The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. David Wroblewski

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      For a break, Edgar flung tennis balls and whirled coffee can lids into the farthest corners of the mow for the dogs to chase. The pounding of their feet on the mow floor provoked the kennel dogs below into a chorus of muffled barks. He’d started the two of them holding retrieval targets—just taking them in their mouths for a second or two—when he noticed that the kennel dogs were still barking. Odd, since both his dogs were now sitting quietly. Edgar opened the vestibule door and listened, then started down the stairs. Finch and Essay, nails clicking on the wooden treads, crowded past him.

      Got to work on that, he thought.

      He was almost to the bottom tread before he saw his father, sprawled and motionless on the floor near the workshop entrance. He was wearing his winter coat, as if heading outside. And he lay face down.

      For a moment, Edgar stood paralyzed. Then he bolted down the steps and was on his knees beside his father while Essay and Finch stomped and plunged around them. He shook his father and dug his fingers into the heavy fabric of his coat and rolled him onto his back and peered into his face.

      What happened? What happened?

      Behind the lenses of his glasses, his father blinked. How slowly his eyes tracked Edgar’s hands. He strained to lift his head, raising it no more than an inch off the floor. He stopped and took a breath. Edgar slipped his hand beneath his father’s head before it could fall back against the cement.

      And then he was frantic. He withdrew his hand as gently as he could and checked his fingers for blood, but there was none. He tore his sweater off and bunched it up beneath his father’s head.

      His father’s mouth had fallen open.

      Can you see me? he signed. He yanked down the zipper of his father’s coat and looked at the checkered work shirt beneath. He patted him from throat to belt. No blood, no injury.

      What happened? Did you fall? Can you see me?

      His father didn’t answer. Nor was he looking back.

      Then Edgar was running through the cold, the house jerking in his vision. Wisps of snow coiled around the porch steps. He burst into the kitchen and yanked the phone off its hook. He stood for a moment, unsure of what to do. He pulled the zero around on the dial and waited. Almondine was in the kitchen with him; he couldn’t remember her running alongside to the house or even following him down from the mow.

      After the second ring a woman’s voice came on the line.

      “Operator.”

      He was already trying to make the words. He moved his lips. A sigh came out of him, thin and dry.

      “This is the operator. How may I help you?”

      His heart surged in his chest. He tried to force sound from his mouth, but there was only the gasp of exhaled breath. He swung his hand wide, then struck his chest with all the force he could muster, mouthing the words.

      “Is this an emergency?” the operator said.

      He struck his chest again. Again. 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 СКАЧАТЬ