Edward Adrift

trespassing.”
    My father warned me never to trespass. There was nothing he hated in the world more than disrespect of private-property rights. If you got him talking about those or the shenanigans of Democrats, he would get very angry. However, if you got him talking about tax cuts or Ronald Reagan, he would get very happy. To be honest, none of those subjects interests me very much.
    Kyle spreads his arms wide and says, “Dude, there’s nobody for miles. Let’s go take a look.”
    “Kyle, no.”
    Kyle is not listening to me. He shimmies (I love the word “shimmies”) under the barbed-wire fence while I say “No, no, no, no, no,” and he takes off running across the field, his feet kicking up dust as he goes.
    I am too large to shimmy under the fence. I grab a fencepost with my right hand and put my left foot on the bottom strand of barbed wire. The strand goes all the way to the ground as I put my weight on it. I look for Kyle, and he’s now just a dot on the horizon, yards and yards away from me.
    Slowly, I straddle the barbed wire, bringing my right leg over to the other side. I am in a precarious (I love the word “precarious”) position now. My balls are hanging directly over the barbedwire. As I find the ground with my right foot, I start bringing my left foot over, and that’s when it happens. I let go of the top strand of barbed wire too fast, and it springs upward, gouging me in my left hamstring. It tears my pants and cuts into my leg, and I fall down on the other side of the fence.
    I pick myself up and dust off, and as I limp toward the oil pump, I see that Kyle has climbed up the back of it.
    “Kyle, get down!” I scream. He can’t hear me or doesn’t want to hear me. The wind is blowing, and it’s as if my words get scattered away from where I’m aiming them.
    “Kyle, get off that right now!” I scream again, and this time I know he hears me, because I’m close enough to see his face.
    He waves at me. “I’m a cowboy, Edward, and I’m riding the biggest horse there is!”
    “Get down!”
    “Make me!”
    I am flummoxed. I’m not going to climb on the back of the pump to chase him; that is just asking for trouble and maybe even tragedy. I can’t call his mother, because I left the bitchin’ iPhone way back at the car. I can’t get anyone to help me, because no one else is here.
    I’m feeling helpless. I run several steps toward the oil pump and then I stop, because I have no idea what I’ll do once I’m there.
    “Get down,” I yell again.
    “No.”
    I pace back and forth and I run my hands through my hair and I get more and more frustrated. I want to scream.
    “Kyle Middleton, you little fucking shitball, you get down off that right now! You’re pretty high and far out, aren’t you? Well, fuck you and the horse you’re riding on.”
    Holy shit!
    Kyle’s face appears to lose all color. He climbs down off the back of the oil pump and walks over to me. He doesn’t say anything. I’m breathing hard. I try to speak.
    “I—”
    “Wow, Edward.”
    “I—”
    “‘Little fucking shitball’?”
    “I—”
    “Wow.”
    “I—I don’t know where that came from. I’m sorry,” I say.
    “Don’t be sorry. That was cool.”
    “No, it wasn’t. Also, Kyle, you shouldn’t say ‘fucking’ or ‘shitball.’ I know I did just now, again, but it’s not nice to say things like that.”
    “I know.”
    “I’m sorry again, Kyle.”
    “I’m sorry, too. What happened to your pants?” He points at the hole on the backside of my legs.
    “That dumb fence,” I say.
    “It tore your pants up pretty good.”
    “I know, Kyle. It hurts, too. I’m lucky I didn’t snag my balls.”
    We’re making our way to the Cadillac DTS slowly, because I’m limping. I look to the sky now and I can see what the motel owner—why do I not know her name?—warned us about. It’s not the bright blue it was this morning; instead, it’s that gray color that forebodes (I love the word “forebodes”) a storm. I think about R.E.M. and the song that was playing as we drove out of Cheyenne Wells, the one where Michael Stipe sings about a sky that looks like a Man Ray painting.
    I also think about the awful thing I said to Kyle and where it must have come from. Actually, I know where it came from. When I called him a “little fucking shitball,” that came fromScott Shamwell the pressman. He usually said that about Elliott Overbay, the copy desk chief, but never when Elliott Overbay