The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

by David Wroblewski

  “You need to realize that this is a business, like a grocery store or a gas station. You’re going to find out that’s an awfully cold-blooded view. You’re asking to be a partner in it. You’ll have to think of this place as a business first and a playground with dogs second.”

  You’re talking down to me, he signed. I know what we do.

  “Do you? What do you think we sell?”

  He must have looked at her as if she were insane.

  Dogs. Dogs, of course.

  “Wrong. You see, Edgar? It’s not as obvious as you think. Anyone can sell dogs. People give them away. Do you know what we charge for each dog?”

  He didn’t. His father had negotiated these things, and it wasn’t something he’d talked much about.

  “One thousand five hundred dollars for a trained, eighteen-month-old dog.”

  One thousand five hundred dollars?

  “Yes,” she said. “Your litter could be worth between nine and ten thousand dollars. It’s not now, but it could be.”

  How come we aren’t we rich?

  She laughed. “Because most of that money goes toward food, medicine, and expenses. We reimburse people who take care of the older dogs. If we place twenty dogs a year, which is about what we average, we squeak by. And it’s not easy to find twenty people willing to pay that much for an adult dog. Most people want pups, you know.”

  He nodded. Do other dogs cost that much?

  “Some. A few cost more—litters out of show ring champions.” She rolled her eyes when she said “show ring”—her attitude about the dog fancy was just shy of total contempt. “Almost all dogs cost less, though. Much less.”

  How can we charge so much?

  “That’s exactly what you need to learn, Edgar. When you know the answer to that question, you’ll know why we can place our dogs at all, much less at that price. You’ll also understand what it is we’re selling.”

  Can’t you just tell me?

  “I could try, but there are no words for some things, Edgar. Let me ask you a question. You’ve been around plenty of dogs in town. Do they seem just like ours? Different color, different breed, but otherwise the same?”

  Not exactly.

  “Kind of scatterbrained, right?”

  Yes. But they aren’t trained, most of them.

  “Do you think that’s the only difference? Our pups mature more slowly, do you understand that? They don’t have their first heat until they are two years old. And when they are little…you know how frustrating they can be. Look at Essay. We were still working on simple obedience with her when she was six months old, long after any mutt would have that stuff down pat. But try doing a shared-gaze exercise with one of those town dogs and see what happens.”

  But that’s easy!

  She laughed and stood and turned on the radio to the country-western station she liked and they cleared the table. She hummed under her breath as they did the dishes, but it was not joyful—more like a person singing to keep her mind off something else. Before Edgar went to bed, his mother said one last thing.

  “Edgar, think about what we discussed. Give it a while. Then we need to do one of two things. Either we stay and make this kennel work—and that is going to require you to learn finish training—or we begin dismantling the kennel. There’s no point in anything halfway.”

  Edgar nodded. It sounded so rational, the alternatives so clear. He knew what he wanted the moment his mother posed her question, and he knew what she wanted him to want, despite her attempt at objectivity. Another life was inconceivable. It would be much later before he’d realize they’d seduced themselves that night—seduced themselves into believing they understood all the costs and consequences of what they wanted. That no mistake they might make could equal what had already happened. That their calm wasn’t simply a veneer.

  SINCE THEY WERE IN TOWN ALREADY, Trudy decided they would eat lunch at the Mellen Diner. As soon as they were seated, Doctor Papineau hailed from across the room and Trudy walked over to him. Edgar sat listening to the lunchtime chatter and looking out the window. In the corner booth, a little girl was staring at him. A moment later she marched past, whispering in a quiet singsong, and disappeared into the bathroom. When he glanced back from the window he discovered her standing beside his booth.

  “Hi,” she said. She was maybe five years old, dressed in a blue jumpsuit with a rainbow-colored elephant across the bib, her hair a yellow tangle of ringlets. She leaned toward him confidentially.

  “Mama says you can’t talk,” she lisped. “Is that really true?”

  He looked at her and nodded.

  “Not even a whisper?”

  He shook his head.

  She drew back and gave him an appraising look.

  “How come?” she said.

  He shook his head and shrugged. The little girl glanced back at her family—oblivious to her absence—and narrowed her eyes.

  “Mama says I should learn some of that from you, but I can’t. I tried, but things just come out of me! I said a person who can talk ought to talk. Don’t you think that’s true?”

  He nodded.

  “My gramma’s like me. Wanna know what my gramma says?”

  Now he was sure he didn’t know this little girl, and he didn’t know her mother or grandmother, either. Yet the more he looked at her face, the more familiar it became, as if he’d seen it often, but at a distance. He glanced back at the corner booth. Her family didn’t have one of their dogs—he would have recognized them at once if they had.

  “Well, do you want to know or not?” the girl asked, stamping her foot on the linoleum.

  He shrugged again. Okay. Sure.

  “She says that before you were born, God told you a secret he didn’t want anyone else to know.”

  He looked at her. There wasn’t much a person could say in response to a thing like that. He considered scribbling out a note to the little girl: I could just write it down. But he thought that was not her point, and she was probably too young to read anyway. He particularly wanted to tell her she didn’t have to whisper. People made mistakes like that—talking extra loud or getting nervous. But the little girl wasn’t nervous, not in the least. She acted as if she had known him all her life.

  She crooked her finger at him. He leaned down and she cupped her hand by his ear.

  “You could tell me the secret,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t tell. I promise. Sometimes it makes it easier if just one other person knows.”

  At first the little girl stood wide-eyed and placid. He sat back and looked at her. Then her eyes squinted into crescents and her lips drew together into an angry little circle.

  “You don’t remember, do you?” she scolded, and now she wasn’t whispering. “You forgot!”

  Edgar’s mother, on the far side of the dining room, stopped talking with Doctor Papineau and turned.

  Don’t look at me, he signed. I don’t even know who she is.

  Abruptly, the little girl turned and stormed off. She’d taken five or six steps before she whirled to face him again. She was a terribly dramatic child, and Edgar had a glimpse of what it must be like in her house. She was probably staging little scenes like this all the time over eating her vegetables and watching television.

  She scrunched up her face as though thinking through a knotty problem.

  “Would you tell me if you did remember?” she asked, finally.

  Yes.

  Her expression brightened into a smile. Her face was still oddly familiar, still impossible to place.

  “Oh,” she said. “Okay!” Then she skipped away. Before she reached the corner booth her attention was caught by a baby in a high chair and she stopped to poke the baby and ask questions when it started to cry.

  “What was that about?” Trudy said when she slipped into the booth.

  I don’t know.

  “Maybe you have an admirer,” she said.

  And for the third time since they’d walked into the diner, he could think of no be
tter reply than a shrug.

  THEY WORKED HARD TO distract one another whenever they recognized bleakness descending. Edgar pulled Trudy to the kitchen table to play checkers and eat popcorn. One night she snuck his entire litter into the house without waking him. In the morning, when he opened his eyes, eight dogs lifted their heads to look at him.

  Edgar opened The Jungle Book and discovered that, for the first time since the funeral, he could concentrate enough to read. And reading was more comfort than anything else. “Kaa’s Hunting.” “Tales of the Bander-Log.” It didn’t matter. It touched the old life, the life before. He watched the television for news of Alexandra Honeywell and Starchild Colony, and that too provided a comfort. Yet, in the mornings, the front of his ribcage ached as if someone had dropped an anvil on his chest in the night.

  The whelping rooms consoled him. Also the workshop, despite what had happened there. But it was the row of paint-chipped file cabinets, standing like sentinels against the back wall of the workshop, that drew him most. Atop the cabinets sat a small reference library. Working Dogs, by Humphrey, Warner, and Brooks. Genetics in Relation to Agriculture, by Babcock and Clausen. Veterinary Techniques for the Farm, by Wilson and Bobrow. Genetics and the Social Behavior of Dogs, by Scott and Fuller. And of course, The New Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language. The master litter book was there, too—row upon row of ledgered names and litter numbers, one line for every Sawtelle dog, all the way back to his grandfather’s time. A thousand times he must have watched his father run a finger along a page, then snatch an overstuffed folder out of a drawer. Generations of dogs filled those metal drawers. If ever a folder turned up missing, his father said it was as if they had lost the dog itself, and he would search and search, saying, “These records are it. Without them, we wouldn’t know how to plan the next litter. We wouldn’t know what a dog meant.”

  The bottom drawers of the oldest cabinets contained a hash of newspaper articles and letters, most addressed to Edgar’s grandfather. There was a letter from a man in Ohio whose dog had rescued him from drowning. Another, from a woman in Washington State, described how her dogs had interceded when she’d been attacked by a mountain lion. Some letters were paper-clipped to newspaper articles from faraway cities. The Boston Globe. The New York Times. Even the London Times. The pattern was clear: his grandfather had been writing to people because their dogs had done something remarkable, something reported in the newspaper.

  One letter in particular caught Edgar’s attention. It was postmarked New Jersey, and the name, Brooks, sounded familiar. He’d read the first few lines before he stood and double-checked the spine of Working Dogs, and then turned back to the letter:

  May 2nd, 1934

  Morristown, New Jersey

  Dear Mr. Sawtelle,

  Thank you for your interest in our work. I am gratified that Working Dogs is of some assistance, and not a futile documentary effort. Unfortunately, I have no plans that would take me to Wisconsin in the near future, as our work demands my presence here. As one who works with dogs, I trust you understand.

  First, to your questions. We do not attempt to train our dogs to make complex choices between training objectives. Of course, the dogs make substantial judgments many times a day, both in training and in service, but a command’s intent is always unambiguously clear. For example, when recalled, the dog should always come. When told to stay, it should always stay. I can think of no benefit in asking a dog to possibly come when recalled. Scent tracking requires a high level of choice-making, but not the kind you’ve asked about. We are eminently practical in these matters. Our goal is to produce the best possible working dogs, and consequently we emphasize predictability. I would not like to guess whether the choice-making behavior you asked about can be trained for or tested accurately, or whether it is heritable. And I have no more efficacious proofing procedures in mind than those you suggest. This whole question of choice between objectives has been a cause for idle speculation on my part the last few nights, and I have even gone as far as discussing it with my colleagues. The consensus seems to be that even if it were possible, there would be little utility in it for service dogs.

  Second, for reasons I suspect you already understand, we cannot consider an exchange of dogs. The six strains that comprise the Fortunate Fields breeding program represent thoroughly researched bloodlines. In order to select a foundation stock of just twenty-one animals, we examined the pedigree data of hundreds of candidates, cross-indexed against their show and working titles. As a result, all of our dogs have a proven ancestry that has produced both excellent conformation and great success at work. Introducing an unknown into the bloodlines is out of the question.

  I should also like to offer two observations. First, by beginning your breeding program with dogs you found “excellent in temperament and structure” but of unpedigreed stock, you have made attaining your objective—and I admit I don’t fully understand it—immeasurably harder. While it is true that our selection of German Shepherd Dogs was essentially accidental, the choice to begin with a well-documented lineage was not. We know, for example, that our dogs have been structurally sound for at least five generations. When questions arise about the heritability of some trait, we can contact the owners of ancestors two and sometimes three generations back. For the goal of producing a scientifically constructed working dog, this is invaluable. Without such information, one might expect that the first dozen generations would exhibit extreme variability in type; to bring order from that chaos, one would have to aggressively inbreed, with the predictable amplification of undesirable as well as desirable traits.

  I also feel compelled to say that it is breathtakingly naïve to imagine creating a breed of dog in the first place. To do so by selecting what you arbitrarily think are outstanding examples—whatever dogs happen to catch your fancy—and crossing them into your line will only result in a jumble, and might well create unhealthy or unviable offspring. I warn you against this course. You seem to grasp the principles of heredity, and thus I am astonished at what you think you might accomplish. You, the canine species, and our society would be better served if you accepted the realities of animal husbandry. Yours is a common vanity, one that every breeder has indulged during a weak moment—but the best of them put such thoughts aside and ask what is right for the breed. I hope you soon do so as well. What you are attempting is, in essence, the opposite of our endeavor, and I cannot recommend it.

  A blank space appeared in the text, and then the letter continued:

  Mr. Sawtelle,

  After finishing the last passage, I set this letter aside for some days, too upset to finish it. I felt I should either write it again with a more civil tone or simply not post it. Though I am no less adamant today, in the interim I’ve found I will be traveling to Minneapolis. This is unusual and unexpected, but if I’ve read my map correctly, I may have time for a brief side trip on my return, the purpose of which will be to convince you, in person, of your folly. In addition, as a scientist, I feel some obligation to review your stock, on the remote chance it might be of use to us. I should be traveling about six weeks hence, and done with my business in Minneapolis around June 15.

  Signed,

  AB

  The letter was a curiosity. Edgar had read Working Dogs years before and knew that Brooks was one of the original breeders on the Fortunate Fields project. The makeshift library atop the file cabinets held several books on that subject, as well as articles about Buddy, the most famous of those dogs. Fortunate Fields had originated through the philanthropy of a woman named Dorothy Eustice, whose idea was to breed dogs to help humanity—in particular, as guide dogs for the blind. An institution called The Seeing Eye had been established to carry that work forward.

  Fortunate Fields was interesting because guide dogs for the blind needed to be of a special temperament: unflappable, easy to train, and happiest at work. This ruled out dogs that were, for example, unnerved by new surroundings or too laconic to be reli
ed upon for steady work. The Sawtelle family legend—myth, Edgar had always supposed—was that his grandfather had contacted the Fortunate Fields breeders in the early days and that one of them had taken pains to advise him on breeding and training. The story went that the Sawtelle dogs even carried the blood of Buddy.

  Edgar fingered through the letters. There were several more from Brooks. The next was dated two months later.

  July 2nd, 1934

  Morristown, New Jersey

  Mr. Sawtelle,

  I apologize for rushing off. Your hospitality was more than I should have hoped for—indeed, more than I should have indulged in. After seeing your dogs, I understand your enthusiasm. However, I must repeat that there is no possibility that we could use them as Fortunate Fields stock.

  Having also seen your records, I understand that the difference between our approaches is one of philosophy, not technique. You are as selective, in your way, as we at Fortunate Fields. (If I am repeating what I already said while visiting, I apologize—some of it is unclear to me now.) I do not think you have much chance of success, though your definition of success is less precise than ours. That may be more sensible, as you’ve argued, but it is not scientific, and in science, progress is necessarily slow.

  I also cannot let you ship a bitch here to be bred. Although I am on your side in this matter, my colleagues are unconvinced.

  However, I tell you the following in confidence: a gentleman named Conrad McCalister has been living with a dog of ours, Amos, just outside of Minneapolis, for two years now. Amos is a sibling of Buddy’s, and every bit the dog she is. We consider Amos to be among our greatest successes, though Buddy gets all the publicity. With my endorsement, I believe Conrad would permit Amos to sire a litter with a bitch of your choosing. I could make sure you had the advantage of our full documentation on Amos, since you would be in a position to appreciate what it meant.