David Wroblewski - The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

BY LATE AFTERNOON EDGAR was hungry-had been hungry, in fact, for quite some time. The final vestiges of panic from the night before had been drained by the monotony of breaking trail and he felt light-headed and irritable and his stomach gnawed at him. He wondered if it was the same with the dogs. They didn’t seem uneasy. They’d spent all afternoon tramping through underbrush and fording backwoods streams. So far the dogs had only missed their morning feeding, but he was used to breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and he didn’t even have a match to light a fire, much less a plan to get food.

He did have something in mind, though it wasn’t exactly a plan, since it depended largely on chance. The woods were dotted with vacation cabins and fishing shacks. What was called the Chequamegon, as if it were a single block of forest, was in fact a Swiss cheese of government-owned forest and private property, particularly around the dozens of lakes. Sooner or later they were bound to find a cabin stocked with supplies or come across a car with some fisherman’s lunch inside. They hadn’t seen one yet. He hoped that meant they were due.

The problem with that idea, he thought as they reached another clearing, was that cabins and cars were located on roads, not in the middle of the woods. And roads were to be avoided at all costs-the encounter with Glen Papineau had removed any doubt from his mind about whether anyone was searching for them. If they were spotted-even by someone driving along who later called the sheriff’s office to report a boy with a bunch of dogs-they would have a good idea where he was. Cutting through the woods, however, meant slow going. He doubted they were covering more than a mile every two or three hours, with all the underbrush and marshes and the dogs to manage and the caution with which he needed to pick his steps. A sprained ankle would be a disaster.

He wondered if someone might try tracking them with dogs. The woods near the kennel would be so soaked with his scent, the fields so crisscrossed with layers of track from his ordinary daily work, that only the purest, most experienced tracking dog had any chance. And every hour that passed, their track blended farther into the general mélange. Then there was the question of where they’d find tracking dogs, anyway. Sawtelle dogs would be useless. Field tracking was an art they didn’t practice. He could hear his mother laugh at the idea; she would tell anyone who suggested it that they might as well track him with cows.

But away from the kennel, everything changed. Their scent would be undisguised and distinctive, and between the four of them they were laying a scent track a mile wide, as obvious to a real tracking dog as if the ground had been lit on fire. The only way to break such a trail would be to get into a vehicle, but hitchhiking with three dogs was as good as walking into the sheriff’s office in Mellen. Which brought him back again to staying off the roads.

He was thinking about this problem, circling it and drawing out the alternatives in his mind, when through the trees he glimpsed sunlight reflecting off water. The late afternoon had grown cooler and the wind had calmed. When they reached the water-it was a lake-they walked out onto a small peninsula of sedge and cattails. The shoreline was irregular and densely forested. He scanned for cabins, but all he saw were pines making a sawtooth pattern against the sky and birds diving over the lake, sweeping up insects. Mosquitoes, he fervently hoped. The dogs walked to the water’s edge. Having spent no time at lakes, they reared and jumped at the small waves that washed up onto their feet.

They would have to go around the lake one way or another. Because he could see most of the shoreline to the north, he chose that direction. In the twilight they came upon a snapping turtle the size of a dinner plate marching toward the water. The dogs gathered around it, rearing as it turned its blunt head, jaws agape and hissing. He rushed over and shooed them away, thinking of the stories he’d heard of turtles’ jaws staying locked onto whatever they’d bitten, even after their heads were cut off. He kept his own feet well back from the thing. He didn’t want to find out if the stories were true.

As soon as the dogs abandoned the turtle, Tinder wheeled and backtracked along its path, then began to whine and dig. In a moment, the other dogs joined in and dirt was flying through the air. They were gobbling the turtle’s eggs, teeth clicking, when Edgar got there. He reached past them and picked up an egg. It was cool and soft in his hand, the size and texture of a leathery Ping-Pong ball. Looking at it, his stomach did a traitorous little flip. Before his mouth could water any more, he took three additional eggs from the rapidly diminishing pile and brushed the dirt off them. When Baboo looked up, he tossed one back. The dog snatched it from the air. Edgar tucked the other three in his shirt pocket.

It bothered him to see them eating like that, but he had nothing better to offer. When they could find no more eggs he slapped his leg and turned to pick a place to sleep while there was still some light. He chose a spot under a stand of ash near the water. The sky overhead was a deep cobalt. Suddenly he was bone tired. He walked the four of them out to the lake and let them drink and slipped off his shoes and rolled up his jeans and waded in. His feet stirred up silt in the water and he had to reach far out, overbalancing himself, to ladle up anything clear. Even then it tasted of algae and muck and left grit between his teeth. He drank again. He led the dogs back, carrying his shoes and socks. They curled up at once. He tried to lie between them, but a rock poked his ribs. His clothes had dried during the day, but they felt greasy and lax and his stomach was bloated with water. He thought he might gag if he dwelt on its taste. Hunger twisted inside him. He got up and found a better position, though he could reach only Essay. Baboo stood, grumbling as if to say, oh all right, and moved over and circled twice and settled with his muzzle near Edgar’s face. Shortly, Tinder followed.

HE WOKE SOMETIME IN THE NIGHT. The dogs lay curled about him in circles of slumber and somewhere a nightingale was calling, “Old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody.” Whatever had roused him had been in his dreams. And then he remembered. He was in the air above the workshop stairs. And he was falling, falling…

SUNRISE. CLAMOR AND SCREECH of birds, as if the sunlight had set them afire. The dogs stretched where they lay. Immediately, he was thinking about food-his belly felt curdled and a coppery tang coated his teeth, as if the minerals in the ground had seeped into him. By the time he sat up, the dogs were snooping in the undergrowth. He called them over one at a time and felt for stickers and burrs, starting with their tails and moving toward their heads. They lay chewing their forelegs as if pulling kernels off a corn cob as he worked. Occasionally, they nuzzled his hands, objecting to some pinch or tug. Then he stayed the dogs and walked each of them out and trotted back and signed a release. When they returned, he reached into his shirt pocket and produced a turtle egg. Tinder first, then Baboo. Essay went last-a vain attempt to teach her patience. Having watched the others get their reward, she streaked toward him through the woods the instant he moved his hands.

Then they set out again, keeping the lake to their left. The underbrush was sparse compared to the previous day’s travel and they made good time. The morning air was thick with moisture and the grasses shed water droplets that glistened on the dogs’ coats. When they’d rounded the lake halfway, he could see water stretching away in a jagged meander to the south.

He was fretting over the problem of food when he glimpsed the first cabin. The sight of it did nothing to ease his mind. He stayed the dogs and walked forward until he understood it could not possibly be occupied. They walked out of the brush together to inspect it. The little shack had collapsed inward many years before. If it had ever been painted, the paint had long since washed into the earth, and now only the roofing shingles, bright purple, hadn’t grayed. A scabrous folding chair stood on what remained of the crude front porch, shedding paint flakes the color of dried mustard as rust worked its way underneath. Inside was a calamity of plywood and mossy bedsprings and vast spider webs hanging like spinnakers between the timbers. The whole thing covered no more ground than a good-size tent, ten feet on a side. The dogs circled and poked their noses into crannies and corners until he called them away for fear of rats and snakes.