Edward Adrift

Limon.”
    “Looks like it.”
    I do the calculations in my head. “So that means I’ve driven 1,844.9 miles on this trip, not 1,846.1.”
    “If you say so.”
    “That’s clearly what the math indicates.”
    “What difference does it make?”
    This flummoxes me. “I don’t know. I like to track things.”
    “Are you going to include the miles we’ve gone today in your total?”
    “That’s a silly question, Sheila Renfro,” I say. “Of course I am.”
    “Do you know how far we’ve gone today?”
    “No, but I can look up the distance from St. Joseph Hospital to Cheyenne Wells, and I can account for this detour.”
    “Can you account for the different route I took through Denver?”
    I don’t like where this conversation is headed.
    “You took a different route?”
    “Yes. There was road construction and bad traffic, so I went a different way.”
    “Which way did you go?” This situation, while not ideal, is not irretrievable (I love the word “irretrievable”). I can still use the Internet to figure out the mileage.
    “I don’t remember.”
    This situation has become irretrievable.
    “Shit,” I say.
    “It’s no big deal, Edward. Also, don’t cuss around me.”

    I try to stay miffed at Sheila Renfro, but it’s not possible. I like her too much. I remember how much she has done and is doing forme, taking care of me at the hospital and now bringing me back to Cheyenne Wells so I can recuperate.
    “Sheila Renfro,” I ask, “what did—”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Say what?”
    “Sheila Renfro. You say my first and last name every time you talk to me.”
    “I don’t know.”
    “It’s weird.”
    “No, it isn’t.”
    “It’s a little weird.”
    “What do you want me to call you?”
    “Just Sheila. Or you could call me ‘She-Pumpkin,’ which is what my daddy used to call me.”
    “I don’t think I could call you that.”
    “I know, silly. I was making a joke.”
    Sheila Renfro is pretty funny sometimes.
    “She-ster?” I say.
    “What was that? A nickname?”
    “I thought I’d try it.”
    “Don’t. Nicknames should come naturally. It sounds like you’re trying.”
    I’m growing flummoxed and frustrated.
    “OK, can I just ask you the question I’ve been trying to ask?”
    “Sure, E-Dog.”
    “E-Dog?”
    “Yes, that’s your nickname.”
    “It sounds like you’re the one trying now.”
    “I’m not trying at all. It came perfectly naturally.”
    “I don’t like it.”
    “OK, how about Eddie Smoochiekins?”
    “E-Dog is fine, I think.”
    Sheila Renfro laughs and bobs her head left and right.
    She’s having a good time.
    Here’s a secret: I’m having a good time, too.

    We pass through the town of Kit Carson and Sheila Renfro says, “We’re close now. Twenty-five miles.”
    I like the countryside here. It’s stark and hard, not the lush and mountainous beauty that one tends to associate with Colorado. In that way, it reminds me of the part of Montana I’m from.
    I remember being in the eastern Montana town of Terry with my father when I was a teenager and him pointing out the buttes in the distance, which he called “badlands.” He said that whole part of Montana was homesteaded and that a lot of people couldn’t make a go of it, because the weather and the terrain were so unforgiving. He said we should admire the people who still lived there, because they had beaten the odds and the land and whittled a life into that bleak landscape. My father was big on defeating things, be they political opponents or systems or landscapes. It was all a competition for him.
    I haven’t read up on the history of homesteading in this part of Colorado, but I bet that the people who have made this area home would draw my father’s admiration for their tenacity (I love the word “tenacity”). Maybe that’s why he enjoyed working here. Maybe that’s why he’s been in my dreams, urging me to come here.
    I must be careful. That’s a lot of maybes and projections, and those are unreliable things, as I know all too well.

    Sheila Renfro slows down and eases her Suburban to the shoulder of the road. We’re on a flat, straight stretch of the highway, with fallow farmland on both sides of us.
    “How are you feeling, E-Dog?” she says. “Can you get up and walk a little bit?”
    “Here?”
    “I want to show you something.”
    “OK, S-Money.”
    “Another nickname?”
    “Yes.”
    “I like that one.”
    I put my hands on the bench seat and push myself to