David Wroblewski - The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Claude lay in the middle of it all on a hastily improvised bed of bales, one hand hanging slackly to the floor, palm up, fingers half curled beside a liquor bottle. Between each of his breaths, a long pause.

Edgar almost turned and led Almondine down the stairs again, but at that moment Claude let out a quiet snore and Edgar decided, as long as Claude was asleep anyway, they could work their way along the front wall to get a better look at him. They edged out. Edgar sat on a bale of straw. Claude’s chest rose and fell. He snorted and scratched his nose and mumbled. They moved one bale closer. Another snore, loud enough to echo in the cavernous space. Then Edgar and Almondine stood over Claude.

The black hair. The face so deeply lined.

Edgar was pondering again the differences between his father and his uncle when, without opening his eyes, Claude spoke.

“You people know you got a hole in your roof here?” he said.

Edgar wasn’t sure what startled him more-the fact that Claude was awake, or that he’d begun to smile before he opened his eyes. Almondine bolted with a quiet woof. Edgar sprawled backward, encountered a bale of straw, and plopped down.

Claude yawned and sat up. He set his feet on the mow floor and noticed the liquor bottle. An expression of pleasant surprise crossed his features. He picked it up and looked at the two of them and shrugged.

“Going-away present from some friends,” he said. “Don’t ask me how they got it. Supposed to be impossible.”

He lifted the bottle to his mouth for a long, languorous drink. He seemed to be in no rush to say more, and Edgar sat and tried not to stare. After a while, Claude looked back at him.

“It’s pretty late. Your parents know you’re out here?”

Edgar shook his head.

“I didn’t think so. But on the other hand, I can understand it. I mean, some joker shows up and wanders out to your kennel in the middle of the night, you want to know what’s what, right? I’d’ve done the same thing. In fact, your father and I used to be pretty good at sneaking out of the house. Regular Houdinis.”

Claude mused on this for a second.

“Getting back in used to be a whole lot harder. Did you use the window or go through the-oh, never mind,” he said, breaking off when his gaze shifted to Almondine. “I guess you snuck out the back. The old tried and true. You figured out the way off the porch roof yet?”

No.

“Your dad didn’t show you?”

No.

“Well, he wouldn’t. You’ll figure it out on your own anyway. And when you do, remember that your old dad and I blazed that particular trail.”

Claude looked around at the mow. “Maybe a lot else is different, but this barn is just how I remembered it. Your dad and I knew every nook and cranny in this place. We hid cigarettes up here, liquor even-we used to sneak up for a belt in the middle of summer days. The old man knew it was here somewhere, but he was too proud to look. I bet if I tried I could find half a dozen loose boards right now.”

Some people got uncomfortable talking with Edgar, imagining they would have to turn everything into a question-something he could answer by shrugging, nodding, or shaking his head. The same people tended to be unnerved by the way Edgar watched them. Claude didn’t seem to mind in the least.

“Did you have something you wanted to ask,” he said, “or was this purely a spy mission?”

Edgar walked to the work bench at the front of the mow and returned with a scrap of paper and a pencil.

What are you doing up here? he wrote.

Claude glanced at the paper and let it drop to the floor.

“Not sure I can explain it. That is, I can explain it, but I’m not sure I can explain it to you. If you know what I mean.”

Edgar must have given Claude a blank look.

“Okay, your father asked me not to get into too much detail here, but, uh, let’s just say I’ve been inside a lot. I got really tired of being inside all the time. Little room, not much sun, that sort of thing. So when I got in that room tonight, even trimmed out and fancy like your mom made it, it occurred to me that it wasn’t much bigger than the room I’d been in. And that didn’t seem like the right way to spend my first…” A bemused look crossed his face. “My first night home. I started thinking maybe I’d sleep on the lawn, or even the back of the truck. Watch the sun rise. Thing is, the outside is awfully big. That make any sense? Spend a long time cooped up, you go outside and it feels almost bad at first?”

Edgar nodded. He set two fingers on the palm of one hand and swept them over his head.

“Exactly right. Whoosh.” Claude swept his hand over his head too. “Know what Scotch is?” he asked.

Edgar pointed at his bottle.

“Good man. Seems like most people get interested in liquor eventually, and they’re either going to try it on their own…”

The bottle of Scotch tipped itself toward him invitingly. Edgar shook his head.

“Not interested, eh? Good man again. Not that I’d have let you have much. Just wanted to see if you were curious.”

Claude unscrewed the bottle cap, took a sip, and looked squarely back at Edgar.

“Still, it would be a big favor to me if you’d keep this between us. I’m not doing any harm up here, right? Just relaxing and thinking, enjoying this place. Your folks would probably end up all worried for no reason. This way, they don’t know you’re sneaking out at night, and they don’t know I went for a stroll, either.”

Claude’s smile, Edgar decided, looked only a little like his father’s.

“You’d better get back to the house now. If I know your dad, he wakes everybody up at the crack of dawn to start work.”

Edgar nodded and stood. He was about to clap Almondine over when he realized she was already standing in the vestibule, looking down the stairs. He walked over to join her.

“Here’s a trick that might come in handy,” Claude said to his back. “You know that stair that squeaks? About halfway up? Try it over by the left. There’s a quiet spot, not easy to find, but it’s there. If you get in the door without slamming it, you’re home free.”

Edgar turned and looked back into the mow.

I know that spot, he signed. We found it this morning.

But Claude didn’t see him. He’d sprawled backward across the bale, fingers meshed behind his head, looking through the gap in the roofing boards and into the night sky. He didn’t look drowsy, more like a man lost in thought. It came to Edgar that Claude hadn’t really been asleep at all as they’d worked their way along to get a better look at him. He’d been teasing them, or maybe testing them, though for what reason Edgar could not imagine.

The next morning, Edgar came downstairs to find his uncle seated at the kitchen table, eyes bloodshot, voice croaking. He didn’t mention their late-night encounter; instead, he asked Edgar to teach him the sign for coffee. Edgar rowed one fist atop the other as if turning the crank of a grinder. Then his father walked out to the porch and Claude joined him and they talked about the barn roof.

“I can start on it,” Claude said.

“You ever reroofed a barn?”

“No. Or a house. How hard can it be?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”

“I’ll figure it out.”

That afternoon, Edgar’s father and Claude returned from the building supply in Park Falls with a new ladder tied to the truck topper and the truck bed filled with pine planks, tar paper, and long, flat boxes of asphalt shingles. They stacked the supplies in the grass behind the back runs and over it all they spread a new brown tarpaulin.

MORNINGS, CLAUDE STOOD ON THE PORCH SIPPING COFFEE, breakfast plate balanced on his palm. After dinner, he sat on the steps and smoked. Sometimes he unwrapped a bar of soap and turned it over and after a while began to shave away curls with a pocketknife. One morning, not long after Claude moved in, Edgar picked up the bathroom soap and discovered the head of a turtle emerging from the end.