>
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
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