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      The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

      A Novel

      David Wroblewski

      Dedication

      For Arthur and Ann Wroblewski

      Epigraph

      There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

      —CHARLES DARWIN, The Origin of Species

      Contents

       Cover

      Title Page

      Dedication

      Epigraph

      Prologue

      Part I: Forte’s Children

      A Handful of Leaves

      Almondine

      Signs

      Edgar

      Every Nook and Cranny

      The Stray

      The Litter

      Essence

      A Thin Sigh

      Storm

      Part II: Three Griefs

      Funeral

      The Letters from Fortunate Fields

      Lessons and Dreams

      Almondine

      The Fight

      Epi’s Stand

      Courtship

      In the Rain

      Part III: What Hands Do

      Awakening

      Smoke

      Hangman

      A Way to Know for Sure

      Driving Lesson

      Trudy

      Popcorn Corners

      The Texan

      Part IV: Chequamegon

      Flight

      Pirates

      Outside Lute

      Henry

      Ordinary

      Engine No. 6615

      Glen Papineau

      Wind

      Return

      Almondine

      Part V: Poison

      Edgar

      Trudy

      Edgar

      Glen Papineau

      Edgar

      Trudy

      Edgar

      Glen Papineau

      Edgar

      Trudy

      Edgar

      Claude

      Edgar

      Claude

      Edgar

      Claude

      Trudy

      The Sawtelle Dogs

      Acknowledgments

      About the Author

      Credits

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

      Prologue

      Pusan, South Korea, 1952

      After dark the rain began to fall again, but he had already made up his mind to go and anyway it had been raining for weeks. He waved off the rickshaw coolies clustered near the dock and walked all the way from the naval base, following the scant directions he’d been given, through the crowds in the Kweng Li market square, past the vendors selling roosters in crude rattan crates and pigs’ heads and poisonous-looking fish lying blue and gutted and gaping on racks, past gray octopi in glass jars, past old women hawking kimchee and bulgoki, until he crossed the Tong Gang on the Bridge of Woes, the last landmark he knew.

      In the bar district the puddled water shimmered red and green beneath banners strung rooftop to rooftop. There were no other servicemen and no MPs and he walked for a long time, looking for a sign depicting a turtle with two snakes. The streets had no end and he saw no such sign and none of the corners were square and after a while the rain turned to a frayed and raveling mist. But he walked along, methodically turning right twice then left twice, persevering with his search even after he’d lost his bearings many times over. It was past midnight before he gave up. He was retracing his route, walking down a street he’d traversed twice before, when he finally saw the sign, small and yellow and mounted high on the corner of a bar. One of the snakes curled back to bite the turtle’s tail. As Pak had said it would.

      He’d been told to look for an alley opposite the sign, and it was there too—narrow, wet, half-cobbled, sloping toward the harbor, lit only by the signs opposite and the glow of windows scattered down its length. He walked away from the street, his shadow leading the way. Now there should be a doorway with a lantern—a red lantern. An herbalist’s shop. He looked at the tops of the buildings, took in the underlit clouds streaming over the rooftops. Through the window of a shabby bathhouse came a woman’s shriek, a man’s laughter. The needle dropped on a record and Doris Day’s voice quavered into the alley:

      I’m wild again, beguiled again,

      A simpering, whimpering child again.

      Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered am I.

      Ahead, the alley crooked to the right. Past the turn he spotted the lantern, a gourd of ruby glass envined in black wire, the flame within a rose that sprang and licked at the throat of the glass, skewing rib-shadows across the door. A shallow porch roof was gabled over the entrance. Through the single, pale window he saw only a smoke-stained silk curtain embroidered with animal figures crossing a river in a skiff. He peered down the alley then back the way he’d come. Then he rapped on the door and waited, turning up the collar of his pea coat and stamping his feet as if chilled, though it was not cold, only wet.

      The door swung open. An old man stepped out, dressed in raw cotton pants and a plain vestment made from some rough fabric just shy of burlap. His face was weathered and brown, his eyes set in origami creases of skin. Inside the shop, row upon row of milky ginseng root hung by lengths of twine, swaying pendulously, as if recently caressed.

      The man in the pea coat looked at him. “Pak said you know English.”

      “Some. You speak slow.”

      The old man pulled the door shut behind him. The mist had turned to rain again. It wasn’t clear when that had happened, but by then rain had been falling for days, weeks, and the sound of running water was so much a part of the world he could not hear it anymore. To be dry was temporary; the world was a place that shed water.

      “You have medicine?” the old man asked. “I have