David Wroblewski - The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

When Edgar reached Claude, he put his hand on the rifle stock. Claude knocked Edgar’s hand away.

“Get out of here,” he muttered. “Get back to the house.”

He’s almost come in twice, he signed, knowing that at best Claude would only gist it. He can’t catch them, not by himself.

He reached for the rifle again. This time Claude turned and grasped the front of his shirt and Edgar found himself sprawling backward into the dry leaves and undergrowth, fighting for balance and then hoping he might make enough racket to get Forte’s attention. But the wind was gusting through the treetops, and the stray was intent on the motions of the fawn.

He didn’t hear Almondine coming. Suddenly, there was a huffing beside him and she stood there, panting furiously, gaze riveted on the stray.

Edgar swept an open hand in front of her face.

Stay.

She saw the command coming and tried to look away, but he got her attention and repeated it. She dropped into a sit. When he turned, Claude had settled the rifle against his shoulder. Edgar watched his finger tighten over the trigger, but there was no kick, no roar. Claude fumbled along the stock, searching for the safety.

From the time they were pups, Sawtelle dogs learned that stay meant remaining not just still but quiet-that whining and barking were a kind of following. And Almondine was in a stay.

Edgar turned to her and touched a hand to his temple.

Watch me.

Her great head swiveled to face him.

Release.

He meant to catch her before she moved, but her hindquarters came off the ground before he’d even completed the sign. All he could do was lunge and clamp his fingers around the hock of her back leg. She sprawled out in the path with a loud yelp.

It was enough to make Claude glance away from the rifle sights. Then Almondine was up again, forging ahead, half dragging Edgar along the path. He finally got in front of her and put his hand around her muzzle and forced her to look him in the eye.

Speak, he signed.

And then Almondine began to bay.

This time Forte couldn’t mistake the sounds behind him for wind. He turned and saw them and leapt away all in a single motion. Claude swung the muzzle of the rifle to track the fleeing dog, but there was nothing left to sight on but swinging branches.

Edgar didn’t realize he’d loosened his grip on Almondine’s collar until she was already away, bounding down the path. She crossed in front of Claude. For a moment, the muzzle of the rifle dropped and tracked her, and then, without pause, Claude pivoted to the field and shot the smaller of the two deer as it stretched its neck, wide-eyed and preparing for flight. The other deer shrieked, executed three springing leaps, then vanished into the woods with the fawn close behind.

Edgar scrambled into the field. The doe lay kicking convulsively. Blood arced from the wound in her neck. Her eye rolled to look at him. Claude walked up beside Edgar and lowered the muzzle of the rifle to the animal’s chest and pulled the trigger. Even before the report finished coming back off the hills, Claude had turned and begun walking toward the house, rifle grasped loosely by his leg like a stick of lumber.

For a long time Edgar stood looking at the deer-her brown hide, her black-tipped ears. Crimson blood seeped from her wounds and then stopped. Almondine appeared at the edge of the field, panting. She trotted over, then froze and approached the animal step by step. The moment when Almondine had passed in front of the rifle’s muzzle kept replaying in Edgar’s mind.

Come on, he signed. Get away from that.

They met Claude walking back into the field carrying a hunting knife and a spade.

“Hold on a second,” he said.

Edgar stopped, then began to walk again.

“Okay, but you’re gonna have to make a decision in a while,” Claude said to his back. “We can help each other here if we want to.”

HE SPENT THE EVENING in the barn, Almondine close by, grooming dogs until his hands ached. Claude approached him once, but Edgar turned away. The sun had set and the stars were coming into sight overhead when the truck pulled into the driveway.

The carcass of the deer hung by one back leg from a low branch of the maple tree. His father was asking questions even before he was out of the cab. Claude walked over to meet them. Forte had finally downed a deer, he said. He’d watched it from the barn roof, but by the time he’d gotten the rifle the deer was down and the stray was working on it, and he’d fired a shot to scare it off.

“The doe was still alive but tore up pretty bad. No choice but to shoot it. I didn’t want to leave it, so I dressed it out and took off the one leg he’d chewed up and brought it back here,” he said.

The lie didn’t surprise Edgar, but what Claude said next did. He expected Claude to return to the old argument, insist they bait Forte and shoot him, or poison him. And this time it was an argument he would probably win. Instead, he suggested they forget Forte.

“As far as that dog goes,” Claude said, “I don’t think I hit it, but I know I scared the hell out of it. Took off so fast I never had time to take a second shot. We’re never going to see it again.”

He looked at Edgar as he spoke, and at first Edgar didn’t understand. His mother caught Claude’s gaze and turned to look at him.

“Where were you during all this?” she asked.

Lit by the porch light, flies penciled their shadows against the carcass of the deer. Edgar’s father turned to face him as well. Claude stood behind and between them, and the resolute expression on his face lifted. The corners of his mouth edged up into a smile.

Claude was presenting Edgar with a choice. He saw that. All his talk of scaring off Forte had just been making the terms of the deal clear. He was offering to forget the stray, let him come or go. The price was silence. Edgar looked at the carcass of the deer and then at his parents.

I was asleep in the living room, he signed. I missed everything.

IF HE AND CLAUDE HAD struck a pact that night, it remained a silent one. Claude never again suggested they try to find or kill Forte and Edgar never told his father the truth about the deer. When he could be surreptitious about it, Edgar filled the steel dish with kibble and set it behind the garden. It was empty by morning, though whether licked clean by Forte or plundered by the squirrels he couldn’t tell.

One evening, as Edgar was crossing the lawn, in that dilated moment after sunset when the sky holds all the light, he saw Forte watching from the far side of the garden and he stopped, hoping the dog would finally trot into the yard. Instead, he edged back. Edgar returned to the barn. He filled the steel dish with kibble and walked up the carefully weeded rows of sweet peas and corn and musk melon until he stood a single pace away. Even then the dog would not come forward. It was Edgar who took the final step, out of the garden and into the wild grass growing at the tree line. There, Forte ate the kibble from Edgar’s hand, trembling. Afterward, he let Edgar lay a hand on his shoulder. Thus began a ritual that would last all that summer and into the fall. A week might pass before the stray appeared again. Edgar would carry food out and the dog would eat while Edgar worked burrs from his coat. Always, before Edgar had finished, Forte would begin to pant and then he would turn and walk away and bed down at the forest’s edge, where the lights of the house glittered in his eyes. And if Edgar came closer then, the dog would rise and wheel and trot into the woods without pausing to look back or making a sound.

HE WOKE THAT DAY TO AN EMPTY BEDROOM AND THE DISTANT recollection of Almondine jumping off the bed in the gray morning light. He’d meant to follow her but then he lay back, and when he opened his eyes again the sun was bright and the curtains billowing inward, carrying with them a volley of echo-doubled hammer strikes-Claude at work on the field side of the barn roof. He kicked off the covers and dressed and descended the stairs, sneakers in hand. Almondine lay sprawled in a parallelogram of sunlight on the porch. His father and mother were at the kitchen table sharing pages from the Mellen Weekly Record. Morning chores had been done and the two kennel dogs, brought to the house on the nightly rotation, were back in their runs.