Edward Adrift

possible.
    I would want to tell my father this, but I also would want him to know that I am hanging in there. My father admired people who hung in there. Troy Aikman was his favorite football player ever because he seemed to be fearless, even when other teams were hurting him bad. I am not fearless. I cannot even pretend to be. But I am hanging in there. I’m trying to make sense of things. I think that’s why I’m on this trip. Yes, Kyle is in trouble, and I want to help him if I can. Yes, I want to see Donna and Victor again. But maybe I want something for me, too, such as not feeling so adrift. That seems selfish, but I think it’s OK. I think my father would think it’s OK, too.
    I’m glad I could think about this, even if it did interrupt my sleep.

OFFICIALLY SUNDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2011
    From the logbook of Edward Stanton:
    Time I woke up today: 2:37 a.m. to deal with the dream about my father. 7:38 a.m. for good. The 208th time all year I’ve been awake at this time.
    High temperature for Saturday, December 10, 2011, Day 344: 43 (according to the Butte newspaper)
    Low temperature for Saturday, December 10, 2011: 27
    Precipitation for Saturday, December 10, 2011: 0.00 inches
    Precipitation for 2011: 19.40 inches
    New entries:
    Exercise for Saturday, December 10, 2011: 47-minute brisk walk after dinner.
    Miles driven Saturday, December 10, 2011: 223.4
    Addendum: While I had a bowl of oatmeal this morning at the complimentary continental breakfast—where I consumed all of my medicine—I thought a lot about the dream I had early this morning and my fear about where my life is headed. There is nothing I can do to magically make the fear go away. There is no such thing as magic. Maybe the fear means something. Maybe it is guidingme toward something. This is all more touchy-feely than I prefer to be, but perhaps I will stress out about it less if I believe I’m headed toward something new and important. I have nothing against belief, although I will concede that it is not nearly as good as fact.
    I’ve also thought a lot about being punched by the intemperate young man in Bozeman. I’m going to try not to stress out about that, either.
    I have a long purplish-blue streak that runs vertically along the right side of my nose, and the fleshy area under my right eye is turning black. What a whipdick that intemperate young man is.

    Before I leave, I do something smart—I wait for an hour after I’ve taken my medicine before loading up the car and leaving Butte. In that time, I pee twice, which should mitigate (I love the word “mitigate”) my having to pee while in transit. I still manage to gas up and be on the road by 10:02 a.m. My fill-up requires 10.023 gallons of unleaded gasoline at $3.1499 a gallon, for a total of $31.57. By my figures, I got 22.3 miles per gallon yesterday. My projections were way off, and that disappoints me. There is just no way to fully anticipate your costs when you’re at the mercy of oil companies.
    It’s a cold, clear morning. The external thermostat on my Cadillac DTS, which displays on the control panel inside, says it’s twelve degrees outside. The external thermostat on this car is not as reliable as the official temperature-gauging machinery used by the National Weather Service, but it is sufficient for my driving needs.

    As I pass a weigh station, where the transportation department checks the paperwork and cargo size of large trucks and other commercial vehicles, I remember sometimes being with my father when he would take long drives like the one I am on. He hated weigh stations. His hostility didn’t come from direct personal experience. Only once did I ever see my father driving a large truck, and that was in November 1974, when he bought an International Paystar 500 in Denver and drove it to Midland, Texas, so it could be outfitted with a drilling rig. My mother sent me along with him on that trip. I was five years old. Their marriage was in trouble, although I didn’t know that at the time. I don’t recall that we had any difficulty with weigh stations on that trip. I’d remember it if it had happened.
    Anyway, my father hated weigh stations. Every time we would pass one, he would say something like “money-grubbing assholes” or “two-bit quasi-cops.” I asked him one time why he hated weigh stations so much, and he said the people in them liked to give a hard time to the drilling crews he supervised. He told me about this one time when a driller