David Wroblewski - The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

It was an old tree, old already when he was born, maybe older than the house itself. At eye level the trunk split into three thick and nearly horizontal limbs, the longest of which arced toward the house and ended suddenly in a mass of waxy leaves. The branch would have continued through the kitchen window had it not been pruned mid-limb. He was shaking and chilled and his fingers were stiff but he managed to boost himself into the crotch of the tree and from there he worked himself onto the limb. The bark felt greasy from long days of rain. Past halfway it began to buck and wobble under his weight. Rainwater cupped in the new foliage showered him every time he moved. He worked slowly along. When he got to the stump end he steadied himself by gripping a hornlike pair of limbs and settled his sternum against the branch and lay outstretched, a swimmer among the boughs.

The window over the sink was closed, the gingham curtains parted to either side. The thin morning light was not enough to illuminate the interior, and at first only the orange power light at the base of the freezer was visible, its bulb winking and flickering. His breaths made the limb tremble like the string of an instrument wound overtight; it was no wider than his hand and its bark bit into his chest and soon his chest began to ache from it. He did not know why he was in the apple tree or what he was looking for but he lay waiting. In time, the side of the barn glowed red. One of the kennel dogs pressed into its run and looked around and retreated. The morning air was bright and water-laden. From downfield a killdeer chattered kee-dee, kee-dee.

Almondine floated into the kitchen, padding along on old legs. She paused beside the stove and circled the table and disappeared. Then Edgar’s mother walked into view, robe cinched around her waist. She stood with her back to the window and started the Mr. Coffee. She lifted her hair in a rope and dropped it outside her robe and waited. She filled her cup. She liked coffee black with just a bit of sugar-he’d made it for her many times that winter-and he watched her lift the spoon from her cup and put it wet into the sugar bowl twice and sip the coffee. The corner of the kitchen was windowed on two sides. She stood in profile looking west at the vapor writhing over the field. When Claude appeared he was dressed, as if he had just arrived. He walked up behind her and put one hand on her shoulder and let it rest there. He smoothed the collar of her robe against her neck and walked to the sink and rinsed out a cup. He didn’t look out then, just turned and poured his coffee and sat in the chair nearest the sink.

Their murmur penetrated the window glass but not their words. After a few minutes Edgar’s mother set her cup on the table and walked to the bathroom. Claude sat watching the mercator of sunlight advance up the field. Wisps of fog swirled and thinned under the new heat of morning. A flock of sparrows lit at the bird feeder at the corner of the house, bickering and flapping one another out of the way, so close Edgar could have snatched one.

He lay in the tree and watched. Claude was leaner than his father and though he was younger and without his father’s bookish stoop, his hair was shot with gray. He sat in Edgar’s father’s chair and pursed his lips and brought the coffee cup to his mouth.

Edgar had been afraid he would see them kiss.

Almondine went up to Claude and raised her face and Claude smoothed his hand over the top of her skull. Edgar’s mother emerged from the bathroom, hair turbaned. Incandescent light from the bedroom fell across the kitchen table. Claude stood and went to the sink and rinsed out his coffee cup and finally he looked out that window.

Maybe he didn’t know what he’d seen at first. His gaze passed aimlessly across the tree and moved on. Edgar had time to wonder if the new leaves were camouflage enough to hide him, though it didn’t seem possible and he didn’t care anyway. Claude swabbed the dishcloth in his cup and picked up a towel and began to dry it. But somewhere in the back of his mind there must have been a twinge, a nag, an afterimage, for when he lifted his face again he looked straight at Edgar and then he shuddered and stepped back from the sink.

A STEP BACK-A SMALL MOTION, perfectly natural, if any reaction can be said to be natural when you realize someone has climbed a tree outside the window and has been watching like a panther for God knows how long. Since you woke up, perhaps. You lean forward. The boy’s hair is wet and dripping, as if he has been there all night in the rain. He has a frozen, impudent look on his face as if the pane of glass between you could protect him from anything, from everything, and if he blinks you do not see it. After a long stare to be sure you are seeing what you see, you understand that the boy has been up there all along-the rustle wouldn’t have escaped your attention even if you had been half-asleep and distracted. And the birds would never have battled like they did over the feeder just an arm’s length away.

You weigh the idea that this is a prank. You lean back and try to quietly laugh, as if you are in on it. You turn your back and set the coffee mug on the table and then look out the window again and watch with false equanimity as the boy peers back, hands clasped around the bough he is balanced so far out upon. When his mother comes up behind you, you turn and face her and that is when you kiss. You unselfconsciously kiss. Her hand lingers on your shoulder. You stand with your back to the window, saying nothing about what you have seen, as she pulls her coat off its hook. She says one last thing and then she and Almondine are out the door and walking toward the barn.

You turn back to the window. Though you expect him to have looked away to gaze at his mother and the dog as they cross the yard, he has not. His expression is slack and his eyes fill his face. He is all watching, no reacting. And a small voice in the back of your mind says this is a boy that spends his days watching. You’re not going to win a staring contest.

And you get to thinking as well (he is still staring from his wet perch) that if this is a contest then you have already lost, because in that moment when you first understood what you were seeing through the window-when your eyes said it was so and your mind replied it was impossible-in that moment, as you think of it from the boy’s viewpoint, you know you looked frightened. You stepped back from the window, back from the sight of his foreshortened body, fronted by that face, those eyes, that shock of hair hanging over his forehead, dripping.

You stepped back and looked up and your eyes were wide. Now you glance up again, attempt an insolent grin, but it does not come off easily. It comes off forced and the grin fades as if the muscles of your face have grown paralytic and this is also something the boy can see, who has not once looked away or betrayed an emotion. But your failure to muster a smile isn’t what gets to you. What gets to you is that the boy seems to be reading your mind, can hear these thoughts, and this makes you wonder what else he has seen, what else he might know, or guess. And as you lock gazes and you finally force the amused smile you wish had come easily, what unnerves you, what finally makes you turn away, is that without moving a muscle or blinking an eye he begins to smile back.

B Y THEN THE YARD WAS IN FULL MORNING LIGHT, THE LAWN a beaded pelt of water. Edgar clambered backward along the apple tree branch and dropped to the ground and trotted past the porch steps. His mother had hooked the barn doors open using the eyelets screwed into the red siding. From the doorway he could hear her voice. She was in one of the whelping rooms soothing a mother as she examined her pup. He walked into the workshop where metal scrap described an ocher swath across the floor. From its nail above the bench Edgar took down an old framing hammer, the one Claude had used roofing the barn the previous summer, the same one he’d lost more than once in the tall grass so that now it bore a freckled patina of rust. The thing was heavy in his hand and he meant to walk back to the house with it, but when he turned Almondine stood in the doorway. Her gaze was fixed upon him and her tail swung side to side in an unhurried wingbeat. The sight of her pulled him up short. He tightened his grip on the hammer’s handle-shaft and went forward and bent and put his free hand to her forechest to walk her back, but instead of giving way she craned her muzzle up and pressed her nose to his ear and then his neck.