The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

by David Wroblewski

  “Okay. Okay. Definitely…definitely not an ordinary situation,” he said, giving Essay and Baboo a wary gaze. “They’re friendly?”

  Edgar nodded. For the man’s benefit, he turned and stayed them. There was something morose about the man, Edgar thought. It was an odd idea to have about someone he’d just met, but an unmistakable aura of resignation enveloped the man, as though he were one of those people depicted in cartoons who walked around with rain clouds over their heads, people whose change fell out of their pockets when they bent down to pick up a penny. The man’s reaction to Essay and Baboo only reinforced this impression—as if he’d somehow been expecting to find a pack of ferocious dogs outside his door one day. He didn’t smile—his expression was guarded, though not unfriendly—but he didn’t frown, either. If anything, his eyes conveyed a look of benign misgiving, the result of some lifelong despondency.

  “Right,” he said. “Trained. But friendly? Yes?”

  Yes.

  He peered into the dark. “Any more out there?”

  Edgar shook his head and he’d have smiled if his stomach hadn’t been churning with anxiety. The man opened the screen door and stepped out, fixing the dogs with a doubtful look. Edgar took the pencil and the pad.

  My dog cut his foot. I need water to clean it and a pan or bucket.

  They looked down at Tinder.

  “Are any people hurt?”

  No.

  “I should call a doctor,” the man said.

  Edgar shook his head vehemently.

  “What’s wrong with your voice? Did you hurt your throat somehow?”

  No.

  “You’ve always been that way?”

  Yes.

  The man thought for a second.

  “Okay, wait, I’ll be right back,” he said.

  He walked inside. Edgar heard some clanking and rattling and then water running in the kitchen sink. In a moment, the man emerged carrying a white enamel pot, water sloshing over the sides. A ratty blue towel was tucked under his arm.

  “Here,” he said, setting the pot down on the planks of the stoop. “It’s warm. You can get started with this. I’ll get you a bucket and see what else I’ve got.”

  Edgar carried the pot to Tinder and ladled up a handful of water and held it out for the dog to smell. Tinder was panting hard, and he licked the water from his fingers. Edgar dipped the rag into the water and ran his hand down Tinder’s foreleg. The dog whined and poked his nose at Edgar anxiously but let him dab at the dirt on his foot. Edgar rinsed the rag. The water clouded and turned brown. He pressed his face to Tinder’s muzzle while he soaked the cloth against Tinder’s pad again and again. Each time the rag came away covered with a mixture of blood and muck.

  The man emerged carrying a metal bucket and walked to a spigot that projected from the house’s foundation. It squeaked when he turned it. Fresh water sprayed out. While the bucket was filled, he turned to Edgar.

  “If I bring this over, will it spook your dog?”

  Edgar had his arm over Tinder’s back. He didn’t think a stranger’s approach would scare him, but it was a good question to ask, and his opinion of the man went up a notch.

  No.

  The man toted the bucket over and set it a cautious distance away and sat. The water in the small enamel pot was gritty and brown. The man reached over and tipped the dirty water out and dipped it into the bucket and returned it.

  Essay and Baboo groaned behind Edgar. It had been a mistake to place them where his back would be turned, making them more likely to break their stays out of curiosity. He sat up straight, keeping one hand on Tinder’s withers, and gestured at the man to stay still. The man nodded. Edgar turned and looked at the two dogs, who tucked their feet and locked gazes with him.

  Come, he signed.

  They bounded forward. Edgar worried that Tinder would forget his wound and rise to meet them but the pressure of his hand between the dog’s shoulder blades kept him steady. Essay and Baboo charged around them, heads reared back to get close with their chests while taking the stranger in widely.

  “I hope you meant it when you said they were friendly,” the man said. He was sitting very straight, trying to look at them both at once. Then he gave up and just looked at whichever dog happened to be in front of him.

  “Whoa buddy,” he muttered. “Okay. Okay.”

  When they’d discharged enough of their curiosity, Edgar clapped and gestured to a spot in the grass nearby. At first they refused. Edgar clapped again, and they trotted over, grumbling. He’d selected a spot where they could watch what was going on, and he felt them relax now that they could make eye contact with him. He turned back to cleaning Tinder’s paw. The fresh water had dirtied again, though now more bloody than brown.

  “You’re hurt, too,” the man said. Edgar nodded. His thumb blazed each time he dipped it into the wash water, but it reminded him how Tinder felt when he dabbed the cold cloth across his paw.

  “What happened?”

  Edgar stopped washing Tinder’s paw long enough to pantomime spiking the flat of one hand on two fingers of another.

  “Uh. Ouch,” the man said. He watched in silence for a while.

  “Okay,” he said at last. “Tell you what. I’m going back inside to see what I’ve got in my medicine cabinet. Here, let me get that—” He reached over and dumped the pan and refilled it from the bucket again. “I might have mercurochrome or hydrogen peroxide.”

  Edgar concentrated entirely on Tinder now. He’d cleaned most of the dirt away and he needed to swab between Tinder’s toes and around the pad. He maneuvered the dog’s paw so that he could submerge it in the small pan entirely. The water turned brown. Tinder yelped and jerked, but Edgar slowly worked his fingers between Tinder’s toes again, dumping the water several times while the man was gone.

  Then the man was squatting down in front of them. He set down a metal pan wrapped with tin foil, on top of which lay a collection of bottles retrieved from his medicine chest. One of them was Tylenol. He opened the bottle and held out two capsules.

  “Maybe you should take a couple of these,” he said.

  Edgar popped them into the back of Tinder’s mouth at once and pointed the dog’s muzzle upward and stroked his throat until his tongue swiped his nose. Then he scooped up a handful of clear water from the bucket and let Tinder lap it. The man nodded. He held out two more capsules, which Edgar quickly swallowed.

  “Right,” the man said. “Also, I’ve got something these guys might be interested in.” He folded back the foil and lifted a hunk of browned stew meat between his thumb and forefinger—the meat Edgar had taken from the freezer that morning to replace the stolen bratwurst. “I just made this tonight. It’s even a little warm yet.”

  Edgar nodded and released the two watchers. There was a time, he thought, when the dogs would have checked with him before accepting food from a stranger; they’d been drilled on it in town. But that was a remnant of a life long gone, cast aside by animals who hunted frogs and snakes and ate ripe turtle eggs. Essay and Baboo arranged themselves around the man, ears up, waiting their turn as he flicked hunks of glistening beef onto the grass. The man acted almost bashful under their combined gaze. With trepidation, he allowed Tinder to take the meat directly from his hands. But Edgar was grateful for any distraction that allowed him to more thoroughly wash Tinder’s wound. When the meat was gone, the man let Tinder lick the gravy off his fingers and pushed the pan out with his foot for the other dogs to clean up. He had a wry expression on his face. Edgar got the feeling this might be the happiest the man could look.

  “Call it what you will,” the man said, “but this is definitely not ordinary.”

  Henry

  WITH EDGAR’S HANDS OCCUPIED, THE CONVERSATION REMAINED lopsided. Essay and Baboo lay in the grass, sated, observing the proceedings by the glow of the moth-crossed porch light. Edgar lifted Tinder’s paw and examined the flayed wound in the center of his swollen, heart-shaped pad.

  “Jeez, tha
t’s gruesome,” the man said, as Edgar dabbed Tinder’s foot. “He’ll be lucky ever to use that thing again.” After another moment’s thought, he added, “Your thumb doesn’t look so great, either.”

  Edgar replaced the water in the enamel pan and went back to washing Tinder’s paw. Threads of blood diffused into the water. The outside tap water was icy, but that was okay—he wanted it as cold as possible. If he could barely feel his hands, maybe Tinder would barely feel his injury.

  He worked the bones of Tinder’s foot, lifting and pressing the toes like piano keys, tracing Tinder’s nails with his own, pressing his fingertips into the soft caves between the pads. Gently, gently, he opened the incision, letting the dog tell him where the pain was. When Tinder snatched his paw away, Edgar closed his eyes and pressed his face into Tinder’s ruff, stroking his chest and jaw, listening to the rush of blood through the dog’s neck, making Tinder realize how important the water was, asking over and over if they could try just once more. After a time Tinder let Edgar lift his foot back into the pan. Edgar waited until his fingers numbed, then began to rock the wound open, let the water flush it clean again.

  When he opened his eyes, the pan had been refilled with fresh, cold water.

  “That’s really something,” the man said. “Sometimes I can’t tell whether it’s you or the dog moving his foot.”

  Edgar nodded.

  “You know him real well, huh?”

  Yes.

  “Same with the other dogs?”

  Yes.

  “It’s okay that he’s got his teeth on your arm like that?”

  Edgar nodded. Yes, yes.

  He continued to work Tinder’s foot. When the water stayed clear, he sorted through the medicines on the stoop. He dumped the hydrogen peroxide into the pan, pouring it over Tinder’s paw. It fizzed at Tinder’s pad and the pursed white flesh on Edgar’s thumb. When the fizzing stopped, he propped Tinder’s paw over his leg and padded it dry. The man went inside and returned with a towel and a rag and some scissors.

  “I don’t have gauze, but if you want you can wrap it in this,” he said.

  Edgar nodded and took the pencil and paper.

  Do you have a sock? he wrote.

  “Right,” the man said, and disappeared into the house again.

  He cut the rag into strips and wrapped Tinder’s foot and tied off the ends of the bandages so they wouldn’t come loose. The man returned with a white sock in his hand. Edgar secured it with the last strip.

  “Okay, look,” the man said. “I need sleep. Work tomorrow.” He looked doubtfully at the dogs. “I’m guessing you won’t go inside without them?”

  No.

  The man nodded as if accepting another in a long series of humiliations.

  “Tell me they’re housebroken. Lie if you have to.”

  Edgar nodded.

  “All right, come on. We’ll figure out what’s next in the morning.”

  Edgar called Baboo and Essay and hastily washed their feet. The man held the door, bleakly ceremonious, as the dogs trotted over, raising their noses at the threshold to scent the air, and walked into the kitchen. Edgar knelt and arranged Tinder in his arms and staggered sideways through the doorway.

  “Left,” the man said.

  Edgar sidestepped along a short hall. Tinder sniffed at the coats hanging from the hooks as they passed. Then he was standing in a living room with a sofa, an overstuffed chair, bookcases, and a television with a phonograph on top. The floors were beat-up hardwood, deeply grooved and darkened with age. He lowered Tinder to a throw rug in front of the sofa. The dog tried to stand, but Edgar lifted his front feet from under him and set him down again. By the time the man appeared with a pillow and a pair of blankets, he had all the dogs downed and stayed.

  “Here,” the man said. “I’d appreciate it if you slept with one of those blankets under you, what with the mud and everything.”

  Edgar looked down at himself and realized that, though he had cleaned up the dogs, he was covered with a mixture of dried blood and dirt.

  “Get some sleep—not that I think you need me to tell you. You’re swaying, you know that, right? The bad news is, I have to be up early tomorrow for work. There’s a bathroom off the kitchen. I put some Band-Aids and some antibiotic goop on the end table, if you want to take care of that thumb.”

  Edgar nodded.

  The man took another long look at the dogs.

  “When they start chewing on things, try to steer them over to that chair, would you?” He jerked his thumb at an overstuffed armchair in the corner. It was upholstered in orange and brown. Images of ducks were involved in the pattern. “I hate that chair,” he said.

  Edgar looked at him, trying to decide if he was making a joke.

  “By the way,” he said. “My name’s Henry Lamb.”

  He held out his hand. Edgar shook it and then Henry walked to a doorway off the living room and turned and looked back.

  “I don’t suppose you have people you want called? Family? Someone to come get you?”

  No.

  “Yup,” Henry grunted. “Had to ask.”

  Edgar was too tired to wash up. He spread the blanket over the couch and lay down. His head ached with fatigue; his thumb just plain ached. He took the Band-Aids and slathered antibiotic ointment over the raw and puckered wound on his thumb. He was still trying to decide if he had the energy to turn out the light when a wave of exhaustion swept him away, the ointment and the Band-Aid wrappers still lying on his chest.

  THE SOFA SHOULD HAVE BEEN a rare pleasure. Instead, his sleep was plagued by absences: Why did the night withhold its panoply of sounds? Where were the bodies of the dogs that warmed him in the dark? He drifted near sleep like a buoy off a shore, until sometime in the night the great rock python Kaa materialized and looped his iridescent coils around Edgar’s legs and chest. It was comforting to meet a figure he recognized, yet how oddly like cotton Kaa’s reptilian skin felt under his fingertips, warm and downy and shot through in places with something almost like a turned hem. The wedge of Kaa’s head swayed before him, lisping nonsense, but even that master hypnotist couldn’t draw him deeper into sleep. Missing dogs. Smothering quiet. Snake’s coils.

  When dogs began to bark, Edgar jumped up, electrified by the alarm in their voices. He didn’t bother to disentangle himself from what he knew to be a dream figment, but somehow Kaa had passed into the waking world and taken the form of a blanket wrapped tightly around his legs. Considering how briefly he remained vertical, Edgar gleaned an admirable amount of information about the situation: there was Essay and Baboo and Tinder, hackles raised, fixated on something across the room; there was Henry Lamb, the object of their attention, wrapped in a threadbare checkered bathrobe, standing puffy-faced and startled in his bedroom doorway; and beyond the living room window there was a perfectly nice summer morning pouring itself into the yard. Then all Edgar saw were chair legs and carpeting, because he was busy crashing to the floor. The dogs turned to look at him. Their shoulders drooped and they began to sweep the air with their tails, gulping and panting in postures that said, possibly, they’d overreacted. Baboo pressed his nose into Edgar’s ear and slobbered to make amends.

  Henry slumped against the doorway. He attempted speech, but only a grunt came out. He shuffled past and into the kitchen.

  “Coffee if you want it,” he croaked after a while.

  Edgar settled the dogs and knelt beside Tinder. The bandage was still on his foot, which surprised Edgar and worried him, too. Had Tinder been healthy, he would have chewed it off in the night. With his hand under Tinder’s belly, Edgar coaxed the dog into taking a few steps.

  Good, Edgar thought, watching Tinder hold his foot aloft. At least he’s not going to try walking on it.

  When Edgar came into the kitchen with the dogs, Henry was sitting at the table cradling a coffee cup. Edgar tipped open the door and Essay and Baboo began trotting around the weedy lawn between the house and barn. Edgar lay his hand on Tinder’s
back to guide him outside. The dog hobbled a few steps, urinated, and hobbled back. When he stepped back into the kitchen, the shower was running and Henry’s cup sat empty on the counter. Edgar poured himself some coffee. He found milk in the refrigerator and sugar in a little bowl by the window. The result was bitter and thick but it shocked him awake. He sat on the stoop next to Tinder.

  Henry walked outside, car keys jingling in one hand, a lunch bucket in the other.

  “Had time to think about what you’re going to do today?” he said, easing down next to them.

  Edgar shook his head. This was a lie. What to do that day was exactly what he’d been worrying about, watching Tinder and trying to guess how long his bandage would last if they started walking. Or if Tinder could walk at all.

  “How’s your dog?”

  Edgar shrugged.

  “Right. Probably too soon to tell.”

  They sat watching Essay and Baboo.

  “Okay, here’s the thing,” Henry said. “While I was showering I tried to figure what most people would do in my place. Like, what’s the ordinary way to handle this? Call the police, I suppose, tell them I’ve got a lost kid and three dogs on my hands. That’s my first instinct, so I don’t trust it—it doesn’t show much imagination, you know?”

  Edgar nodded.

  “So I’m not going to do that. I mean, I don’t think I’ll do that.”

  Henry turned to give Edgar a look—a meaningful look—though Edgar couldn’t be sure exactly what its meaning was. It struck him again how there was something likable about the man’s defeatist sincerity. Henry Lamb saw the world as filled with road blocks and difficulties, or so it seemed. He conveyed, somehow, the impression that no bad news would surprise him, that every situation was a double-bind waiting to be discovered.

  “Look,” Henry said, “I’m telling you right now I’m not trustworthy. I was once, but not anymore. No promises. Nowadays I’m reckless and unpredictable.” He said this without a hint of irony in his voice.