is alive and with me. Usually, he is showing me how to do something or telling me something he thinks I ought to know. I never dreamed about my father while he was alive. At least, I don’t remember doing so. I’ve dreamt about him often in the three years, one month, and eleven days since he died. It’s odd, but it’s also comforting, so I do not complain.
    This dream was strange in that what happened in it also happened in real life, many years ago. I was with my father in a bar in a little town called Cheyenne Wells, Colorado. I was nine years old. I remember that because the Dallas Cowboys had beaten the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XII earlier that year. A few months later, after school was finished, my mother let me go with my father to Cheyenne Wells, where he was going to overseesome work on the oil pumps that the company he worked for owned there. That’s how we ended up at the bar.
    We were sitting on stools. My father was on my left, engaged in an earnest bullshit session with the bartender, and on my right was this old man with long, white whiskers. He had his hands clenched together, and he kept bringing them to his face and peering into them with one eye.
    This sparked my curiosity.
    “What do you have in there?” I asked him.
    “It’s a mouse. Would you like to see it?”
    I didn’t believe him. A mouse could not fit into the small space between his clenched hands. Even if it could, it would probably try to bite the man. I thought he was playing games with me.
    “No, I don’t want to see your mouse.”
    I don’t remember everything—I can’t even guess when the last time was that I thought about this—but I do know this went on for some time, with the old man looking into his hands and inviting me to take a look. I declined every time.
    At some point, I got up to go to the bathroom and pee—because I was a young boy with a small bladder, not because I was medicated like I am now. When I emerged from the bathroom, the old man was waiting for me, and he grabbed me by the wrist and tried to hurt me.
    I screamed for my father, and he got there in what seemed like a millisecond, although I know that’s impossible. He grabbed the old man’s hand and my wrist and yanked them apart, and then he threw an elbow into the old man’s chest, knocking him to the floor.
    “Get the hell out of here,” my father said, and the old man did.
    After the old man scrambled away, my father turned to me. He looked concerned. “Teddy, are you all right?”
    I nodded. I couldn’t say anything.
    My father held out his hand.
    “Come on, Son.”
    He led me back to the bar and told the bartender to set me up with a fresh root beer.

    I have to be honest about my father. He was an inscrutable man sometimes. We got along great when I was a young boy, but in later years, especially when I was a teenager and even older, we fought a lot. There were times when he was cruel to me, like when he directed Jay L. Lamb to write me nasty letters upbraiding (I love the word “upbraiding”) me for what he perceived to be my failures.
    When he died, which was quite sudden and unexpected, we had not resolved many of our disagreements, and that left me regretful.
    Dr. Buckley said that as I adjusted to my father’s death, the good memories would replace the bad and perhaps I could have a relationship with him in death that I could not manage while he was alive. This has been true for the most part, but not entirely. The truth is, I alternate between happy memories, ones where it almost seems as if he’s by my side, and regretful ones, where we’re still fighting and still finding it impossible to understand each other. The one constant, regardless of memory, is that I wish he were here for real. As I lie on my back in bed, staring into the dark, the blanket pulled up around me, I think that I have never wanted him here more than I do right now.
    If my father had been with me yesterday, he would have protected me from the intemperate young man in Bozeman. If hewere here right now, he might be able to tell me why I am suddenly so scared of figuring out how my life is supposed to go. I don’t know anymore. I used to have a job and friends whom I saw every day, or nearly so. I used to have routines and things I could rely on. I don’t have many of those things anymore. I don’t know how to replace what I’ve lost. I don’t know if it’s even