They circled the fire until their chests belled and their tongues hung loose from their mouths. Embers settled on the pile of papers the boy had made and a few of these began to curl and rise flaming into the air. The flames leapt to the orchard trees by wind and sympathy, until only the house and the young maple and the elderly apple tree whose fingers brushed the house opposed them. Red beams beat across the trees. In the south field, the birches and the white crosses glowed like rubies. The shadows of the dogs, cast from the top of the hill, darkened the forests. Great drabs of tar flew sputtering from the barn roof until the whole structure became transparent, down to the glowing ribs. The wires of the pens pooled like water and boiled away. The fiberglass top of the truck crinkled and smoked and shrank inward, belching a nacreous yellow cloud. The wires strung between the house and barn lay snaked and smoking along the ground. In time, the tires of the truck swelled and burst like gunshots and the truck tipped its lee side toward the flames, lacking the sense to save itself. Far away, on the distant ledge of the world, a thunderhead glowed in response to the fire’s call, but if those clouds came they would offer nothing but an inspection of the bones, charred and smoldering.
The woman lay sprawled on the heat-curled grass between the house and the fire, deaf to their calls, deaf to the cries of the blind man standing over her, ignorant and insensate, as though she had departed her body and left it heaving on the shores of the world. Those who understood saw that the time inside her had been boiled away by the heat of the fire and, if anything, thought she might rise transformed into a swan or a dove.
The heat grew. It drove them first toward the house, then to the garden behind the maple. Fire echoed between the now incandescent orchard and the cracked stone pedestal of the barn. Those dogs were not all equally good; some of them fought and others cowered and still others traced idiotic paths around the spectacle and harassed the blind man as he dragged the woman across the grass. Yet witnesses they were, one and all, trained and bred to watch, taught by their broody mothers to use their eyes, taught by the boy himself to wait for a gesture that put meaning into a world where none existed. Among them, the two pups whimpered and cried and pressed against whoever didn’t snarl. One way or another, all oriented themselves against that hemisphere of fire. Some turned their faces into the night. Some sank to their bellies and rested their jaws on their forefeet, facing into the flames like Sphinxes into the sunset.
Essay ran down into the field then. A few of the other dogs followed, including her littermates and also the two pups, these last, slow and confused. When she reached the rock pile, Essay waited until all had stopped with her, then she circled back toward the yard, snarling at any who tried to follow. They milled and waited. She appeared again with half a dozen more dogs following, the rest unwilling to leave the aureole of heat. She trotted through the pack and along the edge of the field, her back reddened by the blaze. When they reached the old logging road, she passed the birches without hesitation and departed the field near the southwest corner, cutting crosswise through the forest. In the woods, they slowed their pace. The dogs spread out beside and behind her.
They passed through fence after fence. Some of the dogs fell away, lost or disheartened, but she did not stop or circle back. They would follow or they would not, she had only made the possibility clear. Night birds decried their passage. A ménage of deer sprang from their bedding grounds. She led the dogs along, checking her way, though it had been marked so obviously that some ran ahead. And then, realizing she’d lost the pups, she did stop and backtrack. She found them huddled near a fallen tree, whimpering and shaking in the moonlight. She lowered her muzzle and they licked at her face and swatted their tails through the bracken, and in return she mouthed their necks and nosed along their sides and feet and bellies, then turned and trotted away. So coaxed, they began to follow again.
The forest streamed round. The night passed. They tracked through marshes and forded creeks until the dark vault overhead gave way to a deep orange, the sky ignited by what they’d left behind. Presently, Essay emerged from the woods. Before her, a field sloped away, fallow for many seasons and dotted with scrub pine. The grass bent wet and heavy in the still morning. From behind her came the hoarse cry of the diaspora, bursting through the underbrush. When the sun broke over the treetops, all before her glittered.
To the west, across the field, Forte paced the tree line, his figure cutting back and forth on the thin fog that clung to the ground. To the east, where the field bottomed out, a scattering of lights twinkled among the trees and here and there the slanted rooftop of a house was visible. Essay could hear the earth breathing around her. If not for the white steeple that rose over the treetops and the headlights that flickered into view on a blacktop far away, she might have been looking on a scene from the beginning of the world. A thing like a song or a poem rang in her ears. There was Forte. There was the village. One by one, the Sawtelle dogs trotted from between the trunks of the trees and followed the forest’s edge until they all stood together, Finch and Opal and Umbra and Pout and the two unnamed pups and all the others who had followed through the night. They traced Essay’s gaze across the field, first east, then west, and shuffled about her and licked her muzzle, making their desires known, and then they waited.
Essay stepped into the grass. She stood, paw lifted to her chest, nose raised to scent the air, watching it all. For an instant, as the morning light brightened, everything in the field stood motionless. She looked behind her one last time, into the forest and along the way they’d come, and when she was sure all of them were together now and no others would appear, she turned and made her choice and began to cross.
Acknowledgments
T his book has been a long time in the writing and consequently I owe thanks to a great many people. Eleanor Jackson, my literary agent, has been an unstinting champion, adviser, and friend; she is an idealist of the savviest kind. Lee Boudreaux, my editor at Ecco, worked like a dynamo to improve this book, challenging every line, every word, every preconception, yet somehow making me laugh in the process. The result is infinitely better for her efforts and she has my deepest gratitude. Abigail Holstein, also at Ecco, saw the manuscript through many travails and offered advice both timely and wise.
I am indebted to my teachers in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers—Ehud Havazelet, Joan Silber, Margot Livesey, Richard Russo, and Wilton Barnhardt, as well as the rest of that remarkable faculty—for the confluence of ideas and talent they bring to Swannanoa each January and July. Richard Russo has been especially generous with his time and consideration. Thanks to Robert Boswell for a pivotal workshop in Aspen and the gracious advice that followed. Thanks also to Robert McBrearty, teaching at the University of Colorado and in ongoing workshops and innumerable lunches, for indispensable advice on writing and life. Finally, thanks to the Vermont Studio Center for a writing fellowship during which sections of Part Three were written.
The following people read drafts of this book and offered in return the great gift of their insight: Barbara Bohen, Carol Engelhardt, Charlene Finn, Nickole Ingram, Karen Lehmann, Cherie McCandless, Tim McCandless, Brad Reeves, Nancy Sullivan, Audrey Vernick, and Karen Wolfe. They pointed out, compassionately, each draft’s weaknesses, which helped make this book better, and its strengths, which gave me hope. No writer could ask for a finer advisory council.
Factual information was provided to me by Maura Quinn-Jones at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Marshfield, Wisconsin, on the basics of speech pathology; Peter Knox at the University of Colorado, on Latin; Jim Barnett, on Japanese; Rob Oberbreckling, on the nature of structure fires; Roger Sopher and Dr. William Burton, on the properties of ether; and Lisa Sabichi, DVM, who endured what are surely some of the strangest questions ever put to a veterinarian. I am grateful for her patient responses, as well as the extraordinary care she has given to two dogs I’ve been privileged to know. To suit my own purposes, I’ve twisted every fact these people supplied me; the resulting error
s and inaccuracies are my fault alone.
There exists a wealth of literature on canine biology, cognition, and training methods. A list of sources consulted would be far too long for these notes, and inevitably incomplete, but anyone interested in the fictionalized training techniques employed by the Sawtelles might well begin with the essay “How to Say ‘Fetch!’” by Vicki Hearne and work outward from there. I have also read, with great pleasure, A Journey into Mellen, a century’s worth of Mellen newpaper articles, condensed and compiled by a committee of volunteers and edited by Joe Barabe. Last of all, from the two real authors of Working Dogs, Elliot Humphrey and Lucien Warner, I ask belated forgiveness for inventing a coauthor; John Sawtelle needed a friend who understood his project and from whom he could learn the lessons of the Fortunate Fields work.
Above all, this book owes its existence to Kimberly McClintock, an extraordinary artist, a loving and generous partner, my most ferocious advocate, my first, last, and most exacting reader. Her encouragement and wisdom suffuse every page of this book.
About the Author
DAVID WROBLEWSKI grew up in rural Wisconsin, not far from the Chequamegon National Forest where The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is set. He earned his master’s degree from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and now lives in Colorado with his partner, the writer Kimberly McClintock, and their dog, Lola. This is his first novel.
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Credits
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Copyright
THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE. Copyright © 2008 by David Wroblewski. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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