David Wroblewski - The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

And though he hated to admit it, Henry’s plan was working. After the previous day’s orgiastic meal, Edgar had thought he wouldn’t eat for a week, but now his mouth was watering. Every time he looked, something new had appeared on the table. Pickles. Root beer. Something wrapped in butcher paper. What looked like lemon meringue pie. Yet they couldn’t walk into that yard. Short of waiting, there was no way to be positive the man hadn’t told the sheriff’s department to stop by around, say, nine o’clock, when he could be sure the kid would be sitting in his house.

When the bratwurst finished cooking, Henry juggled the hot can of beans with an oven mitt and dumped them into a bowl. He stacked the sausages on a plate and set the plate on the card table and casually helped himself, scooping out a mound of potato salad and a dollop of baked beans. Then he quartered the newspaper in a flapping commotion and plucked a pencil from the empty glass across the table and began to work the crossword. Maybe it was Edgar’s imagination, but he thought he could smell the spicy aroma of cooked bratwurst all the way up in the field. Baboo certainly could. He sidled up to Edgar and panted anxiously in his ear. Edgar smoothed his hand absently along the dog’s topline.

A half-dark had fallen. A handful of stars had emerged in the clear azure sky. He stood and clapped quietly to bring Essay forward. When she didn’t appear at his side, he suddenly understood that Baboo hadn’t been panting over food. He whirled and clapped more loudly. When he turned back, Essay was already trotting into the circle of the porch light, her gait jaunty, her tail slashing prettily through the air, swinging her front legs in wide circles as she ran, as if greeting a long-lost friend. Henry set down his newspaper. Essay finished before him in a perfect sit, perhaps three inches away.

“Hello, you,” Henry said, leaning back. His voice carried up the slope in the still evening air. Even from that distance Edgar could see Essay giving Henry the moocher’s eye, sitting up straight, perking her ears, swishing her tail.

Baboo, standing beside Edgar, began to whine and stomp.

Sit, Edgar signed.

With a bitter groan Baboo sat, then sidled to his left for a better view. Then Tinder hobbled forward. The two of them sat scenting the air, heads bobbing and tilting like marionettes whenever Henry spoke.

There’s no use now, Edgar thought. He walked to Tinder and knelt. You’re not running down there on that foot, he signed. He got the dog up and put his arms underneath him and looked him in the eye. When they understood each other, he released Baboo, then put one arm under Tinder’s belly and the other under his chest and stood. Tinder was heavy, but his weight was becoming familiar, and Edgar took slow, careful steps down the hill.

Henry took a swallow of beer and watched them approach. In the last fifty feet, Baboo discarded any shred of reserve and bolted forward, skidding into a sit beside Essay. The two dogs looked back and forth between Edgar and Henry. Then Essay trotted back to meet Edgar and Tinder, oblivious to the look Edgar gave her and tossing her head as if escorting them to a fête, all of it her idea.

Tinder had been patient on the walk down, but now he began to wriggle in Edgar’s arms. Edgar lowered him to the ground. The dog nuzzled Essay then hopped across the grass. In a moment, Henry was ringed by dogs. Given all his preparations, Edgar expected Henry to issue a cheerful invitation, but he didn’t know Henry very well yet.

“I thought you’d run off,” Henry grunted, looking over the dogs’ heads at him. He gestured toward the food. “Have a brat. I burned them pretty bad, but I guess they’re better than nothing.”

AFTER EDGAR STUFFED A BRAT into a bun and scooped potato salad onto his plate, Henry gestured toward the white parcel on the table. Edgar unwrapped it to find three large soup bones with shreds of raw, red meat attached and plenty of marrow.

“Guy at the meat locker told me those were good ones for dogs,” he said.

Edgar nodded. He offered the package to Henry so that he could hand them out, but Henry shook his head. “Thanks anyway, but I was planning on using all my fingers tomorrow,” he said. By that time the dogs had scented the bones and were waiting when Edgar crouched beside his chair. They trotted off to grind their teeth against the shanks and imagine, with unfocused gazes, the animal from which the bones had come.

Then, as if Edgar’s arrival weren’t of the least interest, Henry returned to his crossword puzzle. Occasionally he sat back and tapped his pencil and looked into the dark, as lost in thought as the dogs.

Finally, he set the pencil down and opened a fresh beer. “Darn it,” he said. “I need a twelve-letter word meaning ‘butterfly-like.’ Starts with L.”

Edgar looked at Henry. He picked up a pencil and wrote, Lepidopteral, and pushed the paper across the table.

Henry turned back to the crossword. “Nice,” he said. “What can you get for a…let’s see…six-letter word for ‘echo.’ Ends with R-B.”

Edgar thought for a moment and, beneath his previous entry, wrote reverb.

“Yep. Yep. That works again,” Henry said. “Aha-lentil!” he cried, and filled in another row. “One left. Eight-letter word for ‘Formed of fire or light.’ Starts with E, ends with L.”

Edgar shook his head.

“All right, forget it. I got close. Thanks for the help.” He set the paper down, divided the pie into six slices, passed a plated slice to Edgar, then took one of his own. He pointed his fork at Tinder, who busily gnawed his soup bone. “How’s that guy’s foot?” he asked.

Bad, Edgar wrote. Swollen.

“His main problem is going to be infection, you know that, right?”

Yes.

“You wash it out again today?”

He held up four fingers.

Henry nodded. “I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, am I?”

Edgar shrugged, not wanted to seem ungrateful.

Henry ate a forkful of pie and looked at him. “I don’t mean to pry,” he said, “but it would make things a little easier if you told me your name.”

Edgar sat mortified while Henry finished his pie. In all his thinking and planning throughout the day, this was one detail that hadn’t crossed his mind. He couldn’t simply write his real name down. After years of naming pups, he thought, it ought to be simple to come up with a name for himself. But he didn’t have days or weeks to think this over. He tried to cover his confusion by helping himself to a second slice of pie. He looked at the dogs. Then an idea came to him. He scribbled on the paper and pushed it over to Henry.

“Nathoo?” Henry said, doubtfully. “You don’t look much like a ‘Nathoo.’ Is that Indian or what?”

Call me Nat, Edgar wrote.

Henry looked at him.

“What do you call your dogs?”

The words Essay, Baboo, and Tinder appeared on the paper. Henry repeated them, pointing to each of the dogs in turn.

Yes.

Then, to get Henry off the subject of names, Edgar decided it was time to clean Tinder’s foot once more. He filled the enamel pan with soapy water and carried it out to Tinder.

“This going to take as long as it did last night?” Henry asked.

Edgar nodded.

“Then I’m turning in. Make yourself comfortable when you’re done.”

Henry gathered up the remains of dinner, as well as the card table and chairs. By the time Edgar rewrapped Tinder’s foot, Henry had retired to his bedroom. Edgar led the dogs inside and downed them on the rug in the living room.

He hoped the previous night had been a fluke, but as soon as he stretched out on the sofa it became clear he’d lost the ability to sleep on upholstered furniture. This had not previously seemed to be a skill. Just weeks before he had regularly slept in a bed, under sheets and blankets, with a roof overhead and a single small window through which to view the night. Now his body insisted he was in a chamber. The night sounds came through the half-open window as if down a long pipe. The pliability of the sofa cushions felt all wrong; far more comfortable than twigs gouging his side and bugs biting, but in the forest he and the dogs had slept touching one another-if any of them moved, the others knew it at once. Now he was forced to reach down to touch the dogs at all, and even then it was only with his fingertips. And anyone could walk up to the window before he knew it.