David Wroblewski - The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

They fed and watered the dogs and cleaned the pens and tossed in fresh straw. Edgar scooped a coffee can full of quicklime from the bag by the back door and wheeled the manure down the path. After he’d dumped the manure, he dusted it with the quicklime. He found his mother in a whelping pen when he returned. One of the newborn pups had died, perhaps in fright from all the noise. Perhaps the mother had panicked and stepped on it. Trudy stroked it two-fingered. She and Edgar took it to the medicine room and put it in one of the thick plastic bags they kept there. Edgar took it from her and set it outside it in the snow. The pup’s body was still warm through the plastic, as though the mother had lain next to it even after it had died.

When he came back inside, his mother was waiting for him. Her voice shook, and she put her hands on his arms so he couldn’t turn away. “I want you to tell me what happened,” she said. “Now, if you can. Before we go back.”

He began to sign. He told her most of it-how he’d found his father lying there, how he’d dialed the phone and left the receiver hanging. But he didn’t tell her how he’d nearly knocked himself down trying to drum a voice out of his chest. He didn’t tell her about the thing that boiled and turned when he closed his eyes or the road he’d walked down or the rain. When he finished, she was quietly crying. They stood, arms around each other. At last, they pulled on their coats and extinguished the lights. The snow had stopped falling but the wind rushed against the barn, whirling the dry snowflakes into frigid galaxies. Clouds hung low over the trees, the sky barricaded and gray.

They crossed to the house. Almondine huffed along beside them. Behind the steamed, translucent kitchen window Doctor Papineau appeared for a moment at the sink, then stepped out of sight. When they reached the porch they paused to kick the snow off their boots and they climbed the steps and walked inside.

D OCTOR PAPINEAU SAT AT THE KITCHEN TABLE, ONCE MORE the white-haired, narrow-shouldered old man Edgar had known all his life, looking as shocked and hollowed out as Edgar felt. Hard to believe such a frail figure had lifted him out of the snow by his shirt back. But then it was hard to believe almost anything that had happened that afternoon.

Two pans simmered on the stove, lids clicking to release puffs of steam. Edgar shucked off his coat. His mother, resting a hand on his shoulder to steady herself, bent down to unlace her boots. Then they stood looking at one another. Papineau finally broke the silence. “It’s nothing much,” he said, waving a hand at the plates and bowls populating the table. “Soup and potatoes. I’m not much of a cook, but I know how to open cans and boil water.”

Edgar’s mother crossed the room and embraced the old man.

“That’s fine, Page,” she said. “It’s all we need tonight.”

Edgar pulled out a chair and sat. Almondine stepped between his knees and pressed her head against his belly and leaned in and he set his head in his hands and inhaled the dusty scent of her mane. For a long time, the room canted around them. When he lifted his head, a bowl of soup steamed at his place and Doctor Papineau was sliding a pan of quartered and skinned potatoes from the oven. He dished them around the table then seated himself.

Edgar looked at the food.

If you can eat, you should, Trudy signed.

Okay. It doesn’t feel right to be hungry.

Are you?

Yes. I don’t know. It feels like someone else being hungry.

She looked at the bandages on his hands.

Do they hurt?

His palms jangled and his left thumb throbbed, though he couldn’t remember how he’d sprained it. Facts too trivial to repeat.

Take aspirin.

I know. I will.

She dipped her spoon into her soup and lifted it to her mouth and swallowed and looked back at him. He saw the resolve behind it, and out of solidarity he rolled a chunk of potato into his soup and began to break it up.

Doctor Papineau cleared his throat. “I’ve closed my office for the morning.”

Edgar’s mother nodded. “You can sleep in the spare room-the sheets are in the bathroom. I’ll make the bed after dinner.”

“I’ll make my own bed. Don’t worry about that.”

Then it was quiet, just the tick of silverware. After a while, Edgar’s bowl was empty, though he could not have said what the soup tasted like. His mother had given up any pretense of eating.

“These things are a great shock,” Doctor Papineau said. It was apropos of nothing, and there was nothing else to say. “When Rose died, I thought I was fine. Heartbroken, but okay. But those first couple of days, I didn’t know what I was doing. You two need to be careful now, you hear me? I almost burned my house down that first night. I put the electric coffee pot on the stove and turned on the burner.”

“It’s true, Page. Thank you for reminding us.”

The vet looked at Edgar, then his mother. His expression was grave. “There’s some things we should talk about tonight.”

His voice trailed off.

“It’s okay, Page,” Edgar’s mother said. “Edgar is a part of everything that happens now, whether any of us like it or not. You don’t have to talk around anything.”

“I was going to offer to make some phone calls. Edgar will need to be out of school for a few days. I wondered if you wanted to speak to Claude, let him know what happened. And if there were other people you wanted to call. Relatives or whatnot. I could help you make a list.”

Edgar’s mother looked at Doctor Papineau and nodded. “Yes. But I would rather make the calls. Would the two of you clear the table?”

They all pushed back from their places. Doctor Papineau put the leftovers in the refrigerator and Edgar piled the dishes in the sink, relieved to be moving. He ran water and watched the suds grow over the plates. Doctor Papineau handed him a towel and said he was better off drying, with his hands like that.

Edgar’s mother walked to the counter and opened the telephone book and jotted some numbers on a scrap of paper. She looked at the shattered receiver dangling on the hook, cord end up, like a broken-necked bird, then set the apparatus on the counter and dialed. She held the receiver to her face two-handed and asked if she was speaking with the principal. She said that Edgar’s father had died.

“Thank you,” she said. “No. I appreciate that. Yes. Thank you. Goodbye.”

She lay the receiver on the counter, put both hands down, and took a breath. The speaker inside began to bleat from being off-hook and she pressed the hook to make it stop, then dialed again.

“Claude?” she said. “There’s some news. I thought you should know. It’s about Gar. Yes. He was working in the kennel this afternoon and he had…he had some sort of problem. An attack of some kind. He…No. No. We don’t know. Yes. Yes. Yes.”

There was a long silence. “I’m sorry, Claude. I don’t feel like that would be right just now. There’s nothing…Yes. Page is here. Yes. Thank goodness for him. All right. Okay. Goodbye.”

Then she dialed a third number and asked for Glen, speaking in a monotone. She arranged to meet at his office the next the morning and then she was quiet, listening to Glen talk. Edgar could only make out the moth-buzz voice from the cracked receiver, not the words. But his mother began to fold over the counter like wax softened in the sun until her forehead almost touched the papers.

“Is that absolutely required?” she whispered. “Isn’t there another…? Yes. Yes, of course, I know. But…”

More moth sounds.

“All right,” she said. Something in the sound of her voice made Edgar’s legs go weak. Doctor Papineau asked him a question. He shook his head without understanding. The vet crossed to his mother and set his hand on her shoulder. She pushed herself upright again.