The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

by David Wroblewski

  Places, times, weather—all these drew him up inside her. Rain, especially, falling past the double doors of the kennel, where he’d waited through so many storms, each drop throwing a dozen replicas into the air as it struck the waterlogged earth. And where the rising and falling water met, something like an expectation formed, a place where he might appear and pass in long strides, silent and gestureless. For she was not without her own selfish desires: to hold things motionless, to measure herself against them and find herself present, to know that she was alive precisely because he needn’t acknowledge her in casual passing; that utter constancy might prevail if she attended the world so carefully. And if not constancy, then only those changes she desired, not those that sapped her, undefined her.

  And so she searched. She’d watched his casket lowered into the ground, a box, man-made, no more like him than the trees that swayed under the winter wind. To assign him an identity outside the world was not in her thinking. The fence line where he walked and the bed where he slept—that was where he lived, and they remembered him.

  Yet he was gone. She knew it most keenly in the diminishment of her own self. In her life, she’d been nourished and sustained by certain things, him being one of them, Trudy another, and Edgar, the third and most important, but it was really the three of them together, intersecting in her, for each of them powered her heart a different way. Each of them bore different responsibilities to her and with her and required different things from her, and her day was the fulfillment of those responsibilities. She could not imagine that portion of her would never return. With her it was not hope, or wistful thoughts—it was her sense of being alive that thinned by the proportion of her spirit devoted to him.

  As spring came on, his scent about the place began to fade. She stopped looking for him. Whole days she slept beside his chair, as the sunlight drifted from eastern-slant to western-slant, moving only to ease the weight of her bones against the floor.

  And Trudy and Edgar, encapsulated in mourning, somehow forgot to care for one another, let alone her. Or if they knew, their grief and heartache overwhelmed them. Anyway, there was so little they might have done, save to bring out a shirt of his to lie on, perhaps walk with her along the fence line, where fragments of time had snagged and hung. But if they noticed her grief, they hardly knew to do those things. And she without the language to ask.

  The Fight

  HIS MOTHER’S COUGH WAS BAD IN THE MORNINGS, THOUGH IT was gone by the time they’d finished chores. At school one afternoon, he was called to the office. His mother had telephoned. She would pick him up in the circle drive fronting the school. At first he thought nothing of it; sometimes errands coincided with the end of the school day. He waited under the long-roofed entryway as the buses revved their engines and lumbered forward. He didn’t see the pickup until they were gone. His mother sat in the cab, head tipped back, until a coughing fit curled her forward. He trotted up the sidewalk, watching the truck rock on its springs. When he opened the door, the heater was blasting.

  What happened? he signed. You look terrible.

  “I’m not sure. I got dizzy working in the mow and went to the house to lie down. This thing has gotten—”

  She thumped her chest lightly, which triggered a spasm of coughing. She crossed her fists over her chest and doubled up, then rested her hands on the steering wheel. When she looked over at him, her face was shining with sweat.

  “I called—” she began, then switched to sign. I called Doctor Frost.

  When can you see him?

  She looked at her watch. Ten minutes ago.

  Then go, he signed. Go!

  DOCTOR FROST PRACTICED OUT OF a converted house east of town. His waiting room contained a half dozen chairs and a coffee table covered with ancient National Geographic magazines. A tall, narrow window had been cut into the back wall for his receptionist. Before they could sit down, the doctor appeared, sandy-haired, with wire-rimmed glasses, and led Edgar’s mother to an examination room. Edgar sat on the couch and looked out the windows. The sun was sinking below the treetops. A pair of jays screamed at each other from the pine trees, launching themselves into loopy, tumbling flights. From inside the exam room came an indistinct conversation.

  “Again, please,” he heard Doctor Frost say, and another fit of coughing.

  A moment later, the doctor appeared at the receptionist’s window.

  “Edgar,” he said. “Why don’t you come back and join the party?”

  In the examination room, Trudy sat in the corner on a chair. Doctor Frost patted the black exam bench and asked Edgar to untuck his shirt and he pressed a stethoscope against his ribs.

  “Cough,” he said.

  Edgar exhaled a quiet gasp.

  “Clear,” the doctor murmured. He jotted a note on his pad and turned and pressed his thumbs into the soft skin under Edgar’s jaw, looking absently into space, then looked down Edgar’s throat with a small, lighted examination scope.

  “Say ‘Ah.’”

  A-H-H-H-H, he fingerspelled.

  Doctor Frost glanced at his mother.

  “He just said ‘ah’ for you,” she said weakly, and smiling.

  “Okay, sense of humor intact,” the doctor said. “Try anyway.”

  Then he clapped Edgar’s shoulder and told him to button up. He folded his arms across his clipboard and looked at them.

  “Edgar’s lungs are clear. He hasn’t picked up what you have, Trudy, which is pneumonia. I need to run a lab test on that sputum sample, but there’s really not much doubt—the crackle in your right lung is pronounced. I’m tempted to send you up to Ashland for chest x-rays, but I’m going to hold off and maybe save you a little money. Right now this is mild, and you’re a young woman, and we’re catching it early. We’re going to get you on antibiotics and knock it out quick. There’s a catch, though—”

  “This is mild?” his mother interjected.

  “Relatively, though I wish you’d come in three or four days ago. This stuff is nothing to fool with. I’m not trying to alarm you, but I want you to understand that pneumonia is dangerous. People die from it. Any worse and I’d have you in the hospital.”

  His mother shook her head and started to say something, but before she could speak a coughing fit took her. Doctor Frost waved his hand.

  “I know, I know—a possibility we want to avoid. So you’re going to have to do what I say. All right?”

  She nodded. Doctor Frost looked at Edgar until he nodded, too.

  “Here’s my concern. Edgar’s cough reflex is abnormal. Coughing involves constricting the vocal cords, which, as we know, is difficult for him. With pneumonia, coughing is good and bad. It’s bad because it wears you out. But it’s good because it gets the crud out of your lungs. If Edgar catches this, he’ll naturally be less inclined to cough, and the bad stuff will accumulate in his lungs. That would be worse than for the ordinary person. Much worse. Understand?”

  Again, they both nodded. Doctor Frost looked at Edgar’s mother.

  “It would be ideal if Edgar stayed somewhere else for a week.”

  She shook her head. “There’s nowhere else.”

  “Nowhere? How about with Claude?”

  She laughed wheezily and rolled her eyes, but there was a flash of anger in her expression as well. Edgar could see her thinking: small-town busybodies!

  “Absolutely not.”

  “All right, then we have to minimize contact between you two for the next ten days. No meals together, no sitting around in the living room watching television, no hugs and kisses. Can you quarantine a portion of your house? Someplace you can sleep and keep the doors closed?”

  “Not perfectly. I can close my bedroom door. But it opens onto the kitchen, and there’s only one bathroom.”

  “I don’t like that, but I suppose it’ll have to do. I realize I’m suggesting extraordinary measures here, but this is an unusual situation.” He turned back to the chart and scribbled. When he finished he looked up. “There’s
one other thing, Trudy. You need bed rest—don’t cheat on that.”

  “How long?”

  “A week. Ten days would be better. You’re going to sleep as much as you can for the next week.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Not in the least. I’m telling you, Trudy, don’t push this thing. Antibiotics aren’t miracle drugs. If you run yourself down, they won’t help.”

  He turned to Edgar.

  “Edgar, if you start feeling like you have a chest cold, if your chest gets tight, let Trudy know. Sometimes people don’t want to admit they’re getting sick. But if you play that game, it’s going to be tough. Understood?”

  Doctor Frost led them to the waiting room. He appeared in a few minutes at the receptionist’s window with a prescription and a vial of pills, handed Edgar’s mother a Dixie cup filled with water, and had her swallow the first dose on the spot.

  IN THE TRUCK, EDGAR sat listening to the whistle in his mother’s breath. She frowned and turned on the radio.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Quit worrying.”

  They drove on, music crackling over the truck’s speaker.

  “You’re going to have to do the kennel by yourself.”

  I know.

  When they got home, Trudy went to her bedroom, pulled off her shoes, and dragged the blankets over her shoulders. Edgar stood in the doorway and watched her.

  “Is spring break next week?”

  Yes.

  “I’ll call the school and have you excused until then.”

  Okay.

  “Maybe your teachers can send assignments home on the school bus.”

  Okay.

  “About the kennel. Just get the chores done. Check the pups every morning and night. Don’t worry about training.”

  I can do some training.

  “Then work your litter the most. Nothing fancy. One dog in motion at a time. Remember that.”

  Okay, okay.

  “Spend as much time as you can in the kennel. Take books. Stay out of the house unless you need to eat, sleep, or—” Before she could finish, a cough wracked her shoulders off the bed. When she stopped, she was propped up on one arm, panting.

  What if you need something?

  “I won’t need anything. I can make soup and toast for myself. I’m going to be sleeping anyway. Now close the door, please.”

  He stood memorizing her features under the yellow lamplight.

  She pointed at the door. “Out,” she mouthed.

  WHEN HE AND ALMONDINE returned to the house that night, the bedroom door was closed and his mother’s wind-up alarm clock sat on the kitchen table. He turned off the kitchen light and held the clock to his ear and looked at the green radium dots on the tips of the hands. A glow shone yellow beneath the bedroom door. He eased the door open. On the bed, his mother lay in a fetal curl, her eyes closed. Her exhalations sounded ever so slightly easier than they had that afternoon. He stood watching and listening for a long time. Almondine pushed past him into the room and scented his mother’s thin hand, resting lax and upturned on the sheet, and returned to his side. He closed the bedroom door and stood thinking, turning the wind-up alarm over and over in his hands. Then he walked upstairs. He pulled the blankets off his bed and squeezed his pillow under his elbow and carried them out to the barn. He pushed together four bales of straw in the aisle between the pens and he spread the blankets over the bales and sat and unlaced his shoes and looked at the row of lightbulbs shining over the aisle. He trotted barefoot to the front doors and flipped the light switch. A clap of dark filled the kennel. He flipped the switch up again and took a galvanized pail from the workshop and worked his way along the aisle, stepping onto the upturned pail and licking his fingertips against the heat of the bulbs. He unscrewed all but one, and that far down near the whelping rooms. In the semidark he twisted the knob on the back of the clock until the alarm hand pointed to five then set the clock on the bales beside the pillow and lay back.

  Almondine stood on the cement, watching him doubtfully.

  Come on, he signed, patting the bales. It’s just like in the house.

  She circled the setup then climbed aboard and lay with her muzzle near his face. Wind rattled the doors. A pup yipped from the whelping rooms. He pressed his hand into the plush on Almondine’s chest, feeling its rise and fall, rise and fall.

  He was genuinely terrified of getting sick. It was going to be hard enough keeping his mother in bed; if she thought he was sick, she would do the kennel work anyway, and then she would end up hospitalized. And yet, despite his apprehensions, the prospect of running the kennel alone excited him. He wanted to prove he could do it, that nothing would go wrong. And now that he’d begun to see the real problems in training, he felt so many possibilities whenever he worked his dogs.

  There was another feeling as well, something darker and harder to think through, because there was a part of him that wanted to be away from her. Ever since the funeral, they’d depended on each other so heavily that it was a relief to be alone, self-reliant. Perhaps he thought distancing himself from his mother might distance the fact of his father’s death. He understood that might be part of it, and if so, it was an illusion, but that didn’t change how he felt. He lay under the gaze of the kennel dogs, his hand on Almondine’s side, and thought about being alone.

  WHILE HE WAS EATING BREAKFAST, his mother talked to him through the closed door, pausing to catch her breath at disturbing intervals.

  “Have you been to the barn yet?”

  He swung the bedroom door halfway open. She looked at him glassy-eyed.

  Everything is okay. Are you okay?

  “About the same. Real tired.”

  Have you taken those pills?

  “Yes,” she said. “I mean, not yet. I will when I eat breakfast.”

  I’ll make it for you.

  He expected her to say no, but she nodded.

  “Just toast and strawberry jam. And orange juice. Just set it on the table before you go.”

  He closed the bedroom door. He mixed up the orange juice, toasted the toast, and covered it with plenty of jam, his heart pounding all the while. When he looked in again, she was asleep. He waited a moment, trying to decide what the right thing to do was, then knocked on the door.

  “I’m up,” she said groggily.

  Breakfast is ready, he signed. I’ll check back at noon.

  FOR THE NEXT THREE DAYS HE KNEW she’d been awake only because the breakfasts he prepared were gone at lunchtime and the soup eaten when he checked at night. She must have called the school, because the bus didn’t slow down at their driveway. Invariably, she was asleep when he looked in on her, a book splayed out on the covers beyond her fingertips. Whenever he woke her she seemed startled; it took a minute for her to make sense of his questions. He asked how she felt; she said she could tell the antibiotics were working. She asked if there were problems in the kennel; he said no.

  They both lied.

  Each night Edgar lay awake, ridiculously tormented by the windup clock, which, along with its ticking, issued a ratcheting, grinding noise he’d never noticed before. When he finally managed to sleep, his father appeared beside his makeshift bed, so close and real Edgar didn’t believe he was dreaming until he found himself sitting up and Almondine licking his face. The fourth morning, he fumbled the jangling alarm into silence and promptly fell back into slumber, worrying even then that he might dream of his father again. And worrying equally that he might not. Instead, he dreamed he could breathe words effortlessly into the air. The ability hadn’t just appeared, it had returned, as if he’d had a voice in the womb but lost it when he’d entered the world. And in his dream, he had chosen not to speak into the telephone, not to summon the ambulance that would have saved his father’s life.

  He woke frantic, sobbing. It took a moment before he could marshal the courage to draw a breath, shape his lips, and exhale.

  Silence.

  The awful thing was, his voice sounded all wro
ng in his dream—low, like his father’s, and gravelly. But any voice coming from inside him would have sounded wrong, no less than the buzzing-fly noise from the flashlight-shaped thing the doctors had pressed against his neck. That had given him a voice, but it hadn’t been worth it. Unless, of course, he’d had it the day his father fell down in the barn.

  He began to take shortcuts with the kennel routine. In order to train all the dogs, he raced through the chores. He found he could clean three or four pens while he fed the dogs if he dumped a pile of food on the cement. Something told him this was a bad idea, but it worked. At night the dogs seemed edgy but that was because the schedule had changed—no one slept in the kennel night after night, much less ran down the aisle and threw open the their pen doors to let them race after tennis balls. The late-night training, he told himself, was excellent proofing practice.

  It was past midnight on the fourth day when he finally stretched out on the bales and pulled the blankets over him. He’d turned out all the lights and settled himself beside Almondine when he heard his name spoken in a distinct, feminine voice. He sat up and listened. It had only been the squeak of the heater fan, he decided. A few minutes later, a thought began to nag at him: What if it hadn’t been the heater fan at all? What if his mother was standing on the back porch, calling? He cast off his blanket and threw open the barn doors but all he saw was a barren yard and the porch standing dark and empty.

  IN SOME WAYS, TRUDY THOUGHT, it would have been better if the antibiotics had made her downright sick. As it was, she lay in bed, chilled one moment, boiling the next. She was indifferent to food, though she forced herself to eat. On the third day she’d called Doctor Frost’s office as promised, hoping she was saying what he wanted to hear. She was tired, she told him, but not feverish. She was sleeping a lot. That was normal, Frost said. She should beware of dehydration, be careful not to skip doses of the antibiotics. They talked briefly about Edgar. She told the doctor he showed no sign of a cough. Did she think she could drive into town at the end of the week? Was her cough still productive? And so on. She didn’t mention that she grew sickeningly dizzy whenever she stood, or that she’d been so foggy-minded she’d forgotten his phone number twice while dialing. And she might have stretched the truth about the fever. But she kept focused long enough to maintain the conversation, which felt like a triumph.