Something about the sight of it brought Edgar to his feet. He had them repeat the sequence.
Carry this to that dog.
Tag that dog.
Down when you are tagged.
All at once blood was roaring in his ears. He understood that an idea had slowly been dawning on him, parceled out over the course of days in bits and pieces from some dim compartment of his mind. They went through the drill again. Each time, he saw more clearly the image of Claude backing out of the barn, looking for something dropped or flung away, the white snowy world behind him.
If that sight brought the memory back for Edgar, might it do the same for Claude?
When he was too tired to run the dogs, he sat and peered at the photograph of Claude and Forte. He closed his eyes and lay on his side, distantly aware that the dogs had gathered around, watching. For so long he’d lurched between one truth and another. Nothing had seemed certain, nothing had even seemed knowable.
But now—perhaps—he’d found a way to know for sure.
Driving Lesson
HE HEARD THE SOUND OF FOOTSTEPS ON THE MOW STAIRS, and his mother ducked around the vestibule door, her dark hair in a loose ponytail that swung sinuously across her shoulders. Essay, Tinder, and Opal were in the mow with Edgar, in sit-stays at the moment, and he was holding a length of thick rope, knotted at both ends, of the kind they used for practicing retrieves. Almondine lay sprawled near the doorway.
“How about a ride into town?” his mother said. “We could stop for lunch.”
The three yearlings, excited by his mother’s appearance, began to lift their haunches off the floor and Edgar stepped into their line of sight and caught their gazes until they settled back into sits. When he was sure they would stick, he turned to his mother.
I want to keep working Essay, he signed, a half-truth. He’d begun the morning practicing the tag-and-down sequence but they’d fought him on it, playing dumb after being pushed night after night. He wanted more than anything to be left alone to work, for there to be no chance that the sight of Claude near his mother would bring on one of those cramps of anger that could snatch his breath away. The idea of the three of them squeezed into the truck—or worse, the Impala—set off a caw of panic in his mind. His mood, after a night of half-recalled dreams in which he repeatedly slipped from the branches of the apple tree into some formless abyss, was already black and raw.
“Okay,” she said, cheerily. “Someday you’ll be my son again, I just know it.”
He heard their voices in the yard and then the truck started and crunched along the driveway, and Edgar and the dogs went back to work. He clapped up Almondine and they went through a few retrieves while the yearlings watched. When Essay had executed three fetches in a row without a mistake, Edgar rotated Opal through the routine, then Tinder, and then he began with Essay again, this time, lest she grow bored, tossing the rope into a maze of straw bales he had hastily constructed. When Tinder finished, he led them all downstairs.
He decided to eat an early lunch rather than risk their coming back while he was in the house. He walked past the Impala, checking the impulse to mule-kick a dent into its side, and let Almondine up the porch steps ahead of him. When he walked into the kitchen Claude was sitting at the table. He was smoking a cigarette, and the newspaper was quartered in his hand. Edgar’s first impulse was to turn and stalk out while the spring on the porch door was still jangling, but he forced himself to cross the kitchen and yank open the refrigerator and pile sandwich fixings on the table. Claude kept reading as Edgar slapped together slices of bread and cheese and pimiento loaf. At last Claude laid aside the newspaper.
“I’m glad you came in,” he said. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
Edgar faced the cool depths of the refrigerator and pretended to hunt for something. Then he pulled out a chair across from Claude and sat and began to eat his sandwich.
“You know how to drive that truck?” Claude asked.
Edgar shook his head, which was the truth. His father had let him steer now and then from the passenger side, but only briefly.
“Now, that’s a crime,” Claude said. “When Gar and I were your age, we’d already been driving for quite a while. It’s handy sometimes, you know.”
Edgar tore off a corner of his sandwich and handed it down to Almondine.
“I’ve been trying to talk your mom into the idea we ought to teach you, but she’s not convinced. She’s in favor of Driver’s Ed.” He said “Driver’s Ed” as if it were the silliest thing in the world. “One day our dad just took us out and showed us how. That’s all. After about an afternoon of tooling around, we were all set. Down to Popcorn Corners and back to begin with—a milk run, like they say.”
Edgar thought he understood where Claude was heading and he nodded.
“Of course, you and I have an advantage. It was all stick back then, every truck we ever had. But the Impala’s automatic. As long as your mom’s off in town, I was thinking you and I might have a little fun. Something we could slip off and do, something your mom doesn’t necessarily even need to know about. By the time you get into Driver’s Ed you’ll be the best in your class. Plus, you’ll impress the hell out of your mom the first time you two go for a practice drive. What do you say?”
Edgar looked at Claude.
O, he fingerspelled, as he took a bite of his sandwich.
K, he signed.
Claude watched Edgar’s hands, then slapped the table. “There you go,” he said. “Swallow it down, son, it’s time to take the wheel. Your whole life’s about to change.” He rattled the newspaper together and stood and twirled the car keys around his finger. Edgar set the remains of his sandwich on the table and stood and walked out with Almondine at his heels.
The Impala was parked facing the road, driver’s-side wheels resting in the grass. Claude opened the passenger door and prepared to get in, but when he saw Almondine, he tipped the seat forward and said, “Jump in, honey. Your boy’s about to amaze you.” Then Claude said one thing more. He was looking down the drive with his forearm resting on the roof of the car. He patted the metal with the flat of his hand.
“Right here’s something Gar would never have done,” he said. “He’d have kept you pinned down as long as he could.”
Almondine had jumped into the back seat. Now she was looking out at Edgar, panting. He’d been hearing a ringing in his ears ever since Claude had said the word “son,” and now something that had been hanging by a thread inside him seemed to come loose.
He opened the driver’s-side door.
Come out, he signed to Almondine. You have to stay home.
She looked at him and panted.
Come, he signed. He stepped back. Almondine maneuvered out of the car again and he led her up the porch steps and into the kitchen. He squatted down in front of her and ran his hand over her head and down her ruff and he took a long look at the sublime pattern of gold and brown in her irises. You’re a good girl, he signed. You know that.
Then he closed the door and walked back to the Impala. Claude stood watching him over the flat blue expanse of its roof. The three little vents set into the car’s flanks reminded Edgar of shark’s gills.
Let’s go.
He didn’t care if Claude understood his sign. His body language was clear enough.
Claude dropped into the bucket seat on the passenger side. He rolled down his window and Edgar did the same. “You know the gas from the brake, right? Everybody knows that.”
Claude handed Edgar his ring of keys. Edgar examined them up in the light and gave the gas pedal an experimental push.
“You don’t want to pump the gas,” Claude said. “You’ll flood it.”
The key slid smoothly into the ignition and the Impala’s starter whirred and the engine roared to life. Edgar held the key twisted over a moment too long and there was a horrendous grinding noise. He let up, then seeing the expression on Claude’s face, twisted it again. He pulled his foot o
ff the gas pedal and set it on the floor and listened to the motor idle.
Claude started talking again, but Edgar wasn’t paying attention. He tested the brake pedal experimentally, felt it give under his foot. The shifter was on the column. The orange tip of the gear indicator was under the speedometer. He’d seen people do this before with automatic transmissions; he pulled the shift lever back and dropped it into D.
The car began to roll forward.
“That’s right,” Claude said. “Nice and easy.”
The steering wheel turned with a strange oily smoothness compared to Alice. Edgar wondered if the Impala had power steering. Stranger yet was the huge flat hood extending in front of them. He was used to a thin orange oblong with a smokestack coughing black fumes. This felt like steering from behind a vast blue table. The engine sounded distant and muffled. And he couldn’t see what the front wheels were doing—he had to steer by feel alone.
“That’s good,” Claude said. “Just ease it down the drive and we’ll see what’s coming. Take a left, head down toward the Corners so your mom won’t catch us if she’s coming back from town.”
Edgar looked at him and nodded. He began to press the gas pedal, and then, without quite realizing he’d made any decision, his foot kept pressing down, a surprisingly long way, until it was flat against the floor.
The Impala bellowed. It fishtailed in place on the dirt and gravel of the driveway. Edgar had a good grip on the wheel, and he kept the car more or less straight ahead as it shot forward—maybe a little on the grass to the right, but that was better than clipping the house.
“Whoa there, son,” Claude exclaimed. “You got a tiger by the tail. Let up! Whoa!”
It took no time at all to reach the end of the driveway. Edgar wondered how fast they were going but he didn’t have time to look at the speedometer, so much was happening. For one thing the trees in the orchard were coming up fast on the right. For another, he had craned around to watch the barn receding in the back window, and that was difficult to do with his foot squashed down on the gas. When he faced front again, he thought a very long time before he decided not to run the car straight off the road into the woods across the driveway, because he knew they weren’t really going that fast. Out on the road, they’d be able to pick up a lot more speed. As the last apple tree blurred past the side window he started turning the wheel.
Claude had stopped shouting “Whoa!” as if they were on a horse-drawn wagon and reached over to throw the wheel to the left. They struggled a little trying to agree on when to return the wheel to center; Edgar thought that should happen when the mailbox was dead square in front of the windshield but Claude wanted to start earlier than that. Together, they worked out a compromise. The Impala’s nose heaved left and the car performed a deeply satisfying slide and then they were crossways in the road, or nearly, and there was the deafening sound of gravel being chewed up under the tires and spat at the quarter panels. Claude now had both his hands on the wheel; he had definite ideas about the direction they should be headed.
Okay, Edgar signed, you steer.
He took his hands away, keeping his foot smashed down on the gas pedal. Unburdened of the task of navigating, he could twist around to look through the rear window again; it was exhilarating to see the road shrinking away like a broad brown strip of taffy being pulled out of the trunk. Also, now he had time to check the speedometer. He didn’t know if it was right; it didn’t seem like they could be climbing past fifty already—they weren’t even to the fence line. Maybe it was just the wheels spinning out on the gravel. On the other hand, they had started moving pretty fast once Claude got them headed down the center of the road. Claude had once said the car was a four-twenty-something. Edgar thought that was good; he thought that meant it would go very, very fast.
Air began to roar through the open windows.
Don’t we get to listen to some music? he signed.
Then Claude was shouting about the gas pedal. Edgar reached past him and turned on the radio. Over the roar of the engine, he heard the steely twang of a guitar.
Country music, he signed. My favorite.
He pressed one of the big black preset buttons to switch channels, then another.
I really don’t like it when you call me son, he signed. That’s not right. I’m not your son.
He turned the radio off again.
“I can’t understand you,” Claude said. “Let up on the gas, for Christ sakes.”
In fact, he signed, I really don’t like you being in my house at all.
Claude reached over and tried to shift the transmission into neutral, but Edgar put his hands on the steering wheel again and wrenched it to the left. The car slewed across the gravel and a stand of maple trees filled the windshield. Claude let go of the shifter and put both hands back on the wheel and, to Edgar’s surprise, was able to square their line of travel with the road again.
Now the speedometer was up to seventy-three. The Impala was jittering around as if it were traveling on a strip of ball bearings. That was the fastest he had ever traveled in a car, Edgar thought, and it was interesting that it was on gravel. The speed really ate up the road; ahead, he could see where the dirt merged onto the broad curve of blacktop that continued north and veered east to Popcorn Corners. There was a little bridge over a creek up ahead, and he wondered if they could get the Impala up to seventy-five by the time they reached it. Before he had a chance to ponder it further, they’d arrived. There was a lurch, and when they landed again, Edgar felt as if his body were still sailing through the air while his eyes had fallen back to earth.
He smiled at Claude and checked the speedometer. They’d made it to seventy-five after all. The hood of the Impala was tarnished, and that was a shame. On a nice day, he bet it would be fine to see the clouds climbing across that blue mirror stretched out in front of them. Like flying into the sky.
“Okay,” Claude said. He had quickly gotten the knack of steering from the passenger side. They hardly wobbled at all, which was a good thing, because the road was narrow.
“Okay,” Claude repeated. “You’re the boss. What do you want?”
Edgar wondered that himself. He didn’t really have a plan. In fact, the whole driving thing had been Claude’s idea. And there was that clanging in his head. It was driving him batty; he tried hammering the heel of his palm against his forehead to make it stop. It didn’t help—though, at least now his head had a reason to ring. He turned and grinned sheepishly at Claude.
Why not go all the way to Popcorn Corners, he signed. A milk run, like they say.
“I don’t understand you,” Claude said. “You know I can’t read—”
P-O-P-C-O-
“Don’t fucking fingerspell at me,” Claude shouted. “Let up on the gas!”
And then, before Edgar could react, Claude reached past him and flipped the transmission lever up into neutral. From where he sat, Claude couldn’t have seen the shifter window in the dashboard, so it had to have been a wild guess, and he might easily have thrown it into reverse instead. That was an interesting possibility, and one Edgar hadn’t considered before. What happened if you dropped into reverse going, what, sixty-four miles an hour? No, make that fifty-eight. Fifty.
The sound of the Impala’s engine, roaring while in gear, now rose to a shriek, as if it might leap from its moorings. Claude twisted the key and the engine died. They drifted to a stop. For a while there was just the sound of the two of them panting and a clicking, thumping sound. Edgar looked down and discovered his foot spastically pumping the gas pedal. Their plume of dust caught up with them, then swept past, a dry, brown fog. The cooling engine block made a low ticking sound.
When do I learn to parallel park? Edgar signed. I hear that’s tricky.
Claude pulled the keys out of the ignition and sat back in the passenger seat. He couldn’t possibly have understood what Edgar had signed, but he started to laugh anyway. Pretty soon he was howling and slapping his knee. Edgar got out of the car and
began to walk back up the road toward the house, two or three miles distant. Behind him, he heard the passenger door slam and the crunch of footsteps on gravel. The starter on the Impala whined and stopped, whined and stopped.
Before Edgar had gotten far up the road, Claude had backed the car around and then it was rolling along beside Edgar. The engine made a wounded sound and something was tapping or clicking under the hood. Wha-ting! Wha-ting! Wha-ting! Tingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingting!
“Guess I had it wrong about driving,” Claude said. “No hard feelings?”
Edgar walked along.
“While you’re enjoying your stroll, you might want to consider that you and I have people in common. Your mother, for instance.”
And my father, he signed.
Claude couldn’t help trying to read his sign, even when Edgar flashed it out. The Impala rolled alongside him while Claude replayed the gestures in his mind.
“Yeah, likewise,” Claude said, taking a wild guess. Then he gave the Impala the gas. It knocked and stuttered down the road. He’d gone about a half mile toward the house before the car slid to a stop again and he climbed out.
“You’re just like your father! Goddamn it all!” he shouted, kicking the gravel. Then he turned and climbed into the Impala and roared away.
Trudy
IF TRUDY HADN’T BEEN PREOCCUPIED AS SHE DROVE TO MELLEN, she might have felt pleasure in the trip, for it was one of those perfectly warm June days when the sun felt like a voluptuous and reassuring hand pressing down on a person’s skin. Ordinarily she liked the radio, but the roar of air past the truck window was best for thinking, and Edgar was on her mind. He was engaged in a rebellion she didn’t completely understand. It was over Claude, she knew that much. Three nights in the last week he’d refused to come in from the kennel, sleeping instead in the mow. But whenever she tried to talk to him, he just walked off or stood there and shut her out as only Edgar could.
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle Page 30