Edward Adrift

December 19, 2011: None.
    Addendum: It’s strange how just the passage of a few hours can change things so profoundly. When I retired to my room last night, it was with the full expectation that I would be going to Denver today to pick up my new Cadillac DTS and begin the drive back to Billings, Montana. Now, because of the meth bust in Sheila Renfro’s motel, I am going to be staying at least another day. Sheila Renfro said she thinks we can leave tomorrow. To be honest, that makes me happy and sad at the same time. I’ve been gone from Billings, Montana, for more than a week, and that’s the longest I’ve ever been away as an adult. But I also want to enjoy my remaining time with Sheila Renfro.
    After I shower and change clothes, I see Sheila Renfro for the first time today. She is laundering bed linens. Ed Piewicz has checked out, she says, and of course the cops ended the stay of her other two guests. She says there are no reservations for today.
    “Do you want to take a walk?” she says.
    “Yes.”
    “Let me get this last load into the wash and we’ll go.”

    Before we leave, Sheila Renfro checks in with the sheriff in room number six and makes sure he doesn’t need her. He asks her to bring him back a cup “of that good coffee from the Kwik Korner and not this instant swill you serve here.”
    This makes Sheila Renfro super-mad, as well she should be, I think.
    “You listen to me, Pete. You’re lucky I don’t bill the county for all the coffee and food you and your men have been drinking and eating. You’re a lot more solvent than I am, that’s for sure. If you want a different kind of coffee, you can go get it yourself.”
    The sheriff holds up his hands in a surrender pose.
    “All right, all right. Jesus.”
    “And don’t you cuss around me.”
    She turns and walks toward the door in short, choppy steps, and I notice that she walks exactly the same way that Donna does when she’s mad. I like this.
    In the parking lot, I put a hand on her shoulder to slow her down. With my achy ribs and recovering lung, I cannot keep up.
    “You really told him,” I say.
    “That paternal son of a…doo-doo head!”
    The last syllable emerges from Sheila Renfro in a squeak, and I begin to laugh but throw my hand over my mouth. I don’t want to join Sheriff Pete on Sheila Renfro’s bad side.
    “Come on,” she says. “Let’s go for a walk.”
    We take much the same route we followed the day before, past the lumberyard and across the brown courthouse lawn, which is mottled with bits of snow that hasn’t melted in the past couple of days.
    “How is your endurance?” Sheila Renfro asks.
    “Good.”
    “Want to go farther?”
    “Yes.”
    We leave the business district and head into the residential streets, and I see Cheyenne Wells as I’ve never seen it before, not even when I was here as a little boy in 1978. Most of the houses sit on generous lots, as if the original builders figured that, yes, they were part of a town but there was no reason to be too close to one’s neighbors. That’s an ethic I can appreciate.
    The houses are not much different from the ones on my street. Most of them are wooden, built in a bungalow style. Yards are a patchwork of well-tended lawns and weed farms. The overwhelming characteristic of Cheyenne Wells, in my memories and in my vision now, is the sky. Nothing intrudes on it. This terrain is flat in all directions.
    Sheila Renfro points at a small, tidy, brown stucco house on Fourth Street.
    “My parents lived there while the motel was being built,” she says.
    “It’s nice.”
    “Yeah. I like to walk past it and think of what their life must have been like at that time, before I came along. They never talked much about those days, so it’s left to my imagination.”
    Up ahead, on the corner, she points out Cheyenne Wells High School, her alma mater. She says she doesn’t have much school spirit, and I understand completely. I went to Billings West High School, and aside from Mr. Withers, who was my wood shop teacher there before he became my boss at the newspaper years later, I didn’t have any friends.
    “We had a fifteen-year reunion a couple of years ago. Some of the people who moved away came back and stayed in my motel and had parties. It took me a week to clean it all up,” she says.
    “People can be really rude,” I say.
    “Amen to that. Well, come on, Edward. Let’s head back.”
    She offers her hand for me to hold.
    “Just as friends,”