Edward Adrift

PRAISE FOR CRAIG LANCASTER
    FOR
EDWARD ADRIFT
    “Craig Lancaster is a perfect novelist. Not only do his characters and stories seep into your heart with incredible longevity, but he manages to get them there in an unfussy, pure manner. He’s that skilled of a writer. It’s hard to know who I adore more: Lancaster’s character Edward Stanton or Lancaster himself for creating him. It’s rare that I get so attached and invested in a fictional person, but I find that I think about Edward quite often. It brings me indescribable happiness to be able to return to Edward in
Edward Adrift
, with his endearing eccentricities and his capacity to teach us all more than expected. He’s a reminder that we might miss out on spectacular people should we fail to look past societal expectations of what friends should and shouldn’t be. I wouldn’t miss Edward for the world.”
    —Jessica Park, author of
Flat-Out Love
    FOR
600 HOURS OF EDWARD
(2012)
    “A nearly perfect combination of traditional literary elements, mixing crowd-pleasing sappiness with indie-friendly subversion. A masterful blend of character and action.”
    —Chicago Center for Literature and Photography
    “This is a wonderful book.”
    —
Montana Quarterly
    FOR
QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE
ART OF DEPARTURE
(2011)
    “The success of any short-story collection hinges on the author’s ability to create characters that immediately connect with readers. Lancaster excels on this point, ironically so because the inability to connect is his underlying theme.”
    —
Booklist
    “Have you ever felt in your pocket and found a twenty you didn’t know you had? How ’bout a hundred-dollar bill, or a Montecristo cigar or a 24-karat diamond? That’s what reading
Quantum Physics and the Art of Departure
is like—close and discovered treasures.”
    —Craig Johnson, author of
The Cold Dish

and
Hell is Empty
    FOR
THE SUMMER SON
(2011)
    “A classic western tale of rough lives and gruff, dangerous men, of innocence betrayed and long, stumbling journeys to love.”
    —
Booklist
    “Lancaster has crafted a novel that offers readers the most valuable gift any work of fiction can offer: an authentic emotional experience.”
    —Jonathan Evison, author of
The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving
and
West of Here





The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
    Text copyright © 2013 Craig Lancaster
    All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
    Published by Amazon Publishing
    PO Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
    ISBN-13: 9781611099058
ISBN-10: 1611099056
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012918990

This one’s for those who love Edward and wanted to see more of him. As it turns out, I did, too. And, as always, for Angie and Zula and Bodie, the best home team there could ever be.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2011
    I look at my watch at 3:37 p.m., or actually 3:37 and sixteen seconds—I have the kind of watch with an LED digital display for precision—and stop in the kitchen. I have another fifty-four seconds and could easily make it to the couch, but I stand still and watch the seconds tick off. The six morphs (I love the word “morphs”) into a seven and then an eight and then a nine and then the one becomes a two and the nine becomes a zero, and I keep watching. Finally, at 3:38 and ten seconds, I draw in my breath and hold it. Time keeps going, and I exhale. I look down again and notice that I am standing on top of dried marinara sauce that sloshed out of the saucepan yesterday. And just like yesterday, I don’t have the energy to clean it up, even though it bothers me.
    At 3:38 p.m. and ten seconds, twenty-one days ago, on Wednesday, November 16, 2011, Mr. Withers fired me from my newspaper job at the
Billings Herald-Gleaner
. I know it happened at that time because as Mr. Withers said, “I hate like hell to have to tell you this, Edward,” I looked directly at my Timex watch on my left wrist, where I always keep it. Its display read 3:38:10, and I made a mental note to write it down as soon as possible, which I did exactly fifty-six minutes and fourteen seconds later, as I sat in my car. A phrase like “I hate like hell tohave to tell you this” is