David Wroblewski - The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

This was under the stairs.

Yes.

What does it mean?

You’ve seen him use one.

Claude?

Edgar looked at the Impala sitting in the driveway, then the dark house. At his bedroom window, he thought he saw the shine of Almondine’s eyes.

He’s proposed.

She won’t accept.

She laughed at him. But she will. When she’s alone, she’ll accept.

She won’t! She-

Before Edgar could protest again, his father set his hand flat against the center of Edgar’s chest. A whispery splash on his skin. At first he thought his father only meant to lay his hand on him in a gesture that meant, be still and listen, but then he brought his other hand forward and Edgar felt something pass into him, and his father made as if to cradle Edgar’s heart. The sensation was so strange Edgar thought his heart would stop. But his father only cupped the thing in his hands as though it were a newborn pup. On his face Edgar made out regret and anger and joy and most of all unutterable sorrow.

Any thought to protest or resist left him. The world grayed. Then memories flooded into Edgar in a cascade, like the drops of rain passing through his father’s figure; images seen by a baby, a toddler, a young man, an adult. All his father’s memories given to him at once.

Standing over a crib looking at a silent baby whose hands move over his chest. Trudy, a young woman, laughing. Almondine, a wet, blind pup. Vision of a young boy with a younger boy beside him holding something in the air; something bloody. And smiling. A thousand ruby-lit dogs. And with the images, a sense of responsibility; the need to put himself between Claude and the world. Dogs fighting. Storms mounting the field. Trees slipstreaming past the truck windows. Dogs: sleeping, running, sick, joyful, dying. Always and everywhere, dogs. Then Claude, retreating from the workshop, searching the floor for something. Darkness. And now, standing before him, a boy as clear as glass, his heart beating in two cupped hands.

Edgar fell to his knees, gasping. He leaned forward, emptied his stomach into a pool of rainwater. From the corner of his eye he saw the syringe lying in the mud, light glinting off the shaft of the needle.

He looked up, panting. His father was still there.

Whatever he’s wanted, he’s taken, ever since he was a child.

I’ll tell the police.

They won’t believe you.

Edgar began to sob.

You’re not real. You can’t be real.

Find-

What? Stop! I couldn’t read that.

His father signed it again, fingerspelling the last word.

Find H-A-A…

He couldn’t make it out. It was H-A-A and then something else, followed by a very distinct I: H-A-A-something-I.

I still didn’t…

The mist had lessened further, and his father was barely visible. His hands sprayed away on a gust of wind. Then he vanished entirely. Edgar thought he was gone forever, but when the wind died he reappeared, kneeling now in front of him, his hands so faint Edgar could barely make out the motion.

A touch of the thumb to the forehead.

The I-hand held to his chest.

Remember me.

And then his father reached forward a second time.

He thought he would rather die himself than feel that sensation again. He scrabbled along the muddy ground until the barn was against his back and signed furiously into the night, arms crossed over his head.

Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!

After that everything quieted to absolute silence. The mist grew so refined it made no noise as it came to earth, only the drip of water from the eaves. He could not bring himself to look up until it had stopped altogether.

From behind a feathered break of clouds, the moon emerged, a gleaming sickle of bone as pointed as the syringe beside him. The trees at the edge of the forest glowed blue. He walked along the driveway and looked back at the barn. The dogs were at the front of their pens holding sit-stays, coats like mercury. Their muzzles tracked him as he approached. They lowered their brows and ducked their heads, not wanting to be out anymore. But they did not move.

From the moment they opened their eyes the dogs were taught to watch and listen and trust. To think and choose. This was the lesson behind every minute of training. They were taught something beyond simple obedience: that through the training all things could be spoken. Edgar himself believed this-believed they had the right to ask of the dogs certain things. But the more forcefully they asked, the more certain they had to be, for the dogs would obey. Doubtful, uncomfortable, uneasy, frightened: they would obey.

The line of dogs waited for him to signal a release.

The clouds gaped and folded and closed across the moon.

H E CAME UP OUT OF A DARKNESS THAT WAS NOT SLEEP BUT something vaster and more comforting, the black of willful unconsciousness or perhaps the night that precedes the first wakening, which babies know in the womb and forget ever after. There was Essay’s breath panting slow and hot against his face. When he cracked an eyelid her jet-whiskered muzzle and curious eye filled his vision and he pushed her away and curled his head to his knees and squeezed his eyelids shut. Even so, he’d glimpsed enough to know he lay inside the run farthest from the doors and nearest the whelping room, and that the bare lights blazed along the kennel aisle. Outside, rain fell, roaring, a torrent against the roof. There was the rustle of the canvas flaps and another dog trotted up, this time Tinder, who dug his muzzle into the crevice between Edgar’s chin and chest and snuffled and drew back and cocked his head with a low, puzzled groan.

Bits of straw began to itch along his neck. His shirt clung to his ribs, gelid and damp. A spasm shook his body, then another, and he gasped and despite himself drew a full breath that carried into him the odors of the kennel-sweat and urine, straw and turpentine, blood and defecation and birth and life and death-all of it alien and bitter as if the whole history of the place itself had suddenly blossomed in his chest. And with it, masked until the last instant, the memory of what had happened in the night.

Then Essay and Tinder accosted him together. He could summon only the strength to sit cross-legged against the wooden wall and bury his face in his arms, counting by sound the dogs shuffling through the straw in their pens as rain thundered onto the barn. When he lifted his head again, Essay and Tinder stammered before him and snaked their necks against his palms and shimmied. In time he pushed himself upright. Patches of wet cloth sucked away from his skin. He slipped out of the pen and walked to the Dutch doors and stood with one hand on the latch listening to water sheeting off the eaves.

He drew a breath and swung the door outward. The sapphire sky above floated a small, lone cloud made orange by the sunrise. The new leaves on the maple stirred and quaked; sparrows cartwheeled over the wet field like glazier’s points against the sky, and the swallows nesting in the eaves plunged into the morning air. The house burned white against the green of the woods. The Impala, neon blue. But there was no torrent to be seen, not even a drizzle. The sound of falling rain possessed him for one moment more and then vanished.

He was past the milk house before he remembered the syringe and turned and found it crushed in the center of a grassy puddle, needle snapped, barrel broken and awash. He cupped it in his palm and carried the pieces to the old silo where he pitched them through the rusted iron rungs and listened as they struck the far curve of cement and stone with a papery ring. Then he walked up the driveway, faster as he passed the house, the orchard, the mailbox. He started up the road, wheeled and headed the other way, breaking into a run and then dropping into a jerky reined-up step. He turned again. After a time he found himself walking back down the driveway and he began to circle the house in that same halting stride. Five times around, ten, twenty times, looking into the darkness behind the window glass. Each time he passed the old apple tree its lowest branches tugged at him and he brushed them away until he finally came to rest, panting, caught for the umpteenth time, and at last he turned to look at it.