David Wroblewski - The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Essay and Baboo were milling about on the unlit stoop when he got there. He knelt and guided Tinder down onto the wooden planks. Then he clapped softly and led Essay and Baboo a few feet onto the grass and downed them as well.

When he turned back, a man’s face had appeared in the window above the kitchen sink. The porch light flared. Edgar checked the dogs. They lay at attention, watching. The inside door swung open and the man he’d watched carrying groceries from his car that evening looked at him through the screen.

“Can I help you?” the man said. His gaze fell on Tinder, panting on the stoop. He looked at Edgar and saw the blood. “You’ve been in an accident?”

Edgar shook his head and signed a response. The man wasn’t going to understand sign, but there was no better way to get started. With luck, he’d understand he was being signed at.

My dog is hurt. We need help.

The man watched Edgar’s hands. Edgar waited while he figured it out.

“You’re deaf,” he said.

He shook his head.

“You can hear me?”

Yes.

Then Edgar gestured toward his throat and shook his head. He made as if to write on his palm. The man looked at him blankly, then said, “Oh! Got it. Right. Just a second,” and disappeared into the house, leaving Edgar to stare into the kitchen he’d ransacked that morning.

His legs trembled as he waited. He knelt by Tinder and stroked his ruff and watched as the dog tongued his wounded paw in long strokes, eyes glassy and unfocused, as if staring into another world. In the yellow porch light his bloody fur gleamed black. Then Edgar went to Essay and Baboo and set his hands intimately under their jaws, touching them the way he would if everything were okay, and together they watched the doorway.

The man returned. He stood behind the screen holding a pencil and a pad. His gaze went to Tinder, then to Edgar squatting beside the two other dogs. Evidently, he hadn’t noticed Essay and Baboo before.

“Whoa,” he said. He put his palm forward and patted the air, as if trying to make everything stay still while he took stock of things.

“Okay. Okay. Definitely…definitely not an ordinary situation,” he said, giving Essay and Baboo a wary gaze. “They’re friendly?”

Edgar nodded. For the man’s benefit, he turned and stayed them. There was something morose about the man, Edgar thought. It was an odd idea to have about someone he’d just met, but an unmistakable aura of resignation enveloped the man, as though he were one of those people depicted in cartoons who walked around with rain clouds over their heads, people whose change fell out of their pockets when they bent down to pick up a penny. The man’s reaction to Essay and Baboo only reinforced this impression-as if he’d somehow been expecting to find a pack of ferocious dogs outside his door one day. He didn’t smile-his expression was guarded, though not unfriendly-but he didn’t frown, either. If anything, his eyes conveyed a look of benign misgiving, the result of some lifelong despondency.

“Right,” he said. “Trained. But friendly? Yes?”

Yes.

He peered into the dark. “Any more out there?”

Edgar shook his head and he’d have smiled if his stomach hadn’t been churning with anxiety. The man opened the screen door and stepped out, fixing the dogs with a doubtful look. Edgar took the pencil and the pad.

My dog cut his foot. I need water to clean it and a pan or bucket.

They looked down at Tinder.

“Are any people hurt?”

No.

“I should call a doctor,” the man said.

Edgar shook his head vehemently.

“What’s wrong with your voice? Did you hurt your throat somehow?”

No.

“You’ve always been that way?”

Yes.

The man thought for a second.

“Okay, wait, I’ll be right back,” he said.

He walked inside. Edgar heard some clanking and rattling and then water running in the kitchen sink. In a moment, the man emerged carrying a white enamel pot, water sloshing over the sides. A ratty blue towel was tucked under his arm.

“Here,” he said, setting the pot down on the planks of the stoop. “It’s warm. You can get started with this. I’ll get you a bucket and see what else I’ve got.”

Edgar carried the pot to Tinder and ladled up a handful of water and held it out for the dog to smell. Tinder was panting hard, and he licked the water from his fingers. Edgar dipped the rag into the water and ran his hand down Tinder’s foreleg. The dog whined and poked his nose at Edgar anxiously but let him dab at the dirt on his foot. Edgar rinsed the rag. The water clouded and turned brown. He pressed his face to Tinder’s muzzle while he soaked the cloth against Tinder’s pad again and again. Each time the rag came away covered with a mixture of blood and muck.

The man emerged carrying a metal bucket and walked to a spigot that projected from the house’s foundation. It squeaked when he turned it. Fresh water sprayed out. While the bucket was filled, he turned to Edgar.

“If I bring this over, will it spook your dog?”

Edgar had his arm over Tinder’s back. He didn’t think a stranger’s approach would scare him, but it was a good question to ask, and his opinion of the man went up a notch.

No.

The man toted the bucket over and set it a cautious distance away and sat. The water in the small enamel pot was gritty and brown. The man reached over and tipped the dirty water out and dipped it into the bucket and returned it.

Essay and Baboo groaned behind Edgar. It had been a mistake to place them where his back would be turned, making them more likely to break their stays out of curiosity. He sat up straight, keeping one hand on Tinder’s withers, and gestured at the man to stay still. The man nodded. Edgar turned and looked at the two dogs, who tucked their feet and locked gazes with him.

Come, he signed.

They bounded forward. Edgar worried that Tinder would forget his wound and rise to meet them but the pressure of his hand between the dog’s shoulder blades kept him steady. Essay and Baboo charged around them, heads reared back to get close with their chests while taking the stranger in widely.

“I hope you meant it when you said they were friendly,” the man said. He was sitting very straight, trying to look at them both at once. Then he gave up and just looked at whichever dog happened to be in front of him.

“Whoa buddy,” he muttered. “Okay. Okay.”

When they’d discharged enough of their curiosity, Edgar clapped and gestured to a spot in the grass nearby. At first they refused. Edgar clapped again, and they trotted over, grumbling. He’d selected a spot where they could watch what was going on, and he felt them relax now that they could make eye contact with him. He turned back to cleaning Tinder’s paw. The fresh water had dirtied again, though now more bloody than brown.

“You’re hurt, too,” the man said. Edgar nodded. His thumb blazed each time he dipped it into the wash water, but it reminded him how Tinder felt when he dabbed the cold cloth across his paw.

“What happened?”

Edgar stopped washing Tinder’s paw long enough to pantomime spiking the flat of one hand on two fingers of another.

“Uh. Ouch,” the man said. He watched in silence for a while.

“Okay,” he said at last. “Tell you what. I’m going back inside to see what I’ve got in my medicine cabinet. Here, let me get that-” He reached over and dumped the pan and refilled it from the bucket again. “I might have mercurochrome or hydrogen peroxide.”

Edgar concentrated entirely on Tinder now. He’d cleaned most of the dirt away and he needed to swab between Tinder’s toes and around the pad. He maneuvered the dog’s paw so that he could submerge it in the small pan entirely. The water turned brown. Tinder yelped and jerked, but Edgar slowly worked his fingers between Tinder’s toes again, dumping the water several times while the man was gone.