The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

by David Wroblewski

Edgar ran to the milk house and pulled the chain on the ceiling bulb. He surveyed the tangle of rakes, shovels, and hoes tilting in the corner. Rototiller. Lawn mower. Chainsaw. He spotted a red-and-yellow aerosol near a row of oil cans on a shelf, grabbed it, and ducked out. Claude met him by the barn door with a collar and a training lead tucked under his arm, and a large plastic bag into which he was putting a rag from the medicine room, neatly folded into a square pad. Edgar handed over the Prestone.

  “How much we got?” Claude shook the can. He clamped the bag around his wrist and pressed the nozzle against the rag. The bag puffed out with fog. “Ninety-nine percent ether,” he said. He looked suddenly concerned. “You aren’t smoking, are you?”

  Edgar shook his head before he understood Claude wasn’t serious.

  “Good thing, too,” he said. “Otherwise, there’d be a big flash and you’d be able to tell all your friends about your uncle Claude, the Human Torch.”

  When the hiss from the aerosol tapered off, Claude extracted his hand and held the bag up. The saturated rag slid greasily inside. He waved the arrangement under Edgar’s nose. A sweet tang like sugar and gasoline swept through his sinuses. It made the hairs at the back of his neck crawl upright.

  “At least it’s cold tonight,” Claude said, taking a cursory whiff of his own. “In the summer this would already be half gone. You might want to keep upwind anyway. This isn’t exactly airtight.”

  Then Edgar led Claude behind the barn, quarter lit at best by the occluded yard light and the gooseneck lamp over the kennel doors. Epi heard them coming and backed up defensively until she stood in front of an unused old dog house near the silo. Drops of blood stained the snow around her.

  “If we both come up she’ll run,” Claude said. He was carefully looking at a point on the ground a few feet in front of him. “Go around the other side of the silo.”

  Edgar hesitated.

  “Get going,” Claude said. “Before she decides to cut through that way.”

  Edgar turned and rounded the stony circumference, passing briefly back into the light before he reached the thick cement pier a foot high and three feet wide that connected the barn foundation to the silo. Through the gap he could see the dog house and the kennel runs beyond and the dogs standing in them, watching. Meltwater from the roof had rotted a line into the crystallized snowpack beneath the eaves.

  Epi stood stock still, fixated on Claude. Edgar crouched on the cement pier, ready to intercept her if she bolted his way.

  HOW IT GOT STARTED even Claude didn’t remember. There must have been some first time in the kennel, some formative moment, when a pup had injured itself and backed into a corner, scared and defensive, and Claude had stepped past everyone to somehow enchant it, which was the only word for what he could do. He knew instinctively how to approach, how to touch, how to confuse and distract, so that, fearful or not, the dog found itself acquiescing. Maybe that first time had happened when he was very young. In any case, it was something he’d known how to do all of his life.

  In high school, Claude began working afternoons and weekends at Doctor Papineau’s shop. At first, it was odd jobs—clean up, repair, filing, walking the convalescent dogs. He liked the antiseptic smell of the place and the rows of prescription drugs on the shelves, like bottles of magic. When animals needed their dressings changed, he helped with that, too, asking many questions, which flattered the veterinarian, and seldom forgetting the answers, which impressed him. In time, Claude persuaded Doctor Papineau to let him assist on minor surgeries. The veterinarian showed him how to administer intramuscular injections of sedative, as well as the older skill—waning even then in veterinary practice—of the ether drip.

  Occasionally, a dog came in wild with fright. Doctor Papineau had a noose pole for such situations, but people hated seeing it used, and Claude learned to work without it, crawling into the back of the truck—or wherever the frantic dog hid—and emerging with a docile animal and an empty syringe. He was bitten more than once, but they were fear bites, quick and shallow, and Claude had excellent reflexes. He became a masterful judge of how far a dog could be pushed. And eventually he craved the thrill of those moments more than anything.

  On Sunday afternoons, when the shop was closed, Claude cleaned up and administered medications by himself; he knew where to call Doctor Papineau in case of an emergency. And if, on those Sundays, a dog was boarded that Claude had taken a dislike to, when he was done with his work he let it out to run the halls. Then he jimmied Doctor Papineau’s desk for the key to the pharmacy room, prepared whichever method of sedation most interested him that day, and began to search. Once the dog was unconscious, he carried it to its pen and checked his watch. Both methods had their uses, he decided, but he was faster and more adept with the needle.

  Though not perfect. Doctor Papineau attributed the first dog’s death to post-surgical trauma. The second dog, however, puzzled the veterinarian. He’d questioned Claude for a long time about the dog’s condition that Sunday. The session had left Claude shaken, and after that, there were no more incidents at the shop.

  Late night, autumn 1947. Claude was leaning against the wall at the back of a long-abandoned barn, watching the crowd, all men, disperse into the cool night. A few of the men led dogs muzzled and close-leashed against their thighs. A few more stood cocooned in silence and disappointment. A man counted out money into another’s hand. The roughshod plywood ring had been dismantled already and under the light of two white gas lanterns someone was pitching water across the boards to rinse the blood away. Outside, bitter laughter, black undercurrent of animosity. An argument followed, quickly shouted down.

  Then Gar appeared, shouldering his way inside. He blinked at the glare of the lanterns. He was about to leave when he spotted Claude and walked over, glowering.

  “Come on,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

  “I got myself here. I can get myself home.”

  “If you leave the house with me, you’re damn well going to walk back in with me. The only thing I want to know right now is whether any of our dogs were here.”

  “No.”

  “Tell me which dogs.”

  “I said no. Why do you think I’m here, anyway?”

  “I don’t know why you’re here. That’s what we’re going to talk about after we leave.”

  Then a man trotted into the barn. “Hey, Doc,” he called, waving Claude forward. Gar looked at Claude and then at the men cleaning the plywood. Claude had kicked the satchel behind him when his brother walked in, but Gar spotted it anyway. He picked it up. He looked at the initials embossed on the top. Then he opened it and looked inside.

  “You’re kidding me,” he said. “You patch them up afterward? Is that the idea?”

  The man called again, this time more urgently. Claude started to take the satchel, but Gar pushed him back against the beam.

  “Wait here,” he said. He walked over to the man. Claude couldn’t hear the conversation but he saw Gar shaking his head. The man cradled his arm in front of him and pointed off somewhere. Gar shook his head again. Finally he turned and motioned to Claude and the three of them walked out of the barn, Claude carrying the satchel. Out on the road, motors started and tires rolled over gravel and the beams of headlights swung cross-eyed through the trees. Claude could see the bite punctures in the corded muscles of the man’s forearm.

  A shaggy shepherd cross with a stocky build and a blunt muzzle was chained to a tree near the road. As they approached, the dog hobbled to its feet and began to bay, one bloody hind leg held off the ground.

  “Knock it off!” the man shouted.

  The dog licked its chops and limped forward. The owner sidled up to it, but the moment he tried to slip an arm under its flanks, the animal set his muzzle beside the man’s ear. Even from where Claude stood, the baleful rumble in the dog’s throat was unmistakable.

  “See?” the man said, backing away. “He was okay when we first got out here. Now I can’t get him in the truck.”r />
  Gar looked at Claude. “You can tranquilize him?”

  Claude nodded.

  Gar guided the man back a few paces. Claude set the satchel on the ground and opened the jawed top and pulled out a bottle and a syringe. He drew fluid into the syringe. Then he walked to a point just beyond the reach of the dog’s chain and whistled a warbly double-tone—tweee, tweee.

  The dog tipped its head, curious.

  NOW, IN THE DARK behind the barn, Claude had turned sideways to Epi. He kept his gaze averted, elbows pressed to his sides, knees bent, trying to minimize his profile as he crabbed toward her with a slow side shuffle. He was mumbling a monotone stream of nonsense, the words an endless, senseless flow of noise. “Say, honey,” he said. “Such a good girl. Goodness gracious. Such a sweetie pie.” He held the plastic bag crumpled against his far hip, and something metallic glinted in his hand. He moved a foot closer, then paused, his delay just long enough that he seemed to be drifting pointlessly inward, every gesture slight and contained and almost accidental so that he hardly seemed to be moving at all, never a direct glance, never a raised voice, but closer, always closer, and always the steady meaningless patter.

  Epi retreated toward the empty dog house, looking wide-eyed across her flank. She knew she was trapped, and she turned to look at Edgar. He thought she might decide to come to him, but the howls and the flashing teeth and the desire to flee overwhelmed all else in her mind and she froze. Edgar raised his hand to sign a down. She saw him and turned back to Claude and lowered her head miserably, mouth closed up, ears flattened. The gash on her face was black and wet and she dragged a paw across the cut and sank to the cold snow and tucked her feet up tight beneath her. She sized up ways past Claude. When he was three small side steps away from her, she retreated into the dog house and, shortly, a low growl emanated from inside.

  Claude opened the plastic bag. Fumes wavered toward the ground. He pitched the soaked rag far back into the doghouse and quickly turned and sealed the door with his jacketed back.

  “Wait,” he said to Edgar. He’d stopped the patter and all was quiet. Inside the dog house there was a panicky clomping as Epi positioned herself between the rags and the door. Claude sat looking downfield. A long time passed. Finally, he rose and stepped back.

  “Come on, girl,” he said. “Come on out.”

  Epi’s muzzle appeared. She blinked and stepped into the night. She tottered and growled uncertainly. Claude closed the distance between them in two quick steps and cuffed her under the chin with his left hand and stepped back. Her jaws snapped shut hollowly.

  “None of that,” he said.

  In her confusion—compounded by the night’s events and the ether fumes and now this lightning strike from Claude—Epi let her topline soften and her tail uncurl. For a moment all defiance left her, as if she were letting herself be taken down finally and forever in some fight that still carried on in her mind. Then Claude’s arm was looped over her back, his hand against her belly. She flashed her muzzle back at him in surprise, but he already had the needle between her shoulder blades, talking again, low and quiet, and he stayed there even after he’d tossed the syringe away, stroking her and waiting.

  “Okay, honey,” he said. “Edgar, keep still. If you spook her, I’m the one she’ll bite. Time to lie down and rest, sweetie. Been a long night. Such a good girl.”

  He ran his hand down Epi’s back. She sagged and folded herself against the ground and a shudder passed through her.

  “Bring that lead over,” Claude said. “Slow.”

  Then: “Put it on her.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s find out what we’ve got here.” Claude knelt and slipped one arm under Epi’s brisket and the other under her flanks and she came up in his arms, the whites of her eyes showing and her body lax. They rounded the silo and Claude waited under the metal-hooded flood lamp while Edgar fumbled with the door latch.

  “There’s a bag in the car,” Claude said, walking into the kennel. “Front seat. Go get it.”

  Claude was in the medicine room when Edgar returned. Epi lay stretched out on the examination table, limp but awake, keening feebly as Claude shaved the side of her face with the electric clippers. He stopped periodically to pour antiseptic over the pink skin he’d exposed, flushing loose hairs from her wound. Beneath the velvet fur her skin was freckled. The brown liquid streamed down the fur of her neck and puddled on the table.

  Edgar set the weathered satchel he carried near the wall. The initials PP were embossed along its top, the curves and arches of the letters abraded over time into a pale felt. Claude lay the clippers aside and rummaged through the bag, producing black suture thread and a needle, both of which he doused with antiseptic. The wound was smaller than Edgar expected, opening just below Epi’s eye and ending near the corner of her mouth. Whenever Claude applied pressure, blood seeped from the ragged edges of the laceration and the sight made yellow rings jitter at the edge of Edgar’s vision.

  You made this happen, he thought. Stop it. Pay attention.

  He clenched his hands until they ached, and watched. Twice, Claude dropped the needle into Epi’s fur while placing stitches. He cursed under his breath and re-rinsed it with antiseptic.

  “Is there another dog hurt?”

  Edgar nodded.

  “Look in that bag for a bottle of pills marked ‘Valium.’”

  The bag sat jawed open on the floor. Edgar pulled out bottles and examined them then turned and held one out for Claude to see.

  “That’s the one. Give it two of those and wait for me.”

  Claude returned to his suturing. Edgar shook out the pills and walked to Finch’s pen. The dog met him, hobbling gamely on three legs. By the time Claude carried Epi out of the medicine room and settled her in her pen, with her head cushioned by a pair of towels, Finch had relaxed into sleep.

  The stitches in Epi’s face were neat and black and even. Edgar counted twelve, top to bottom. Claude had smeared a glistening salve over the wound. Edgar dipped three fingers into the water dish and let the drops fall on Epi’s tongue and listened to the pop and hum of the clippers. By the time Claude carried Finch out, Epi had come awake enough to lift her head and watch. She tried to climb to her feet, but Edgar ran his hand along her back and guided her down again.

  Courtship

  IN THE HOUSE, CLAUDE WALKED ACROSS THE KITCHEN AND knocked at the closed bedroom door, coat bunched in his hand. Edgar knelt and stroked Almondine’s muzzle.

  What happened tonight? he signed. Why couldn’t you stand?

  She dug her nose along his arm and legs, scenting him to divine what had happened after he left the house. Her eyes were bright. She searched his face. When he was satisfied she was okay, he stood and walked to the bedroom door, where Claude was still waiting.

  “Trudy?” Claude said, knocking a second time.

  The door swung back. Edgar’s mother stood there holding the jamb for balance. Her hair was matted with sweat, her eyes set in hollowed circles above chalk-white cheekbones. Claude drew a quick breath at the sight of her.

  “Christ, Trudy,” he said. “You need a doctor.”

  She turned and sat on the bed. She looked past Claude as if his presence hadn’t registered.

  “Edgar?” she said. “Is Epi okay? What time is it?”

  Before Edgar could sign an answer, Claude said, “She had a cut near her eye, but it wasn’t deep. Finch is going to be limping for a few days, that’s all. They looked worse than they actually were.”

  Edgar’s mother nodded.

  “Thank you, Gar. You’re right, I don’t think these antibiotics are working,” she said. “Could you drive me to see Doctor Frost?”

  They stood in silence for a moment. At first Trudy didn’t recognize her mistake but Claude’s posture straightened as if he’d laid a hand on some low-voltage wire. Something like embarrassment and fear and another feeling he couldn’t name made Edgar’s face flush.

  “Yes,” Claude said. “I can do tha
t.”

  Trudy passed her hand in front of her face as if clearing cobwebs.

  “Claude, I mean,” she said. “Claude. I’m going to lie back down. Wake me at eight, would you? Then I’ll call and make an appointment.”

  “Not a chance,” Claude said. “We’re going now.”

  “But he won’t even be in his office for another hour and a half.”

  “He will be after I call him,” Claude said.

  She insisted Edgar stay behind, that he not get near her. Reluctantly, he agreed to stay and watch Epi and Finch and Almondine. Claude backed his car up the driveway and headed toward town with Edgar’s mother huddled against the passenger-side door.

  Edgar dragged himself through morning chores, lining the pens with the straw bales he’d slept on before the fight. He checked on the pups in the whelping room and weighed them for the log sheets and sat in the straw in the corner of their pen and dozed. The pups mustered the courage to mount an attack. He brushed them aside, but they charged again, biting his fingers and shoes and the belt loops on his jeans, and then he pushed himself up and went to Epi’s pen.

  LATER, HE WOULD BLAME himself for not seeing what would happen, as if he could have prevented it, but during the weeks that followed, his preoccupation was above all with his mother’s health and the mending of the injured dogs. He cleansed and salved Epi’s sutures every morning, and held warm compresses in place until they had cooled in his hands, leaving for school with his fingers stained brown from antiseptic. Her fur began to grow in, but she was distrustful and skittish. Finch’s leg healed quickly. Most important of all, Almondine’s spell in the kennel was not repeated.

  But lying in bed, Edgar would reenact the events of that night, changing the smallest action to stop everything from unraveling.

  If I had let fewer dogs out…

  If I hadn’t fallen asleep…

  If I had fed them the right way…

  Sometimes he worked himself all the way back to If she hadn’t gotten sick…If I could have made a sound…If he hadn’t died…