The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. David Wroblewski

going to have to work real hard soon, he signed. You know that, don’t you?

      Iris swallowed and looked at him, eyes wet in the cave light. He reached into his pocket and held out another curd.

      HE DREAMED HE WAS RUNNING, feet pounding beneath him, breath coming in gasps. Always he arrived too late. The third night he woke in a fit of anxiety and he was at the kitchen door, on his way to check Iris, before he decided it was a bad idea. At breakfast he peeled an egg and he and his father walked to the barn. He rehearsed in his mind the case for skipping school, but before his father even touched Iris, he said, “It won’t be today.”

      Edgar squatted and stroked her face and broke the egg into pieces and fed it to her while his father tried to explain how he knew.

      “Look at her eyes,” he said. “Are they teary? Is she walking in circles?” He felt the curve of Iris’s huge belly, her hindquarters, looked at her gums, took her temperature. He always had an explanation, but the truth, Edgar suspected, was that his father just knew, and didn’t know how he knew. They looked up Iris’s birthing history; she’d whelped on her sixty-second day with her first litter of six and at sixty-four days with her second litter of five. Friday would be day sixty-two.

      When they were finished, Edgar collared Iris and snapped on a lead and let her walk wherever she liked. She headed for the tall grass behind the barn, then the Wolf River apple trees at the top of the orchard. Her hind legs rowed out to her sides when she walked. When Almondine approached, serious and respectful, Iris stood for inspection.

      Edgar boarded the school bus in despair. Ten thousand hours later, it ground to a halt in front of their driveway. He felt weightless as he opened the whelping room door. Iris lay sleeping, solitary, enormous. When Friday passed, he barely noticed that school was over. It was just another day when Iris would surely whelp while he was away.

      WHEN HE LOOKED IN on Saturday morning, the bedding in the whelping box had been scratched up into a pile. Instead of lying outstretched in her usual gestative pose, Iris was pacing and panting. She came forward with her ponderous gait. Once outside, she forged into the hayfield, aiming for the hazel stand.

      “That sounds interesting,” his father said, noncommittally, when Edgar found him in the workshop. They walked to the nursery. Iris had settled herself back in the whelping box.

      “How’s it going, girl? Today the day?”

      She looked back and bumped her tail against the slats. His father put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall and watched her. “Not right this minute,” he said after a while, “but it’s going to be sometime today. I want you to check her every half hour from now on. But stay out of this pen—we just want to know if she is sleeping, walking, or what.”

      I’ll stay and wait.

      “No. Don’t spend any more time here than you have to. When you come in, be quiet and slow. She’s worried now and she’s wondering how to protect her babies. If we bother her too much, she could panic. Understand? She could try to eat her pups to keep them safe.”

      Okay, he signed. It wasn’t what he wanted to hear, though he understood the reasoning.

      “The next thing to watch for is when she starts licking herself or walking around the whelping box. Once that starts, we’ve got work to do.”

      NOW TIME THICKENED LIKE wet cement. From his dresser he dug out a pocket watch he’d gotten for Christmas many years before and wound it and set it and shook it to make sure it was running.

      He and Almondine walked the path to the creek, but before they’d gone more than halfway he turned and ran back, slapping through the ferns. They arrived five minutes early for the next check. He sat with his back against the narrow front wheels of the tractor while Almondine dozed, annoyingly relaxed, in the cool grass. When the time had passed, he found Iris lying in her box, muzzle atop folded forelegs; she caught his eye and raised her head. In the other whelping pen, a litter charged the door and tried to bite through the rubber toe of his sneaker when he pressed it to the wire. He went to the house, looked at the watch, compared it with the time on the kitchen clock. He fetched The New Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language and opened it at random. His eyes jittered over the words. Intake. Intangible. Intarsia. He flipped a hunk of pages. Perilous. Perimeter. Perimorph. Ridiculous, impossible names for dogs. His toes twitched, his heels rattled against the floor. He slapped the dictionary shut and knelt in front of the television, twisting the channel knob to Wausau, Eau Claire, Ashland.

      His father parceled out small jobs, concocting them, Edgar suspected, more out of mercy than necessity: pile newspapers outside the pen door; lay towels on the newspapers; straighten the bedding in the whelping box; wash the steel pan in the workshop, fill it with water, and put it on the stove; put scissors and hemostat in the pan and boil the water; put a bottle of Phisohex on the towels; set out thread and iodine; get a short lead.

      After dinner, when the next half hour had passed, he excused himself and walked to the barn. They always seem to start at dinnertime, his father had said. The dogs were standing in their pens, muzzles slowly turning to track his progress down the aisle.

      All it took was one glance. For fear of making a commotion, he forced himself to walk the whole length of the barn, but as soon as the evening sky opened overhead, his legs made the decision on their own and he bolted for the house.

      “REMEMBER WHAT I SAID about her getting nervous? She’ll be calm if she knows we’re calm, so move slow. She’s an old hand at this. Our job is to watch and help just a little. That’s all. Iris is going to be doing all the work. We’re just keeping her company.”

      Edgar was waddling along behind his father, a basin of warm water sloshing in his arms.

      Okay, he nodded. He took a breath, let it out. The setting sun cast his father’s shadow back along the driveway.

      “Now,” Gar said, “let’s find out how she’s doing.”

      Iris stood in her whelping box, head down, digging frantically. She paused briefly when they entered the whelping room, glanced at them, then turned back to her work.

      “Go ahead,” his father said, gesturing at the door.

      Edgar stepped inside the pen, carrying the pan, and set it down in the corner. His father handed him the newspapers, the towels, and all the paraphernalia he’d collected during the afternoon. Iris stopped digging and walked to the door. His father squatted down and stroked her face and chest; he ran the tip of his finger along her gum line and put his palm against her swollen belly; in return, she pressed forward until one of her feet was outside the threshold of the pen door. His father placed his hands on her shoulders and eased her back. He had Edgar latch the hook and eye on the inside of the door and Iris returned to the whelping box and lay down.

      Now what? Edgar signed.

      “Now we wait.”

      After twenty minutes or so, Iris stood and circled inside the whelping box. She whined and panted, then sat. After a few more minutes, she stood again. She shivered, turned her head all the way back to her hindquarters, and licked at her hip. She shivered again.

      Shouldn’t she be lying down? Edgar signed.

      “Sit tight,” his father said. “She’s doing just fine.”

      Iris lowered herself nearly to the floor, hips suspended above the bedding. A spasm shook her body. She whined quietly, grunted, then raised her hips and turned to look behind her. A newborn pup, dark and shiny in its embryonic sac, lay on the gray bedding.

      “Wash your hands,” his father said. He’d closed his eyes and tipped his head back against the wall. “Use the Phisohex.”

      As Edgar rubbed his hands together in the water, he heard a squeak from the whelping box. Iris had already torn the birth membrane away and had turned the new pup on its back. She was running her tongue along its head then its belly and hind legs. Its fur glistened and it kicked its hind legs and squeaked again.

      “Has