David Wroblewski - The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

The pups had fallen asleep, except one who fussed at a nipple, nursing then letting go then taking it again. He reached past the pup and rolled the nipple between his fingers and brought his fingers wet to his nose and tongue.

What are you complaining about? he signed.

He set aside the dictionary and shifted the pup back into place, stroking it two-fingered while it nursed and he didn’t stop until it, too, lay asleep.

AFTERWARD, HE HERDED HIS LITTER into the workshop and up the narrow steps, stopping only to retrieve the photograph of Claude and Forte from its hiding place, tucked into the envelope with the Hachiko letter. The mow was still warm from the day’s heat. He swung open the broad door at the front and let the night air wash in, cool and thick with pollen. The dogs wrestled and plunged across the straw bales at the back, for the once-vast wall of yellow had diminished to a low platform. They would need more straw soon. That meant a day standing at the mow door, waiting at a creaking conveyer for bales and driving in the hay hook and stacking them crosshatched to the rafters. He looked out at the dark woods. He wondered if Schultz had imagined teams of men working where he stood at harvest time, shouting, cursing, taunting those below to bring on the hay as they hauled on the sling ropes.

When the dogs settled down he shut the door and they began to work. He’d forsaken the regular training schedule, instead teaching them playful acts with no point and no purpose. Tagging one another. Carrying scraps of doweling from place to place. Dropping to the floor during a carry. Watching the dogs was the only thing that put him at ease, and he made a game of it, trying variations, setting up barriers, switching the order, testing connotations. A tag, they decided, meant not merely scenting another dog, but a solid nose-push. A carry meant not dropping a thing, even when a tennis ball rolled by. Edgar found a pen and an old spoon and a length of welding rod and he asked the dogs to take those items in their mouths instead of doweling, despite their strange texture and taste.

When they’d agreed on this new meaning of carry, an hour had passed and he declared a break. While the dogs lounged in the loose straw, Edgar took out the photograph of Claude and Forte. The stray was on his mind for the first time in a long while. Such a foolish dream to have hoped the dog would come in from the woods. He thought of that day in the field, how swiftly Claude had turned to shoot the doe after the stray bolted. After a while he slid the photograph back into his pocket and he read from The Jungle Book, letting his hands swipe through the air.

So loud did he howl that Tha heard him and said, “What is the sorrow?’” And the First of the Tigers, lifting up his muzzle to the new-made sky, which is now so old, said: “Give me back my power, O Tha. I am made ashamed before all the Jungle, and I have run away from an Hairless One, and he has called me a shameful name.” “And why?” said Tha. “Because I am smeared with the mud of the marshes,” said the first of the Tigers. “Swim, then, and roll on the wet grass, and if it be mud it will surely wash away,” said Tha; and the First of the Tigers swam, and rolled, and rolled, till the Jungle ran round and round before his eyes, but not one little bar upon his hide was changed, and Tha, watching him, laughed. Then the First of the Tigers said, “What have I done that this comes to me?” Tha said, “Thou hast killed the buck, and thou hast let Death loose in the Jungle, and with Death has come Fear, so that the People of the Jungle are afraid one of the other as thou art afraid of the Hairless One.” The First of the Tigers said, “They will never fear me, for I knew them since the beginning.” Tha said, “Go and see.” And the First of the Tigers ran to and fro, calling aloud to the deer and the pig and the sambhur and the porcupine and all the Jungle Peoples; but they all ran away from him who had been their Judge, because they were afraid.

He roused the dogs again and began rehearsing two new commands. He began with away, demonstrating in small increments: at first it was enough to look somewhere else without moving. The shared gaze training helped now, and they caught on quickly. Then he coaxed them into taking a step, then several steps, then running all the way across the mow. Finch was the first to get it: no place in particular to go, just not here. The dog fairly danced with excitement.

Far more difficult was the idea that another dog might convey a command. For example, if he wanted Baboo to down, all Edgar had to do was lift his hand in the air-Sawtelle pups knew that sign when they were three months old. But now he wanted Baboo to down if Finch or Essay nosed him on the hip. They called this linking-teaching a dog that one action automatically followed another. Linking was what made a dog sit when his companion stopped walking. Linking was what made for a clean finish on a recall, when the dog not only returned but circled behind and sat on one’s left. And when it came to linking, the Sawtelle dogs were genuinely gifted.

He put Baboo in a stay and stepped one pace back.

Tag, he signed to Essay, indicating Baboo.

The instant Essay touched the dog, Edgar raised his hand. Baboo downed. A moment of revelry. They practiced again, this time with Baboo tagging. After dozens of trials-with breaks to race for a knotted rag thrown into the dark corners of the mow-they’d all gotten the hang of it. He moved them farther apart-five, ten, twenty feet-using a long line threaded through a floor ring for corrections at a distance. After more practice, with just a hint of down the dogs dropped when tagged-not every time, but half the time, then two thirds of the time, until finally he could stand motionless and watch while Essay dashed across the mow, nosed Baboo’s hindquarters, and Baboo sank to the floor.

Edgar celebrated by rolling them onto their backs and holding their feet against his face. They were fastidious about their pads and when he inhaled against them, an earthy popcorn smell filled his senses. The dogs craned their necks to watch, eyeing him as if astounded, and boxing and writhing to coax him back again. He clapped them to their feet for more practice. Always the same few commands now. He played them again in different orders with different pairings. Different obstacles. Longer or shorter releases.

Roll on your back.

Carry this to the other dog.

Tag that dog.

It was very late, and he was almost tired enough to sleep when he chose a sequence at random and watched them work it out. Opal trotted across the mow holding a dowel in her mouth. She tagged Umbra. Umbra dropped to the floor.

Something about the sight of it brought Edgar to his feet. He had them repeat the sequence.

Carry this to that dog.

Tag that dog.

Down when you are tagged.

All at once blood was roaring in his ears. He understood that an idea had slowly been dawning on him, parceled out over the course of days in bits and pieces from some dim compartment of his mind. They went through the drill again. Each time, he saw more clearly the image of Claude backing out of the barn, looking for something dropped or flung away, the white snowy world behind him.

If that sight brought the memory back for Edgar, might it do the same for Claude?

When he was too tired to run the dogs, he sat and peered at the photograph of Claude and Forte. He closed his eyes and lay on his side, distantly aware that the dogs had gathered around, watching. For so long he’d lurched between one truth and another. Nothing had seemed certain, nothing had even seemed knowable.

But now-perhaps-he’d found a way to know for sure.

H E HEARD THE SOUND OF FOOTSTEPS ON THE MOW STAIRS, and his mother ducked around the vestibule door, her dark hair in a loose ponytail that swung sinuously across her shoulders. Essay, Tinder, and Opal were in the mow with Edgar, in sit-stays at the moment, and he was holding a length of thick rope, knotted at both ends, of the kind they used for practicing retrieves. Almondine lay sprawled near the doorway.