The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
This was not going to be elegant, he thought.
The dogs had not been inside a house—or any building, for that matter—for many weeks. They circled skittishly at the threshold until he shooed them in. They entered slinking. He filled a big plastic bowl with tap water and put it down. They leapt forward and slobbered up the water, spookiness vanished, while he rifled the cupboards, setting food aside as he discovered it. When he opened the refrigerator his gaze fell on a package wrapped in white butcher paper. The purple-inked label read, “Bratwurst.”
They ate like starved kings. They would be gone in a few minutes and never see the place again and he fed them all as much as they could hold. He carried the bratwurst to the back door and tore the paper and spilled the rubbery links across the planks of the stoop. Even before they’d stopped writhing, the dogs were tearing at them. A jar of caramel-colored honey sat on the kitchen table, cloudy with crystallized sugar. Edgar unscrewed the top and ran a finger’s-worth out, then topped a bowl of Wheaties extravagantly with it and splashed milk over the top and stood in the doorway and watched the dogs while he shoveled the concoction into his mouth. The bratwurst was gone almost before he started to eat; the dogs licked their chops and looked at him.
Okay, he signed. Stand back.
He set his cereal down and emptied the water bowl and dumped the contents of a half dozen cans of Campbell’s Chicken Soup into it and several more of creamed corn. When his cereal was gone, their bowl had been licked clean as well. Then he walked onto the stoop with a bag of marshmallows. Three brilliant white cubes sailed through the air. He mashed one into his cheek, grinning evilly, and began another round. Halfway through the marshmallows he was suddenly done. He gestured the dogs back into the kitchen and began to search the kitchen methodically, sorting the food into what he could take and what he should put back. When he finished, he pulled a brown grocery sack from a mass of them behind the refrigerator and stuffed it with their trash. He put the can opener into the silverware drawer and refilled the plastic bowl with water and let the dogs drink. They pushed lethargically to their feet, stomachs belled out. Suddenly he thought it was stupid to have let them eat so much after a long hungry stretch. That risked bloat. But they also risked starving, came the reply. He rinsed the water dish and put it under the cupboard where he’d found it.
There was precious little they could take along. A bag of jellybeans. A flat, frosty package of bacon from the freezer. While he was looking in the freezer he found a package of stew meat, also butcher-wrapped, but too big to carry. He set it in the refrigerator where the brats had been. A jelly jar with pencils and pens and packs of matches stood on the countertop by the door. Out of habit, he grabbed the matches (“The Lute Bar and Grill”) and dropped them into his shirt pocket. Then he searched the small bathroom off the kitchen. The medicine chest contained Bactine (he took it) and iodine and mercurochrome and a scattering of small adhesive bandages in their waxed envelopes (he left them) and gauze, but no Off!
The dogs were milling around the kitchen when he came out. He hustled them out the door and removed his muddy shoes, and then he washed the dishes and rearranged the kitchen and wetted a towel that lay draped over the back of a chair and wiped up the dirt they’d tracked in. When he finished, the kitchen looked reasonably like it had before they’d arrived. The kitchen clock read one-fifteen. He carried the paper bag containing the evidence of their crime to the trash can behind the shed, lifting a fly-strewn bag from on top and jamming his beneath.
They retired to the field. He fetched the Zebco and the satchel and walked along the fence line. Halfway up the slope the Lute water tower was visible again. He heard a rumble and noticed for the first time the railroad tracks at the bottom of the bluff beside the field. A freight train appeared from the south. Out on the road, the crossing bars dropped and the bell clanged. They watched a locomotive and fifteen cars roll along. The tracks appeared to pass by Lute on a tangent. That was good luck, he thought. They might try walking the rails.
But not just then. A postprandial lethargy had taken hold of Edgar and he stumbled to where the dogs lay stretched out in the shade of the lone tree overhanging the fence. Tinder lay on his back, feet raised in a posture of surrender. Baboo and Essay faced the fence, chins on paws, gazes dreamily fixed on the horizon. As Edgar reached them, Essay heaved a roaring burp, licked her lips, and rolled onto her side. Edgar felt just the same. The sunflowers hid them nicely from the house. He sat down beside Baboo and stroked his ruff until the dog’s eyes drooped shut. Then Edgar lay back on the grass.
WHEN HE WOKE, enormous cuneiform clouds had rolled across the sky, and between them great slant columns of afternoon sunlight tilted onto the earth. He yawned and sat up. He looked around. Though evening was well along, an hour or two of good light remained, he guessed. If they started at once and the traveling went easily, they might make several miles’ progress before bedding down again. His head throbbed from sleep or feast or both. The dogs, too, seemed dazed. They stood and yawned and shook themselves out and somehow slid down to the ground again. He let them lie and snuck downfield for another look at the house.
Someone had recently arrived. A plain-looking sedan sat parked next to the stoop and the trunk was hinged open and a tall, lean man, maybe thirty years old, was hefting grocery bags out of its depths. The man had already been inside the house, for the back door stood open, but he seemed unalarmed. Edgar smiled to himself. He’d begun to take pride in his skill as a burglar. He had turned it into a kind of game—how much could he take before they noticed? How could he rearrange things to hide what was missing? People didn’t expect someone to break into their houses to steal a little food; they expected to be ransacked—to lose televisions, money, cars, to find their dresser drawers dumped, their mattresses overturned. No one in the cabins (as far as he could tell) had ever done more than scratch their heads at their depleted larder. Who stole half a loaf of bread and then cleaned up after himself? Edgar and the dogs had feasted where this man now unpacked his groceries, and there was a chance he wouldn’t even notice.
When he returned, Edgar found the dogs sniffing with great interest the package of bacon he’d taken from the kitchen of the little farmhouse. He looked at them and shook his head in disbelief. Edgar himself felt like one of those snakes that swallowed pigs whole; he didn’t actually slosh as he walked but the idea of putting more food inside his belly was laughable. He shooed them away and they pranced backward and watched him while he stuffed their loot into the satchel. Then he grabbed the Zebco and led the dogs down the bluff.
The railroad tracks veered to the northwest. A person could judge whether a train was coming, he’d read, by pressing an ear to one of the rails, and he tried it: the scored silver bar was warm but silent. The four of them trotted up the track far enough that a passing motorist wouldn’t make much of them—a boy and some dogs—and then, as the night came on, he ambled along, tie to tie, feeling content and even swaggering a bit at the thought of their success raiding the farm. Scrub wood paralleled the tracks left and right. Far ahead, a low uncovered bridge waited in the gloaming. Stories came back to him of people struck by trains as they walked the rails, and he wondered how that was possible—wouldn’t anyone hear a train thundering toward him long before it arrived? He hoped one would come by just so he could count off the seconds between the first sound of it and when it passed.
These were his thoughts when Tinder first cried out, a yike of surprise and pain that made Edgar’s stomach instantly knot in fear. He knew where each of the dogs was—Essay and Baboo had been poking along beside him on the ties, as content and lost in thought as he, but Tinder had trotted down the grade to investigate something in a stand of cattails. Probably frogs, Edgar had thought. He even recalled seeing, from the corner of his eye, Tinder stiffen and pounce. But his attention had been directed up the tracks, imagining onrushing trains. Tinder’s motion had looked unexceptional—the dogs pounced dozens of times each day, on toads, frogs, field
But this time Tinder let out a shrill ai-ai and leapt back. Edgar stood watching, unable at first to move, as the dog tried to set his foot down. Tinder shrieked and threw himself down amidst the cattails, holding his right paw in the air and striking at it with his left.
Snake bite, was Edgar’s first coherent thought. Somehow that finally broke his paralysis. He crashed through the weeds below the embankment and dropped to his knees beside Tinder, but even before he touched the dog he saw the blue-green shard of glass, muddy and jagged, impaled in the bottom of the dog’s foot, and the thin spear protruding from the top. Out of reflex, Edgar grabbed Tinder’s muzzle. In days to come he would remember that instinctive motion and think he had at least done one thing right, because Tinder was about to bite the glass and would have gashed his mouth as badly as his foot.
Tinder shook off his grip and tried to scramble up. Edgar threw a leg over the dog and rolled him. Tinder lashed his body side to side, kicking a fine crimson spray over them. Then Edgar felt Tinder’s teeth on his forearm, but there was no time to see if he’d been bitten, or how badly. Somehow, he got himself kneeling over the dog. Essay and Baboo had plunged down the embankment alongside him and they danced at Tinder’s muzzle, worrying and licking his mouth. For a moment Tinder’s body went slack as he looked at the other dogs. Now, Edgar thought, knowing he might not get another chance. He gripped Tinder’s paw tightly and grasped the crudely serrated wedge of glass between his thumb and forefinger and pulled. There was a horrible sawing as the speared point slid back into Tinder’s foot. The glass was slick with blood and mud and Edgar’s thumb slipped along the edge. Had Tinder not jerked his foot back, the tearing sensation in Edgar’s thumb would have made him release the shard before it was out of the dog’s pad. He felt Tinder’s teeth on his forearm, this time harder, but by then it was already done. He dropped the piece of glass and rolled and lay on his side, squeezing his hand and looking at the ragged incision that had appeared in the fleshy front of his thumb. The cut burned like acid and he shook his hand to slake it.
Tinder hobbled away and sank to the ground near the embankment. If the sensation in Edgar’s thumb was any measure, Tinder must have been in agony. Edgar curled his thumb into his fist and ran to the dog, blood dripping from between his fingers. He sat panting. Essay and Baboo were nosing through the cattails, swiping their tails in curiosity. He stood again and ran to them, panicked at the idea of more broken glass, clapping his hands until blood splashed across his shirt. He hustled the dogs back toward Tinder, where they scented the dog along his legs and sides until they were certain they had located his wound.
The shard of glass lay in the weeds. Edgar picked it up. The broad end had three smooth ridges—threads for a jar cap. A fragment of a jelly jar or something like that, pitched into the weeds from a passing train or by another walker of ties. Bloody dirt packed the threads. He flung it angrily into the cattails and forced his thumb out straight and pulled open the gash to look at it. He felt a thump and then he was sitting. Essay was nosing him and licking his face. When his vision stopped tunneling he pushed himself to his feet, wobbled, and sank to his knees.
Wait, he thought, drawing a breath. Try again.
On his next attempt he was able to stand. He staggered over to Tinder, who lay with his paw curled inward before him, as if cradling some orphaned part of his body, sorrowfully drawing his tongue across the pad. His pelt contracted where Edgar lay a hand on it. Tinder turned away from his injury momentarily to look at Edgar. With his good hand, Edgar stroked the dog from the top of his head down along his backbone. He palpated Tinder’s back feet, hoping he would understand what was coming. Then Edgar ran his hand along Tinder’s foreleg again, this time all the way to his pad, without a protest from the dog beyond a short rumble of apprehension and a lick.
A crescent-shaped wound lay in the center of the triangular middle pad, oozing blood and dirt. Edgar didn’t attempt to touch it, but slowly—very slowly—rotated the paw until he could look at the bloodstained fur on top. He delicately touched the tips of Tinder’s claws, one by one, manipulating his toes. When he touched the second toe, Tinder whined and jerked his foot. So that was it. Something in his second toe; maybe not the bone, but there were ligaments, tendons, tiny muscles in there.
He released Tinder’s leg and stroked him and tried to think. He bent his thumb experimentally. It didn’t hurt more bent than straight, which was a good sign, but they could both probably use stitches. He stood, still wobbly, and retreated a few paces, bringing Essay and Baboo around behind him. Tinder lay watching, ears back, as if he knew what Edgar was about to ask of him.
Come, Edgar signed.
Tinder looked at him. He whined, then stood on three legs and held his damaged forefoot in the air, nosing it like a broken thing.
Edgar knelt.
I’m sorry, he signed. We have to do this. Then he recalled Tinder again.
Tinder set his foot on the ground and jerked it up. He hobbled a step, looked at Edgar, and tried again. When he finally reached Edgar, he dropped to the ground, panting, and refusing to meet Edgar’s gaze even when Edgar put his face in front of his.
He might be going into shock, Edgar thought. He ran a fingertip along Tinder’s gums. They were moist, which was good, but it was obvious that the dog couldn’t walk. Edgar got Tinder to his feet by slipping a hand under his belly. He passed one arm behind the dog’s back legs and threaded the other under his chest, careful not to touch his dangling foot. He thought if he did it wrong Tinder might bite him out of panic, and if he dropped the dog, he knew he would not be granted a second try. But Tinder panted in his face and waited and Edgar came smoothly to his feet.
Slowly he made his way up the side of the railroad embankment, digging the toe of each shoe into the gravel before trusting his weight on it. Once on top, he could take only one small step at a time, for fear of tripping on a tie. His thumb throbbed as if it had burst. Tinder hung slack in his arms, as if he’d concluded that this was how things would have to go. And that, if nothing else, made Edgar realize how badly the dog’s paw had been mangled.
Then he remembered the Zebco and the fisherman’s satchel lying beside the tracks. He didn’t turn back for them. It would be impossible to carry them anyway, and the dark was quickly becoming absolute. He would have to go back later. Far in the distance, headlights glowed then faded as a car crossed the railroad tracks beneath the bluff they had descended.
He focused on that point and took another step.
BEFORE THEY REACHED THE blacktop, he’d had to set Tinder down three times to let the knots in his back unkink. The dog was heavy—ninety pounds or more, over half Edgar’s own weight. Each time they stopped, Tinder tried to walk, managing only to hobble a few yards before lying down. The lucky thing (if that was what it could be called) was that they had gone only about a mile down the track. Essay and Baboo had stuck close by—another good thing, since Edgar had no way of signing a recall with his arms full.
He picked up Tinder. They began again.
Then they stood on the deserted blacktop. The only light came from the windows of the little foursquare house beneath the sunflower field. The adrenaline that had first powered Edgar had ebbed, and he staggered along with Tinder in his arms. The asphalt was wonderfully flat and smooth beneath his feet. When they reached the mailbox, Edgar walked up the driveway, under the row of tall trees in the front yard. The air around the house was alight with fireflies. A june bug buzzed past. Essay and Baboo charged ahead and rounded the corner of the house. The moment they disappeared, Tinder began to squirm and Edgar walked faster.
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 th
“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.