As for Kyle, I met him on October 15, 2008, and so I’ve known him for 1,148 days of the 4,684 days he’s been alive. (That means Kyle was born on February 9, 1999, making him twelve years, nine months, and twenty-nine days old.) I’ve known Kyle for more than 24 percent of his life. That means I’m invested, and that’s why it hurts that I don’t see him every day. He’s been gone from here for 187 days, and that’s 187 days of getting smarter, growing taller, and becoming closer to a man. I used to measure Kyle’s height once a month along the side of my little garage, because I could plainly see that he was growing fast, but what my eyeballs told me was no match for solid data. The data is still there on the garage, written in blue ballpoint pen for anyone who wants to see it, but the last measurement happened on June 1 of this year. Between March 1, 2009, when we took the first measurement, and June 1, 2011, when we took the last, Kyle went from 4 feet 10 ⅜ inches tall to 5 feet 6 7⁄16 inches tall—taller than his mom. It’s a shame I can’t tell you how tall he is now. I’ll never paint that garage again, so I at least have the measurements we took to remember that he was here.
I’ve tried to blame Victor for my friends being gone, because if Donna hadn’t met Victor, she wouldn’t have married him and there would have been no railroad job in Boise to take them away from here. The problem with blaming Victor is that it forces me to assume that nothing else would have changed, and I’m not comfortable assuming anything. That Dr. Buckley retired and I lost my job go to show that a lot has changed, not just the presence of Victor and his job in Boise. I prefer facts, and while it is a fact that Victor’s job led my friends away from me, it’s also a fact that Donna and Kyle love him and want to be with him and are happy they found him, and I think that should be given at least as much consideration as anything else. And even though I’m unhappy that my friends are gone, I like Victor too much to blame him. Donna and I were already good friends when he came along, and he tried hard to be my friend, too, which isn’t always easy. He even asked me to serve as a witness when he married Donna at the courthouse, which was nice of him to do.
All this thinking about my friends moving away inspires another thought. If Donna and Victor are willing to send Kyle here for a few days, I’ll have time to spend with him before I have to fly to Texas. We can watch football games, go for walks, build things in my basement workroom. I will ask him about his troubles at school. I will tell him about the shitburger year I’ve been having. We’ll go outside and get a new measurement of his height on the garage, something that we badly need. It could be a good thing for both of us, and I remember that Dr. Buckley once said that “mutually agreeable” outcomes are the best kind. She’s a very logical woman.
I mop the floor, and I’m happy about this idea I have. When I’m done, I’ll call Donna back and tell her what I’m thinking, and then I’ll hope that she and Victor are amenable (I love the word “amenable”) to this course of action.
Happily, I dip the mop, like I’m Fred Astaire and it’s Ginger Rogers.
I’m pretty funny sometimes.
I’ve finished in the kitchen, taken the wheelbarrow back into the garage (Scott Shamwell left it outside, just like he said he would), had a shower, put on my good clothes, and had my breakfast of oatmeal—along with my fluoxetine and new diabetes drugs—when the phone rings.
“Hello?”
A voice I know instantly comes back at me.
“Edward, it’s Nathan Withers.”
This is incredible. The mailman hasn’t even picked up my letter and already it’s gotten results.
“Hello.”
I hear him clearing his throat.
“Edward, my boy, I’ve always shot straight with you, haven’t I?”
I’ve never seen Mr. Withers use a gun, but I recognize this idiom.
“Yes.”
“I intend to keep doing so,” he says. “I heard you were here last night, trying to fix those steps on the south side of the building.”
“Yes.”
“You can’t do that. I don’t want to hear about you being here again. Am I clear?”
I want to cry. “Yes.”
“Now, listen,” he says, more softly than when he told me never to visit the Herald-Gleaner again. “I know it’s hard. My boy, I would have never let you go if I’d had any other choice. Now, I’m not supposed to tell you that, but again, I’m shooting straight with you. Working here is something you’re going to have to let go. It’s hard, and you did good work, and you don’t deserve what happened to you. Have you ever heard the phrase ‘deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it’?”
“Yes. Clint Eastwood said that in Unforgiven.”
“That’s right. You’re a talented man and a good worker, and somebody will appreciate that and give you a job, if you want one. But it won’t be here. If you need a recommendation, I will write you one. If you want to have lunch sometime, I’ll buy it. But you’re not getting your job back. Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“OK. Edward, have a good Christmas. Life is so much more than where you work. Find something you want to do, something that belongs to you and nobody can take away, and do that happily for the rest of your life. I know you can.”
“I will try.”
“That’s good. Take care.”
Mr. Withers hangs up.
I want to go back to bed.
Unfortunately, I have to pee first.
It’s 1:57 p.m. when I wake up for good. I woke up thirty-three minutes earlier and an hour and twelve minutes earlier to pee. While I have no statistical data to back this up, I can say with near-certainty that I’ve never peed this much in my life.
The reason I woke up for good is an idea. It’s one of the best ideas I’ve ever had. Again, tracking my number of ideas and their respective qualities is not something I ordinarily do, so I’m making this statement not based on empirical fact but on gut feeling. I don’t imagine that I’ll ever completely warm up to gut feelings, given their intrinsic (I love the word “intrinsic”) lack of reliability, but in recent years I’ve learned to accept that I have them.
Now that Mr. Withers has stated without equivocation (I love the word “equivocation”) that I will not be going back to work at the Billings Herald-Gleaner, I am not bound to be in this house or in Billings. Furthermore, as my lawyer, Jay L. Lamb, has made clear, I’m fucking loaded. I have never really thought of it that way, but I remember that was Scott Shamwell’s reaction when I told him how much money my father left me when he died. “Bro,” he said, “you’re fucking loaded. Why are you working here?” He meant it as a rhetorical question, but in time, Mr. Withers answered it for him by involuntarily separating me.
But back to my current situation. The world is my oyster, as the saying goes, and a stupid saying it is. Kyle doesn’t need to come here. I will go to him. I am not due anywhere for eleven days, when I’m scheduled to fly to Texas to see my mother. I have plenty of time.