The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

by David Wroblewski

May 1935

  Chicago

  John,

  Just a note to let you know that my friends in the diplomatic corps have sent some sad news. Hachiko was found dead in Shibuya station on the seventh of March, in the very spot where I met him so many years ago. He was waiting for Ueno, of course. By all accounts, he still made the trek each day unless his arthritis was so bad he couldn’t walk.

  I have included a photograph, sent to me by my friends, of the monument that was erected for him. He walked past it for the better part of his last year. I suppose he never noticed it at all. Yet another example of our dogs exceeding their so-called masters.

  How is it, John, I feel I have lost an old friend, though I met him only twice? Perhaps it is because of our Ouji. He and Charles, Jr., are inseparable companions, and I don’t think I exaggerate when I say they have equaled the bond I once had with Lucky.

  I take some consolation knowing that a fraction of Hachiko’s bloodline is in my care—and yours. I hope the grand experiment is proceeding well. (I know you don’t like me calling it that, but I can’t help teasing you sometimes.) Last month, while visiting my district in Chicago, I met a family that owned a Sawtelle dog. I saw them walking down the street and bolted from the car like a madman. Perhaps you remember them? The Michaelsons? It is probably my imagination, but I swear I saw a trace of Ouji in their dog. Could it possibly be from one of his matings?

  Yours, as always,

  Charles Adwin

  Eighth Illinois District,

  United States House of Representatives

  Nothing in the letter seemed significant. Edgar didn’t know of anyone named Charles Adwin. Why had his father told him to find Hachiko? Hachiko, whoever that was, was dead, and had been for many years.

  He sat back.

  Ueno? Ouji?

  He turned back to the file cabinet. He had searched one drawer, but there was a second, also filled with old correspondence and miscellany. He began searching it for a letter postmarked from Washington, perhaps Chicago, and thus he almost missed what he was looking for, because it bore international postage. Only Charles Adwin’s distinctively broad handwriting made him take a closer look.

  October 1928

  Tokyo

  Dear Mr. Sawtelle,

  With some difficulty, I have contacted the family of Hachiko and discovered, to my amazement, that there is indeed another litter produced from the same sire and dam. I do not know how you knew this, or if this was a spectacularly lucky guess. Nor do I pretend to understand your breeding project. I know little about dogs and simply admire them like most people, ignorantly, I suppose. But admire them I do, and I have known the best of them. As a boy I had a Setter named Lucky that was the moral superior of any man I’ve known, myself included.

  Hachiko is a phenomenon here in Tokyo, much talked about among the residents. The stories are true. I have stood on the Shibuya train platform in the afternoon and watched him walk out of the crowd, alone, and sit and wait for the train to arrive. He is a regal animal, pale cream in color, and he moves with great dignity. I have, as well, walked over to him and stroked his thick pelt and looked into his eyes, and I must say I felt the presence of a great soul. As we stood there, the train arrived and the doors opened and Hachiko watched to see if his master, Professor Ueno, would disembark, but of course he didn’t. Ueno hasn’t stepped off that train for nearly three years, since a stroke felled him at the university. Hachiko must know by now that he isn’t going to appear, but he waited anyway. And so I waited alongside him. A pair of foolish boys stood off to one side of the platform, laughing and taunting the dog, and before I knew what I was doing, I had run over to them and chased them away in a fury—hardly the behavior of a diplomat. Hachiko was not so easily distracted. Indeed, so assured in his posture was he, so patiently did he sit and watch that train, that I felt we were the ones blind to the truth, not Hachiko. After a long wait, he stood and walked back into the crowd, alone. The next day, he was there again, waiting for the train. I know, because I returned as well, drawn to this quiet drama for reasons I cannot easily explain.

  Hachiko’s story has become widely enough known that strangers passing through Shibuya station recognize him at once. Some have begun to set food out for him. There are stories of people bursting into tears at the sight of the dog sitting and waiting. As I have already confessed, I was not without some emotion myself. I suppose one cannot conceive of such devotion in man or animal until one has seen it with one’s own eyes. There is already talk of erecting a monument to the dog.

  Frankly, I was prepared to dismiss your request, but meeting Hachiko changed my mind. With some difficulty, I was able to locate the breeder. This involved following Hachiko through the streets of Tokyo, to the house where Ueno lived. There the dog paused, briefly, and I fully expected him to walk to the door. Instead he turned his gaze up the street and continued to the home of Professor Ueno’s gardener, who now cares for the dog. (The professor had no family.) The gardener was able to direct me to the breeder, Osagawa-san. I introduced myself and explained your request, and that was when I found out there was a litter. He was adamant that no dog of his could be shipped in the manner you suggest. He does not believe a pup would survive such a trip intact in mind and body, and refuses to consider the idea. He said (after I calmed him) that you are welcome to come to see the pups yourself, at which time he would discuss whether you might be a fit owner. I explained that such a trip was not within your means. Osagawa-san is quite devoted to his dogs. I think he is right about the pup traveling. Though they have been used to hunt bear, the dogs seem extraordinarily sensitive, and even if we found a place for one on a ship to San Francisco or Seattle, there are thousands more miles to go by train before he would find his way to you, with no one to look after him. It simply isn’t practical. I’m sure you understand.

  However, another avenue may have opened, if you would consider it. An unexpected result of my visit has been the opportunity to acquire one of these pups for my own family. We have named him Ouji, which means, roughly translated, “Prince.” He is a fine specimen. At four months of age, he lacks the sagacity of Hachiko, but that is to be expected. At times he is a terror to us, but I believe the day will come when I shall thank you for bringing us together. I see in him some of the character I remember in Lucky so many years ago, and though it might be my imagination, I may have caught a glimmer of what I saw in Hachiko’s gaze on the train platform.

  The opportunity I suggest is this. In the next twelve months I expect to end my assignment here in Japan and return to my home. I have already announced my intention to resign. Life in the diplomatic corps has been good, but I cannot deny my midwestern roots. In the spring my wife, son, and I will board a ship bound for San Francisco, and by fall we should be settled in Chicago again. Ouji will be about eighteen months old then, and if you should want to come and meet him, you would be welcome. If you are interested, and he is suitable, I don’t think he would object to siring a litter for you. I’ve already put the question to him, but he was busy demolishing a corner of my briefcase and did not answer.

  I apologize for failing to plead your case with Ogasawa-san; however, I owe you a debt of gratitude for inspiring my visit to Hachiko. It is a moment that may well have changed my life. You see, my decision to come home was finalized during the long walk beside Hachiko as he made his way through the streets of Tokyo. I cannot justify the feeling, but it seemed possible—indeed, likely—that a third presence accompanied us, someone whom only Hachiko could see. And in that moment, I understood that I had been too long away from home.

  Before I close, I must voice one final thought. I cannot believe you thought any plan to ship an unaccompanied pup via freightliner and rail would have worked. I have half entertained the notion that you manipulated me from afar into adopting a sire for your project. If that is the case, then you are a genius, sir, and we could use your kind in the diplomatic corps.

  Yours,

  Charles Adwin

>   Senior Secretary

  United States Ambassador to Japan

  Edgar leaned back, letter in hand. He didn’t have to puzzle over its significance. His father had been pointing him toward something like evidence, though not of anything Claude had done.

  I am no dream, his father had been saying. It’s happened before.

  A Way to Know for Sure

  THE METRONOME OF THE KENNEL TICKED AWAY, SUNRISE AND sunset. A new litter was arranged, a late-summer whelping expected. Four dogs from the oldest litter were placed over the next two weeks, entailing a frantic burst of finish training, evaluation, and paperwork. Doctor Papineau found a reason to drop in whenever the adoptive owners arrived, exuding what seemed to Edgar an increasingly proprietary air. And Edgar found himself drawn between opposed desires: To wait and watch or to run away. To tell his mother what he suspected or to fling himself at Claude. Days, his head rang with fatigue. Nights, he dropped onto the bed and lay for hours as his gaze jittered across the ceiling. Summer storms drew him like a moth to a porch light and he walked aimlessly through the rain, coring his interior with second thoughts, treble thoughts. The strangest kind of curse had been laid upon him: knowledge without hope of evidence. He felt haunted not so much by his father’s figure as by his father’s memories, poured into him that night only to be lost again. Nothing he did could recall them. There—was that a memory of his own or a shred of his father’s? Or had his ceaseless inward scrutiny manufactured phantoms that were no one’s recollections at all? His mind seemed capable of twisting back along any slithery line of thought, reflecting its own desires like a bead of mercury jiggling before a mirror, recalling anything he wanted, true or false. Whenever the rain stopped he was left disappointed and angry—angry most of all at his father and then aghast at himself for it.

  And despite his mother’s declaration, Claude did not come to stay all at once. There was never a clear boundary, never a decisive moment to which Edgar could object. If Claude spent the afternoon working in the kennel, he would leave before evening came. The next day he might not show up at all, or might stop by long after dark to leave a bottle of wine while the Impala idled in the driveway, some companion waiting in the passenger seat, features underlit by the dashboard while the radio played. And his mother following Claude to his car.

  Sit tight, Edgar told himself. Just wait.

  That meant sitting at the dinner table and watching Claude slice and chew and swallow and smile while Edgar’s heart vibrated like a hummingbird in his chest. It meant sitting in the living room afterward, pretending indifference. Mornings, it meant looking at the soap shavings scattered about the porch, and the cakes become turtles frozen in the act of hatching—altogether too much like Edgar himself, caught and unable to move as days lapped and receded. It meant, worst of all, being obliged to help Claude in the kennel, where, despite his resolve, Edgar too often replied to Claude in slashing, incomprehensible torrents of sign. But when he could stay calm and watch, he saw not one Claude but many: the quiet one, the jovial one, the confidential one, the one who sat silent in a group. When people came to visit, he watched Claude steer them outside to walk through the apple orchard or into the field or up the road. Anyplace quiet, private. There would be talk and laughter. A gesture of surprise. A head nodded in agreement.

  None of which told Edgar what he needed to know. In the end he was certain of only one thing: Claude kept coming back. Whatever Claude wanted, whatever he had done—no matter how nonchalant he acted—he had to keep coming back.

  THE WHITE PATCH HAD SPREAD, or so it seemed. A lone dandelion, as bleached and colorless as the grass around it, sprouted in the center, mop half-open. Edgar plucked the albino thing and pressed the scentless mass to his nose. When Almondine began to investigate the spot, he shooed her back and rolled the wheelbarrow over, spade rattling in the bed.

  His mother emerged from the depths of the barn and stood watching.

  “What are you doing?”

  He dug the point of the spade into the white patch.

  Does that look normal to you?

  “What?”

  This right here. This spot.

  She looked at the patches of dead grass scattered around the lawn, all withered from the dogs’ urine, then back at Edgar with an unhappy expression. When he looked up again she was gone. He dug out a hole until it was below the dandelion’s taproot and carted the dirt into the field by the hazels. He filled the hole with quicklime from the bags stacked by the rear barn doors and poured a bucket of water over it all and watched the quicklime slake. When he’d finished, he filled a coffee can with the same chalky powder and walked to the hazels and salted down the dirt.

  DUSK. BATS WHICKERED THROUGH the corona of insects around the yard light. The dogs’ attention spans were long now and they began to show rare, unnameable talents, which Edgar cultivated for hours in lieu of being in the house. There were long recalls in the field, Baboo and Tinder bounding through lime-colored hay from some far zenith. Finch and Opal, learning to untie simple knots. When asked to clear a leash tangled around her feet, Essay would crouch and leap, avoiding in one adroit move the laborious process of stepping out of the loops. In the mow, he sat the dogs in a circle and knotted a treat into a rag and tethered it to one of the fly lines threaded through a pulley in the rafters. He released a dog by name. If any other dog moved, the treat flew into the air and all the dogs grumbled. When he ran out of ways to proof them, he stood in the doorway of the barn and looked at Claude’s Impala and listened to the music playing through the living room windows, waiting for the lights there to go out.

  AFTER DINNER ONE EVENING Claude maneuvered Doctor Papineau out to the kennel, unaware, it seemed, that Edgar was there. When he heard them coming, he stepped into the dark outside the rear barn doors and listened. The two men walked into the whelping room, then came out and stood looking into the night.

  “Maybe it is time,” Doctor Papineau was saying. “I’ve maintained these dogs are a too-well-kept secret for years now.”

  “Well, you know what I think,” Claude said, “but Trudy might appreciate your advice. She respects your opinion something fierce.”

  “I don’t know about that. With Trudy, it’s better to wait to be asked than to offer an opinion.”

  In the dark, Edgar grinned. He wasn’t sure what they were talking about, but he remembered well the night Doctor Papineau had provoked his mother and how quickly the old man had backpedaled.

  “We’d want to rethink your share if you came in on this. Twenty percent might be more reasonable.”

  Doctor Papineau grunted, a low hmmm-hmmm-hmm. “I never have gotten around to selling that lot on Lake Namekegon. It’s just sitting there,” he said. “How many does he want to start with?”

  “Twelve, for now. A pilot run at Christmas, and then something bigger next year.”

  “I suppose I could talk to Trudy next time I’m out.”

  They were quiet for a time.

  “You know, Stumpy’s is having a fish boil on Saturday. First of the summer.”

  “Is that right. Lake trout?”

  They turned and walked up the kennel aisle.

  “Whitefish, I think. Why don’t we swing by and pick you up? I could make myself scarce if you wanted to talk to Trudy then.”

  Edgar watched them go. After Doctor Papineau had driven away, he walked into the house and clapped his leg to call Almondine to go upstairs, all the while feeling Claude’s gaze on his back.

  WHEN SATURDAY NIGHT CAME, Edgar made it clear he wasn’t going anywhere with Claude. His mother feigned indifference, as with a contrary pup, though he knew she felt otherwise. The moment the Impala’s taillights disappeared, he rifled the mail drawer, then the kennel files laid on top of the freezer, and the working notebooks. Almondine sat and watched him search. In the closet, he checked the pockets of Claude’s coat and trousers. He found nothing to help make sense of that overheard conversation.

  Then he turned to more unlikely pla
ces—the ammo box with the old telegram, the truck, and finally the spare room. It was almost empty, and had been since Claude moved out, but on the interior wall was a small door. He crouched and opened it and looked into the unfinished rafter space above the kitchen. There, stacked haphazardly across the dusty batts of pink insulation, were a dozen cardboard boxes, the ones his mother had packed that winter day he’d come upon her with her hair wild about her head and so lost in grief she had not even seen him. He knelt on the joists and pulled the boxes into the room. They were printed with logos for canned tomatoes, baked beans, ketchup, their flaps crossed and taped down. The heaviest were jammed with shirts and trousers exuding the faint scent of his father’s aftershave. Edgar ran his hands along the insides, feeling for anything not fabric. Two of the boxes held coats and hats, and two more, shoes. Finally, a smaller box of miscellany: his father’s spring-banded wristwatch, his razor, his key ring, his empty leather billfold, shiny on the flanks but the corners stretched and pale and the stitching unraveling on one side.

  From the bottom Edgar lifted out a Mellen High School yearbook, class of 1948. Tucked inside the front cover was his father’s diploma, printed on thick stock with “Mellen High School” crested across the top. He paged through the black-and-white photographs until he found his father among the twenty-five graduates, between Donald Rogers and Marjory Schneider. His father’s expression was severe in the style of many of the portraits and his gaze focused on some distant concern. He’d worn glasses even then. Edgar turned to the sophomores. Claude was listed as one of three without a picture.

  Edgar scrutinized the posed group shots and candids—the football team, the farm club, the choral group, the crowd in the cafeteria. In the process, two loose photographs slipped from the latter pages. People and places he did not recognize. He shook the yearbook over his lap. Three more photographs fluttered out. In one, his father stood on a lakeshore, fishing. In the other, he sat in a truck, sporting several days’ growth of beard. His elbow rested on the open window and his hand was draped over the steering wheel.