The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. David Wroblewski

Each blow drove a single note from his body.

      “A-n-a-a-a.”

      “Can you tell me where you are?” the operator said.

      Almondine retreated a step and began a deep, throaty barking, smashing her tail from side to side and dashing toward the door and back.

      “I can’t understand you. Can you tell me where you are?”

      He stood panting. He beat the receiver against the countertop until it was in fragments and left it hanging and ran out the door and up the driveway and onto the road, hoping to see his mother arriving in their truck, or a car passing, any car. Almondine was beside him now. The woods were lost in the falling snow, the apple trees blanched. Beyond a hundred yards everything faded into a featureless blank so white it hurt to stare into it. A car would not be passing in such a storm. When he looked back at the barn, Essay and Finch were crossing the yard toward them. The four of them stood while he looked up and back along the road. Then he ran to the house again. A voice was coming out of the shattered handset.

      “—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