The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. David Wroblewski
JANUARY THAW. THE ASH they spread along the driveway melted the snow into gray puddles, candied with ice in the morning. He sat in their living room wearing a coat and boots, watching for the yellow caterpillar of the school bus through the bare trees. In the afternoons, the sun was up barely long enough to take his litter into the yard before suppertime to proof them on come-fors and stays in the snow. They learned quickly now. He led three of them at a time to the birches in the south field, then ran to the yard and released them with a sweeping gesture they could see against the sky, and they sliced across the field like a trio of wolves, bodies stretched over the white snowdrifts.
He was getting better, too. With a single dog, he could make leash corrections as well as his mother, catching them in the middle of their first step out of a stay, when they had barely made up their mind to break; when he did it right, they settled back before lifting their hindquarters all the way off the ground. But he didn’t make it look easy like she did. It took every bit of his concentration. He learned to toss a collar chain at their hindquarters if they didn’t come on the long-line recalls, though his accuracy was a problem. Plus, he moved his arm so much they saw it coming. He practiced against a bale of straw. His mother could flick her wrist and catch a dog loafing halfway across the mow. When he wasn’t expecting it, she threw one against his own backside. The shock of it, the jingle and the impact, made him jump.
“Like that,” she said, smiling. “Works pretty well, doesn’t it?”
And all the while his dogs grew smarter—caught on to the corrections and found ways to beat them. They would be seven months old soon, and their coats were sleek and winter-thickened. They’d grown as tall as they were going to get, but his father said their chests wouldn’t fill out until the summer.
Doctor Papineau, when he visited, could never keep them straight, but to Edgar they were so different it was hard to believe they came from the same litter. He could tell them apart by their movements alone, the sound of their footfalls. Essay always pushed to see what she could get away with, waiting until he looked away to bolt. Tinder, the most rambunctious, would break a stay just because one of his littermates looked at him with a certain glint in his eye. Baboo was the opposite: once in a stay, he would sit forever. He made up for his delay coming off the long line with his love of retrieves. He trotted back to Edgar again and again with the target in his mouth, an aw-shucks swagger rocking his hindquarters.
They were, each of them, brilliant, frustrating, stubborn, petulant. And Edgar could watch them move—just move—all day.
ICY GRAINS, DRY AND WHITE, were falling from low, flannelled clouds. The wind gathered and swept the grains across the yard like a surf. When Edgar opened the barn door, a tendril of snow scorpioned along the cement floor and dispersed at Almondine’s feet. His father was kneeling in the farthest whelping pen, where a pup squirmed and mewled on the silver pan of the scale, its ears folded and otterlike. As Edgar watched, his father cradled the pup in his hands and set it back with its mother.
“Giants,” he said, writing a note on the log sheet. “And ornery. They haven’t opened their eyes yet and they’re already pushing each other around. You should be grateful you didn’t end up with this batch.”
I’m taking mine upstairs, Edgar signed.
His father nodded and turned back to the pup. “I want to clean out those buckets in the workshop before your mother gets back from town. When you finish, find me, okay?”
Okay, he signed. He knew which buckets his father meant—a whole row of them under the workshop stairs, all different sizes, some not buckets at all but battered old lidless ten-gallon milk cans filled to the brim with scrap metal, old nails, hinges, screws, bolts. His father had been threatening to either sort through them or pitch them into the silo for as long as he could remember.
Edgar pulled Finch and Essay out of their runs to practice long-distance downs. The dogs bounded to the workshop and up the stairs, tussling and growling in the straw as he and Almondine followed. In the mow, he could see his breath in the air. He closed the vestibule door. Almondine, without immediate training duties, found a comfortable corner to watch from. Edgar stayed one dog and let it rest while he snapped a long line to the other’s collar and put it in a standing stay. On each trial, he lifted his hand overhead to signal a down, rewarding them with a scrub of their ruff, or correcting with a sharp tug on the long line, which he’d threaded through an eye bolt in the floor to direct the force down and not forward. As soon as they’d mastered one distance, he retreated a pace farther.
Essay understood the exercise at once, and how to confound it. She waited until Edgar was walking toward her—when it was hardest to give a correction—then stood up before she was released, panting merrily. Or she would lie down but immediately roll over. Twice, while she was supposed to be waiting her turn, he discovered her poking at the bales of straw, contemplating a climb. Finch, on the other hand, never took his eyes off Edgar. The problem was he just kept standing there, watching, when Edgar signed the down. After Edgar had repeated the command three times, Finch began to look concerned. Edgar scolded himself for repeating commands and walked over, but the sight of Edgar approaching struck Finch like a bolt of inspiration, and the dog slid to the floor.
For a break, Edgar flung tennis balls and whirled coffee can lids into the farthest corners of the mow for the dogs to chase. The pounding of their feet on the mow floor provoked the kennel dogs below into a chorus of muffled barks. He’d started the two of them holding retrieval targets—just taking them in their mouths for a second or two—when he noticed that the kennel dogs were still barking. Odd, since both his dogs were now sitting quietly. Edgar opened the vestibule door and listened, then started down the stairs. Finch and Essay, nails clicking on the wooden treads, crowded past him.
Got to work on that, he thought.
He was almost to the bottom tread before he saw his father, sprawled and motionless on the floor near the workshop entrance. He was wearing his winter coat, as if heading outside. And he lay face down.
For a moment, Edgar stood paralyzed. Then he bolted down the steps and was on his knees beside his father while Essay and Finch stomped and plunged around them. He shook his father and dug his fingers into the heavy fabric of his coat and rolled him onto his back and peered into his face.
What happened? What happened?
Behind the lenses of his glasses, his father blinked. How slowly his eyes tracked Edgar’s hands. He strained to lift his head, raising it no more than an inch off the floor. He stopped and took a breath. Edgar slipped his hand beneath his father’s head before it could fall back against the cement.
And then he was frantic. He withdrew his hand as gently as he could and checked his fingers for blood, but there was none. He tore his sweater off and bunched it up beneath his father’s head.
His father’s mouth had fallen open.
Can you see me? he signed. He yanked down the zipper of his father’s coat and looked at the checkered work shirt beneath. He patted him from throat to belt. No blood, no injury.
What happened? Did you fall? Can you see me?
His father didn’t answer. Nor was he looking back.
Then Edgar was running through the cold, the house jerking in his vision. Wisps of snow coiled around the porch steps. He burst into the kitchen and yanked the phone off its hook. He stood for a moment, unsure of what to do. He pulled the zero around on the dial and waited. Almondine was in the kitchen with him; he couldn’t remember her running alongside to the house or even following him down from the mow.
After the second ring a woman’s voice came on the line.
“Operator.”
He was already trying to make the words. He moved his lips. A sigh came out of him, thin and dry.
“This is the operator. How may I help you?”
His heart surged in his chest. He tried to force sound from his mouth, but there was only the gasp of exhaled breath. He swung his hand wide, then struck his chest with all the force he could muster, mouthing the words.