David Wroblewski - The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Then the smallest of the funnels slid by, its bloom of water skimming the lake’s surface like an upended rose. A jagged thread of light snaked down, drawn to a tree near the shoreline. The sound that followed was more like an explosion than thunder, but it was instantly swept away by the howling wind. When Edgar looked back at the lake, only the larger funnel remained, so squat and black it looked as if the thing were drawing earth and sky together.

What happened next took maybe ten seconds. The ropy funnel that had just passed out of view reappeared, skipping and twisting across the water like a tentacle, moving back along its line of travel. Then the sinuous gray thread of its body was pulled toward the large funnel. They separated for a moment, then twined, the smaller of the two spiraling around the larger before it was consumed. Or nearly so. A whirling streamer peeled away and flailed over the lake, dipping halfway to the water before evaporating. At the same time, the larger funnel changed from ashen to ghostly white, towering palely over the cove, lunging and retreating.

Unbelievable, Edgar thought, as the wind buffeted them. What he was seeing was unbelievable.

Yet he had seen unbelievable things before, came the answer. And he had run from them.

That was the moment Essay decided to bolt. One instant Edgar’s arms were wrapped tightly around her chest, the next she’d slipped away as effortlessly as if greased. She dashed across the cove, her bounds foreshortened by the wind. Baboo barked and scrabbled his hind feet against the bare rock, but Edgar doubled over and threw his arms around the dog, clamping one hand over his muzzle to stop his thrashing. Almost at once he understood that Baboo didn’t intend to follow Essay-he wasn’t drawn by her vision, her compulsion, whatever had made her race to meet the pillar that roared at them from out on the water. He was only trying to call Essay back.

The white funnel lurched toward shore, two hundred yards away now, maybe less, the distance from the Sawtelles’ house to the middle of the lower field, and there it came to a standstill, swaying over the lake. Essay faced it, barking and snarling, tail dropped like a scimitar. When she turned sideways, the force of the wind blew her hind feet out from under her and she rolled, twice, barrel-wise, before scrambling up and facing the wind squarely again, this time carefully holding her ground.

Something crashed to the beach in front of the rocks and a spray of blood pinked the air-an enormous fish of some kind, guts burst and streaming across the pebbled cove.

Now Essay tried to advance. Each time she lifted a foot from the sand her body wobbled precariously in the gale. Finally, it drove her to the ground. She lay there, ears flattened against her skull, muzzle wrinkled, legs extended like a hieroglyph of a dog, stripped by the roar of the wind, it seemed to Edgar, to her essence, insane and true all at the same time. When the wind abated for an instant, her hackles stood. Then it hit again, harder than ever. The trees along the shore whirled and bent and righted themselves, the breaking of their limbs like rifle cracks.

I should go out there, Edgar thought. She’s going to be killed. But then Baboo will bolt.

He had time to debate it in his mind, to weigh the loss of one against the other, and he saw there was no way to decide. She had made this choice, he thought-what his grandfather had always wanted, what he’d wished for time and again in his letters. So, in the end, Edgar lay on the floor of the cave as the wind fired stones at them like bullets. He redoubled his grip on Baboo and watched between his fingers as Essay was driven back to the tree line, crouching and retreating, her muzzle moving but no sound reaching them.

And in that moment, he thought: it isn’t going to work. I’ll never get far enough away. I may as well never have left.

Out on the lake, something changed. The funnel stalled, narrowed, whitened, whitened still more, then lifted off the water. The steam at its base dropped into the lake as if a spell had been broken. The stem of it writhed in the air above them like a snake suspended from the clouds. The wind lessened and the blast of sound abated. Essay’s bark came thinly to them and Baboo began to bark in response. From across the cove, Edgar heard Tinder doing the same.

Overhead, the tube of wind slid sickeningly through the air, preparing to crash down again, this time directly onshore, but without pause it revolved up into the clouds and disappeared as if pursuing some tormentor there. A wash of foamy black water swept up from the lake almost to the rock wall, then carried back with it half the water flooding the little cove. The freight train sound vanished; the wind gusted and was still. There was the hiss and boom of waves breaking up and down along the shore.

The moment Edgar loosened his grip, Baboo sprang from the ledge and ran to Essay, who was already trotting triumphantly before the retreating waves. Baboo accompanied her for a few yards then turned and bounded toward the rocks where Tinder and Henry huddled, and he paced there, waiting.

Getting Tinder down was not easy. The rock was wet and slick and Tinder resisted being carried. Henry took him in his arms and slid down, managing just enough grace to maintain his hold and scraping his back across the rocks in the process. When Henry set Tinder down on the wet sand, the dog limped to the wind-thrown fish and sniffed it. Drops of rain-real rain, not flung lake water-began to fall. Out on the lake, a huge mass of driftwood floated in the water like the tangled bones of a sailing ship dredged from the bottom.

They found Henry’s car plastered with green leaves. The passenger-side window sported a long white crack. They hustled the dogs inside and sat for a long time breathing and listening to the patternless drum of rain on the roof.

“There’s something wrong with that dog,” Henry said. “That wasn’t hardly a sensible thing to do.”

Edgar nodded. But he thought, how can we know? He closed his eyes and the image of Ida Paine, bending toward him across her counter, filled his mind. If you go, she whispered, don’t you come back, not for nothing. It’s just wind, that’s all. Just wind. It don’t mean nothing.

It don’t mean nothing. He tried saying that to himself.

He took up the paper and pencil lying on the seat.

Let’s turn around, he wrote.

“Now that’s more like it,” Henry said. He keyed the ignition and wheeled the car onto the road facing the direction they had come. “At least one of you is thinking straight.”

Edgar smiled, grimly, his face turned to watch the rain and the passing trees. If Henry knew the alternative, he thought, he’d like it even less.

On the way back, Henry kept the radio off. He drove without comment, except for once, when, apropos of nothing in the moment, he shook his head and muttered, “Christ all Friday.”

IT WAS STEAMING HOT that next August afternoon, as Henry’s car rolled along the forest road near Scotia Lake, where Edgar and the dogs had passed the Fourth of July in what now seemed to him a time of aimless wandering. The water was hidden by the trees and foliage. From the inside of the car, it all looked unfamiliar. They overshot the driveway before Edgar caught sight of the little red cottage, now boarded up for the season.

Stop, he signed. That was it.

“You sure?”

Edgar looked again and nodded. He recognized the white trim and the front door and the window he had crawled through. He remembered the taste of the chocolate bar he had stolen there, how it had melted in his back pocket while he fed the dogs butter squeezed through his fingers.

Henry nosed his sedan into the weedy drive and killed the engine. “I’m going to say this one last time,” he said. “I can take you all the way to wherever you’re going. I don’t mind.”