The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
“—need to stay where you are. I am—”
The dogs pranced in his path as he crossed to the barn. He’d left the door open and all the time cold air had been pouring in. He flung the door shut and threw the latch and knelt beside his father.
Are you okay are you okay are you okay.
His father wouldn’t look at him.
Wouldn’t look at him.
He ran to the medicine room at the back of the barn and tore his hands across the shelves. Gauze and pills scattered around his feet as he pawed through the supplies. He returned empty-handed. Just keep him warm, he thought. He pulled a spare coat off the hook inside the workshop and draped it across his father’s chest.
A wrack of shivers came over Edgar. Almondine walked up and put her nose to his father’s cheek. Her hind legs shook, as if scenting something fearful and strange. The sight made Edgar angry and he got his legs beneath him and flew at her. She bolted to the far end of the barn and watched as he staggered back to the workshop. He knelt and looked into his father’s face. He pressed his hands against his chest. He thought he would feel breath being drawn, but instead there was a single long exhalation. Through his father’s open mouth came a groan, expressionless and mechanical, in a falling note. After that, nothing at all—no movement, no in-suck of breath, no twitch of an eyelid. Just that collapse, like a wax figure melting.
He ran down the line of pens, beating on the wire. The dogs stood on their hind legs and wailed and bayed, the roar of them like an anthem. Yet through it all he heard the whisper of snow seeping beneath the doors, seething along the floor toward his father lying there on the concrete, motionless, looking nowhere and breathing nothing. The floor jolted as if something had struck the earth. Edgar realized he was sitting. He pulled himself upright, square by square along the wire of a pen door. Then he was beside his father again, and the dogs were quiet. Almondine crept over and nosed his hand and sat beside him. The others stayed hidden at the far end of the kennel, panting and watching.
And so they waited.
Storm
WHEN HE CLOSED HIS EYES SOMETHING HORRID BLOOMED there, a black-petaled shape boiling endlessly outward. In his body, he stayed beside his father, but in his mind he stood and walked through the barn door. Outside, it was a summer evening. The sun set, the earth dark. He crossed the yard and entered the house and inside he lifted an undamaged telephone receiver and spoke. No one replied. He was outside again. A windless rain began to fall, carrying down the night. He walked along the road, clothes drenched and hanging, and all was quiet and he walked that way for hours.
He heard a sound: the muffled crunch of tires on the icy driveway. The dogs began to bark. Some threw themselves at the closed drop-gates to their outer runs. A man’s voice shouting. The porch door slamming. The sounds drew him back until he was sitting beside his father once more.
He tried to stand, but failed. At the last minute, he threw his weight to the side and scrambled along the barn floor in order not to touch his father. He lay panting. Almondine came from somewhere—near the file cabinets—and nosed his hand until he forced himself up. He went to the barn doors and threw them open. Blue snow. Shadows bluer yet. He was almost to the house when Doctor Papineau appeared at the back porch door.
“Edgar, your door was swinging wide—” he began, and then stopped. His gaze moved to the barn. “What’s going on?” he said. “Where are your folks?”
All Edgar could do was stand before the old man, trembling. His teeth chattered and the muscles in his face began jerking all out of control. Then one of his legs buckled and he sank into the snow and the last thing he saw was Doctor Papineau rushing forward.
HE WOKE IN HIS PARENTS’ bedroom. He was lying on his side, facing the doorway, Almondine beside him. Doctor Papineau was leaning heavily against the kitchen cabinets, his back to Edgar, talking on the battered phone.
“—yes,” he was saying. “Of course. For God’s sake, Glen, Gar Sawtelle’s lying out there in his barn, and his son is in some sort of shock. No. No. I don’t know. His hands are bruised and cut up. All right. Okay. Yes, that must have been him. It was busted to pieces and hanging off the hook when I got here. I’m surprised it even works.”
There was a pause. “The feed mill,” he said. “Maybe the grocery store. If she’s not on the way back already. Try to get a hold of her before…She has the truck. It’s a brown…uh, Chevy with a topper. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” Then he said, “No.” The word had an air of finality to it.
When he hung up the phone he ran his hands through his white hair and heaved himself upright and turned and walked to the bedroom.
“Son?” he said. “Edgar?”
Edgar looked at him and tried to sit up. The old man put a hand on his shoulder.
“Just lie back,” he said. “Do you know what’s happening here?”
I shouldn’t have left him. He won’t stay warm out there.
“Edgar, I can’t understand when you sign.” Doctor Papineau stood and turned back to the kitchen. “I’ll get you a pencil and paper.” As soon as he was out of the room, Edgar was up running through the kitchen, but his sense of balance had gone awry. He crashed into the table and fell. By the time he got up and opened the porch door, Doctor Papineau had him by the arm. For a moment he hung suspended, in mid-stride, above the back steps. Then Doctor Papineau couldn’t hold on and Edgar fell into the snow just beyond the stoop. Before he could move, Doctor Papineau was on top of him.
“Hold on,” he said. “I don’t want you going out there. There’s nothing you can do right now, and seeing him like that is going to make it worse later. Come inside and wait with me, okay?”
For an old man, Doctor Papineau was surprisingly strong. He lifted Edgar out of the snow by the back of his shirt. Edgar felt the buttons in front straining to pop as he got his feet beneath him.
“Can you walk okay?”
He nodded. The snow where he had fallen was stained red from the cuts and gashes on his hands. They walked into the house, Papineau’s hand firmly on Edgar’s shoulder. Edgar sat at the table and looked at the veterinarian until the old man looked away, then stood and began to make coffee. Edgar walked to the corner of the kitchen and sat on the floor near the heat vent, letting the air blow across his feet. He clapped for Almondine. She came and stood beside him and breathed and leaned against him. The cuts on his hands stung as if they had burst into flame.
“There’s coffee,” Doctor Papineau said after a while.
When he didn’t answer, Doctor Papineau took a cup from the cupboard and filled it and sat back down at the table. He looked at the phone and the clock and the boy.
“I’m sorry about all this, Edgar,” he said at last. “But one thing I’ve learned from all these years of veterinary has been to attend to the living. Your dad’s out there, and I’m sorry there’s nothing we can do for him, but it isn’t going to do anyone any good for you to go out there and drive yourself crazy. I know that’s hard, but in time you’ll see it’s true. Everyone loses people. You understand? It’s terrible. It’s a tragedy for a boy like you to have to deal with this, but there’s nothing you or I or anyone else can do now but wait until people get here who know how to handle this.”
Doctor Papineau’s voice was calm, but his thumb was twitching and thumping on the table and he’d put one hand over the other to steady it. Edgar closed his eyes and let the black-petaled thing twist before him. After a while he was walking along the dark road again and the rain was falling, and the longer he walked, the narrower and more overgrown the road became, until at last it was almost a comfort.
WHEN ALMONDINE LIFTED her head, he heard the siren, faint at first, then louder as it topped the hill. He looked at his hands. There were windings of white gauze around each palm, neatly secured with medical tape. Doctor Papineau must have dressed them with bandages, but he didn’t recall it. He walked into the living room and found the veterinarian standing at the window. They watched the ambulance pull into the drivew
Edgar walked to the kitchen and sat by the register again. Doctor Papineau opened the kitchen door and went outside. Edgar heard men’s voices. In a few moments his mother knelt beside him.
“Look at me,” she said, hoarsely.
He turned, but couldn’t meet her gaze for long.
“Edgar,” she said. “How long were you out there?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “The operator got a call around two o’clock, but no one spoke. That was you?”
He nodded. He watched her face to see if she already guessed how much he was to blame, but she only bent her head to touch his and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. At her touch, a flame rose in him and ate him alive, and when it was gone he was left sitting hollowed out in her arms.
“I know what you’re thinking, Edgar,” she whispered. “Look at me. This wasn’t because of you. I don’t know what happened, but you’re going to have to tell me, no matter how bad it was. Do you understand? I’ll wait all night if you need me to, and we’ll just sit together, but before we go to sleep, you have to tell me what happened.”
It wasn’t until she pulled his head up that he realized he had crossed his arms over his head. Her hands were warm against his face. He wanted to tell her everything, right then, and he wanted to say nothing, ever. He lifted his hands to sign, then realized he didn’t know what he wanted to say. He tried again.
It won’t be true if I don’t say it.
She looked down at his bandaged hands and took them into hers.
“But you know that’s wrong, don’t you? There’s nothing we can do to bring him back.” Her face crumpled and she started to cry. He put his arms around her and squeezed.
Then a man appeared in the doorway, an enormous broad man, a giant, youthful projection of Doctor Papineau. Glen Papineau, the Mellen sheriff. Edgar’s mother stood. Glen put his hand on her arm and guided her to the table and pulled out a chair.
“Why don’t you sit down,” he said. Glen Papineau pulled out a chair and sat, too, his parka rustling as he moved, the chair creaking under his weight.
“From the way things look out there, he was carrying something heavy, a bucket of scrap metal, when it happened,” Glen said. “It’s possible he had a stroke, Trudy.”
There was a long silence.
“Is there somebody I can call for you?”
Before she could answer, Doctor Papineau spoke up.
“I’m going to spend the night here, Glen. If there’s someone to call, I’ll do it.”
The sheriff looked from his father’s earnest, elderly face to Trudy, who nodded absently.
“I’m going to need to talk, uh, with your son, eventually, for my report, Trudy. I know this isn’t the best time, but it has to be soon. Now would be best.”
“No,” she said. “Not today.”
“Okay. Tomorrow at the latest. I guess I’ll need you, too. He only signs. Is that right?”
“Of course. You know that, Glen.”
“I just mean, if you don’t feel up to it I could see if we could arrange an interpreter,” Glen said. He sounded taken aback at his mother’s tone, which was a mixture of weariness and pain and impatience.
“It has to be me.”
“Why’s that?”
“What Edgar signs is a sort of…half his own invention. Gar and I can read it. Could. Can. A conventional signer wouldn’t make much sense of it. He could write things out, or we can bring in his old letter board, but that would take a long time. Besides, I wouldn’t let you question my son without being there.”
“All right, all right,” Glen said. “I just thought it might make things easier on you. When you feel up to it in the morning, call the office.”
He turned and stepped onto the porch. Doctor Papineau followed him out of the house. They talked outside, on the stoop, voices low. Suddenly, Edgar’s mother stood up and strode to the door.
“God damn it, Glen!” she shouted, her voice so loud Edgar could hear an echo off the side of the barn. “If something needs taking care of, you talk to me. Me, do you understand? Page, thank you for being here. But I won’t have you and your son making decisions for us. This is our place. Glen, you’ll talk to me.”
“Trudy,” said Glen, “I, uh, guess I was just telling Dad here that I asked John and Al to take Gar to Brentson’s. And that you or he, somebody, should call and talk to Burt about the arrangements. If you want someone else to handle things, he’ll help get that squared away. That’s all. We weren’t trying to hide anything from you. We were trying to ease things up on you.”
“I know you’re doing what seems right. But I’m not helpless. I don’t expect this to be easy, and I don’t expect I’ll have to go through it alone, but I do expect that whatever decisions have to be made will be made by me and no one else. Understood? When I need help I’ll ask for it. Brentson’s, by the way, will be fine. Glen, if you could let Mr. Brentson know I’ll call him in the morning, I would appreciate that. I’ll call you in the morning, too. Now, Page, come inside before you catch pneumonia.”
There was silence, and then the three of them exchanged brief goodbyes. Doctor Papineau came inside, and Edgar’s mother walked into the living room and watched the ambulance and the squad car maneuver up the driveway and onto the snow-packed hill toward Mellen.
AFTER THE TAILLIGHTS HAD disappeared, Trudy walked into the kitchen.
“Page, would you mind making some dinner? Anything you’d like. We need to go out to the kennel and—”
“Hold it a second,” Doctor Papineau said, gently. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather I took on the chores? That way you and Edgar could spend some time talking?”
“No, we need dinner, and that’s much too quiet a thing for either one of us to be doing. Edgar’s going to come out to the barn, and when we come back, the best thing in the world would be if dinner was ready. Assuming we can find any appetite.”
She turned to Edgar.
“Edgar? Can you come out to the kennel and help with chores?”
Though the idea of going into the barn made him dizzy, Edgar stood. His coat lay on the bedroom floor. By the time they walked out the door, Almondine at their side, Doctor Papineau had taken a white package of butcher-wrapped meat from the refrigerator and was standing and looking into the cupboards.
OUTSIDE, TRUDY STOPPED AND took Edgar by the shoulders and wrapped her arms around him. She whispered in his ear, “Edgar, if we want to keep this place, we have to look like we can do it, right from the start. I don’t know if I should ask you to do this, but I’m going to anyway. Listen to me, honey. Can you walk back into that barn with me now? We’ll do it together—I know it will be bad, and if you just can’t then we won’t, okay? But believe me when I say that the sooner you go in there, the better it will be.”
She leaned back and looked at him. He nodded.
“Sure?”
No. He smiled a little, and so did she, and her eyes grew wet all of a sudden.
I couldn’t without you, I know that.
“You won’t have to go there without me for as long as you need.”
When they came to the barn she unlatched the doors without a pause and threw them open wide; the aisle lights, so feeble in the daytime, now fanned across the snow, casting Edgar’s and his mother’s shadows back along the snowdrifts. Almondine trotted in ahead of them. Without stopping to think about it, Edgar walked inside and turned and pulled the doors closed, concentrating on the dimming light against the trees opposite as the doors came together.
Then the three of them stood in the kennel aisle. The dogs were so quiet he could hear his breaths and his mother’s. The door to the workshop was open. Inside, the first thing he noticed was the tarnished gray milk can, tipped over, and the scrap of small bolts, nuts, hinges, nails, and washers fanned out across the floor, all coated with an orange powder of rus
They fed and watered the dogs and cleaned the pens and tossed in fresh straw. Edgar scooped a coffee can full of quicklime from the bag by the back door and wheeled the manure down the path. After he’d dumped the manure, he dusted it with the quicklime. He found his mother in a whelping pen when he returned. One of the newborn pups had died, perhaps in fright from all the noise. Perhaps the mother had panicked and stepped on it. Trudy stroked it two-fingered. She and Edgar took it to the medicine room and put it in one of the thick plastic bags they kept there. Edgar took it from her and set it outside in the snow. The pup’s body was still warm through the plastic, as though the mother had lain next to it even after it had died.
When he came back inside, his mother was waiting for him. Her voice shook, and she put her hands on his arms so he couldn’t turn away. “I want you to tell me what happened,” she said. “Now, if you can. Before we go back.”
He began to sign. He told her most of it—how he’d found his father lying there, how he’d dialed the phone and left the receiver hanging. But he didn’t tell her how he’d nearly knocked himself down trying to drum a voice out of his chest. He didn’t tell her about the thing that boiled and turned when he closed his eyes or the road he’d walked down or the rain. When he finished, she was quietly crying. They stood, arms around each other. At last, they pulled on their coats and extinguished the lights. The snow had stopped falling but the wind rushed against the barn, whirling the dry snowflakes into frigid galaxies. Clouds hung low over the trees, the sky barricaded and gray.