The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

by David Wroblewski

  The future, when he thought about it at all, held little threat and little promise. When the Impala returned that afternoon, and his mother emerged on steadier feet, new prescription in hand, he thought all their mistakes had finally been made. She needed to recover. His father had died in January; it was only the end of May. They needed to stick to the routine they’d established during the intervening months. In that way, their life would return to its original shape, like a spring stretched in bad times but contracting eventually into happiness. That the world could come permanently unsprung never occurred to him. And so, for the longest time, he was oblivious to what was happening, for where his mother was concerned, some things seemed no more possible than if she might suddenly fly through the air.

  THE PACE OF WORK hadn’t slackened. The pups came first, then the food, the water, the cleaning, the meds. The rest of their time was devoted to training. While his mother was still recovering, Claude arrived in the morning, unloaded supplies, and helped with chores. Edgar walked Finch up and down the aisle so he could judge the dog’s recovery. Afterward, Claude stayed only long enough for a cup of coffee, drinking it standing up, with his jacket on; Edgar’s mother talked to Claude about what needed to be done in the kennel, as though they had come to some agreement about his helping out. Then he set his coffee down and walked to his car.

  After she was back on her feet, Claude stopped appearing in the mornings. Since he wasn’t there when Edgar boarded the school bus, there was no reason to believe he’d been there at all, until one afternoon he came across a pile of white soap shavings on the porch steps. Claude came for dinner the next evening. The moment he entered, Edgar’s mother’s movements grew slower, more languid. And when the conversation turned to Epi and Finch, Edgar understood that Claude had been out to the kennel many times since Edgar had last seen him, including that day. By then, nearly a month had passed.

  After dinner, Edgar went upstairs. He listened to their footsteps, their murmured talk not quite covered by the noise of the television. Her words filtered up to him lying in his bed.

  “Oh, Claude. What are we going to do?”

  Her question ended with a sigh.

  Edgar rolled over and waited for sleep. Listening and not listening.

  If she hadn’t been gone that day…

  If I hadn’t been in the mow…

  If I’d been able to speak…

  Sometime in the night, the Impala started with a throaty rumble. In the morning, when Edgar stood beside his bed, fiery spikes radiated from the center of his chest.

  IT WAS WARM NOW, at least on some nights. One evening he walked out onto the porch and straddled an old kitchen chair to watch the sun set. Days of sunshine had melted the snow in the field, and a brief rain had rinsed everything clean. Almondine found a spot on the old rug and began chewing a bone, her mouth propped open against the hollow end. Shortly, the kitchen door opened and his mother’s hands came to rest on his shoulders. They listened to the water drip from the trees.

  “I like that sound,” she said, “I used to sit here and listen to water run off the roof like that before you were born.”

  I know, he signed. You’re very old.

  He felt rather than heard her laugh. She dug her fingers lightly into his shoulders. “This is the time of year your father found that wolf pup. Do you remember us telling you about that?”

  Parts of it.

  “See those aspens down there?” She reached over his shoulder, and he closed an eye and sighted along her arm at a stand of trees occupying the lower corner of the field. “When he came up from the woods that day, those were only saplings. You could wrap your fingers around the trunks of most of them. They’d just begun to leaf out. I happened to be looking there when your father came through. It was the most amazing thing—he just shimmered into place, walking so slow and cautious. At first I thought he’d hurt himself. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up to see it.”

  Because you thought he was hurt? Or because of how it looked?

  “Both, I suppose. I should have known he was carrying a pup right away. He was walking the same way he carried a newborn in the kennel.”

  With his shoulders hunched.

  “Yes. But from a distance, I didn’t recognize it.”

  The sound of her voice was pleasant, and Edgar felt like listening, and he supposed she felt like talking. He’d heard bits and pieces of the story as far back as he could remember, but now she told him about the miscarriages that preceded it, the final trip to the hospital, the figures in the rain. By the time she finished, the aspens at the back of the field had dissolved into the gloaming.

  Did you ever name the baby?

  “No,” she said, at length.

  Suppose it had lived.

  His mother took a deep breath.

  “I think I know what you’re getting at, Edgar. Please don’t ask me to compare different kinds of grief. What I’m trying to tell you is that after the miscarriage, I lost myself for a while. Time passed that I don’t remember much about. I can’t explain what it was like, exactly, but I remember feeling angry that I’d never had a chance to know that baby before he died, not even for one minute. And I remember thinking I’d found a place where none of it had happened, where I could just rest and sleep.”

  He nodded. He recalled how, waiting in the barn beside his father that day, something had blossomed before his eyes when he closed them, something dark and forever inward-turning. He recalled how after a time he had found himself walking along a road, how the one Edgar had stayed with his father and the other had kept walking, how all around the road was pitch dark and how rain was falling on him and gently drenching him. And he remembered thinking that as long as he stayed on the road he was safe.

  “Do you want to know why that hasn’t happened to me now?” she said.

  Why?

  “Because I did have a chance to know your father. It’s so unfair he died that I could scream, but I was lucky enough to know him for almost twenty years. That’s not enough. I could never have known him enough, not if we both lived to be a hundred. But it is something, and that makes a difference to me.” She paused again. “What happened to your father isn’t your fault, Edgar.”

  I know.

  “No, Edgar, you don’t know. Do you think I can’t read you? Do you think I can’t see? You think just because you don’t make a sign for something it isn’t written all over your body? In how you stand and walk? Do you know you’re hitting yourself in your sleep? Why are you doing that?”

  It took a moment to sink in. When he stood, the chair clattered to the floor behind him.

  What do you mean?

  “Unbutton your shirt.”

  He tried to walk away, but she laid a hand on his shoulder. “Do it, Edgar. Please.”

  He unfastened the line of buttons and let his shirt fall open. A bruise, mottled with sickly blue and green, covered the center of his chest.

  Somewhere, an icy tuning fork struck a bar of silver and rang and rang. He walked to the bathroom and stood before the mirror and pressed a fingertip into the bruise. An ache pulsed outward along his ribs.

  How long had he been waking with that feeling of an anvil having been dropped on his chest? A week? A month?

  “What is that?” Trudy said, when he walked into the kitchen. “Goddamn it, Edgar. What’s going on with you? You’re so closed up around your sadness you’ve left me here alone. You can’t do that. You can’t shut me out. As if you’re the only one who lost someone.” She put her hands on his shoulders. “In the mornings when you walk into the kitchen, I’ll see you out of the corner of my eye and think you’re him—”

  That’s crazy. I don’t look anything like him.

  “Yes you do, Edgar. You move like him. You walk like him. I’ve watched you in the whelping room and you even carry the pups like him, just the way you described, with your shoulders hunched up, taking those careful steps. Do you realize that there are times when I need to leave the ho
use, when it’s just you and me, because I look at you and I feel like he isn’t gone? I come back from the barn some nights and I can’t help myself. I go up to your room to watch you. It’s the only time you let me near. It’s the only way I can get close. To you or him.”

  I’m not him. I’m not half who he was.

  Then a wrack of shivers ran through him. He pushed past Trudy onto the porch, buttoning his shirt. There was something else he’d wanted to say, but discovering the bruise on his chest had swept everything else from his mind.

  “Edgar, I know what it’s like to disappear into bad feelings. I know how tempting it is. You think by going further into it you’ll finally come out the other side and everything will be okay, but it doesn’t work that way. You need to talk to me. I can’t shake the feeling you haven’t told me everything that happened.”

  I did. I told you. I came down from the mow and there he was. I had to wait for someone to show up.

  “The handset on the phone was shattered.”

  I got mad and hit it on the countertop. I told you that.

  “What else, Edgar? What else happened?”

  Nothing!

  “Then what is that?” she said, pointing at his chest.

  I don’t know! I must have fallen against something. I just don’t remember.

  “Edgar, I’ve watched you do it in your sleep. You’re hitting your chest. You’re trying to sign something. What is it?”

  He couldn’t reply, paralyzed by the memory of throwing his fist against his body. Every time he thought of it he almost shook with the blow. He stood on the porch, his ragged exhalation matching hers, until at last he remembered what he’d wanted to say.

  Claude isn’t like him, either.

  Now it was his mother’s turn to be silent. She looked past him into the field and sighed. “After that last miscarriage, I wanted to have an operation to make it impossible for me to get pregnant. I liked that idea—that way I could be sure I’d never feel that bad ever again. But your father said I was only imagining the worst case. One more time, he said. Not because it won’t be terrible if it happens again, but because it will be wonderful if it doesn’t. And he was right, Edgar. The next time, we had you. I can’t imagine what our lives would have been like if your father hadn’t believed so strongly in fresh starts.”

  He turned and stared out into the night.

  “Edgar, there’s a difference between missing him and wanting nothing to change,” she said. “They aren’t the same things at all. And we can’t do anything about either one. Things always change. Things would be changing right now if your father were alive, Edgar. That’s just life. You can fight it or you accept it. The only difference is, if you accept it, you get to do other things. If you fight it, you’re stuck in the same spot forever. Does that make sense?”

  But aren’t some changes worth fighting?

  “You know that’s true.”

  So how do you know which is which?

  “I don’t know a way to tell for sure,” she said. “You ask, ‘Why am I really fighting this?’ If the answer is ‘Because I’m scared of what things will be like,’ then, most times, you’re fighting for the wrong reason.”

  And if that’s not the answer?

  “Then you dig in your heels and you fight and fight and fight. But you have to be absolutely sure you can handle a different kind of change, because in the end, things will change anyway, just not that way. In fact, if you get into a fight like that, it pretty much guarantees things are going to change.”

  He nodded. He knew she was right but he hated what she said. A person could stop a specific thing, but they couldn’t stop change in general. Rivers can’t run backward. Yet, he felt there must be an alternative, neither willfulness nor resignation. He couldn’t put words to it. All he knew was, neither of them had changed their minds and neither of them could find anything more to say. He stood there until his mother turned and went into the kitchen, then he pushed open the porch door and walked to the barn.

  THERE WAS PLENTY OF binder twine lying around the mow. With a little trial and error, he fashioned a double loop and a tail that he could knot around the bed frame. The thing was easily hidden beneath the blankets, and if she walked in at night, she wouldn’t see it. He passed his wrists through the rabbit ears. All it took was a twist to keep them from slipping free while he slept.

  Late at night, the rotary dial on the telephone resonated through the walls, the rip of a digit rolled clockwise, the grind of the dial working backward, loud enough to wake him. Whatever part of her conversation wasn’t captured by the handset rode on air currents through that old house, a gray smoke so fine it drifted up the stairs and through the furnace registers, and wherever it brushed a wall, or a curtain, or a lightbulb, it crumbled into a dust that settled over everything.

  In the mornings, he tucked the twine into the toe of an old tennis shoe and looked at his chest in the mirror.

  It worked surprisingly well.

  THE FIRST THUNDERSTORM OF spring came through in the middle of a night, lightning flashing through the sky and thunder rattling the glass in the windows. In the morning, the storm had lapsed into a ceaseless, undramatic rain. Slow, even sheets of water that paused for a minute or an hour, but soon enough returned, along with the splash of water running off the eaves. After two days, the basement began flooding. It was no surprise, and no emergency, either. The legs of the tables had long been set in coffee cans. Edgar watched the water seep through the rocks Schultz had set in the basement walls. The float rose in the sump pit twice an hour and the lights flickered as the motor engaged. Then a thump as the column of water hit the elbow in the vent pipe.

  Outside, the world became a riot of vegetable odors, boggy and florid—the waft of old hay, tamarack, algae, moss, sweet sap and rotted leaves, iron and copper and worms—a musky yawn that hung in the yard.

  FOR TWO NIGHTS IN a row the dogs woke him.

  They’d begun leaving the run doors up at night and the dogs slept with their muzzles propped across the wooden thresholds. From his bedroom window he could make out their black noses and shining eyes. The first night he ignored their barks and rolled over and covered his head with his pillow, but the second night he detected a kind of fervor in their tone that drew him fully awake. He picked out the voices of Essay and Opal over the drumming of falling rain. He and Almondine knelt at the window. The dogs were standing wet in their runs, tails slashing happily behind them.

  Deer in the orchard, he thought. Or a raccoon.

  He went to the spare bedroom, where the window faced the orchard and the road. There was nothing to see. By the time he’d walked back to his room, the dogs were silent again. It occurred to him that the dogs might have seen Forte, and that idea cheered him. The stray seemed just contrary enough to come back after wintering with some adopted family.

  Edgar lay awake in his bed, hoping now the dogs would start up again. Or that he would hear Forte’s howl. With his attention so pitched, he began half hearing a voice—the voice he’d heard in the barn when he’d slept there. The voice he’d heard (now he remembered) the night before. Always intertwined with some other sound. He heard his name cried as the bedsprings creaked; a wordless call in a gust of wind against the windowpane. He sat up and pulled books off the shelves, running his eyes over the letters like so many scribbles, until the sky lightened outside his window.

  At breakfast he waited for his mother to mention the barking.

  Did the dogs wake you last night? he asked, finally.

  “No. Were they barking?”

  A lot.

  “That’s okay,” she said. “They get restless with the thaw.”

  By the time he’d finished evening chores that next day he was so tired he staggered up the stairs and fell into bed. It was pitch dark when the sound of his name woke him. This time it had come through the splash of rain in the gutters. He sat up in bed, arms folded, listening. In a minute, the dogs began again. He slipped out of bed without turni
ng on the light, raised the sash, and craned his head out. Everywhere, rain was falling. Directly below his window, Claude’s Impala sat parked in the driveway.

  In each pen, a dog stood, baying.

  He slipped on his jeans and shirt and haphazardly tied his shoes. He crept down the stairs, hand on Almondine’s back to slow her. His mother’s bedroom was dark. The clock in the kitchen read one thirty.

  He knelt before Almondine.

  You have to stay. I don’t want you getting wet.

  He opened the porch door and leaned out. A breeze tousled his hair. There was no lightning, no thunder, just the steady whisper of warm rain, like the murmur of the creek—the sound that had once made Almondine pounce on the snow-covered creek as if something hid there. Silvery sheets of water poured into the gutters around their roof.

  Near the door was a light switch. When he flipped it, the goosenecked flood lamp over the barn doors came on, casting a cone of light across the rough planks of the double doors. He half-expected to see a woodchuck or a fox scurrying off but there was only the glint of rain dropping into the light. And yet the dogs kept barking with such a strange mixture of alarm and recognition, wet and shining as they looked into the yard. A flicker danced in the rain before them and was gone. Edgar was about to turn back inside when something caught his attention near the barn door. When he looked closer, there was just rain.

  Then, abruptly, the dogs fell silent. They braced themselves four-footed and shook off and one by one trotted to the portals at the back of their runs, where they pushed through the canvas flaps and disappeared.

  Whatever was making them bark, Edgar thought, had to be inside the kennel. He was never going to find out what it was standing on the porch. He turned to Almondine one last time and knelt to quiet her. Then he stepped into the rain and began to cross the yard.

  In the Rain

  HE WAS DRENCHED BEFORE HE REACHED THE CORNER OF THE house. The same rain, warm on his hand, now soaked through his shirt and jeans, chilling him, but it was pointless to go back for a coat. He walked to the Impala and pressed his hand against the hood. The engine was cold as a stone.