No.
“Yup,” Henry grunted. “Had to ask.”
Edgar was too tired to wash up. He spread the blanket over the couch and lay down. His head ached with fatigue; his thumb just plain ached. He took the Band-Aids and slathered antibiotic ointment over the raw and puckered wound on his thumb. He was still trying to decide if he had the energy to turn out the light when a wave of exhaustion swept him away, the ointment and the Band-Aid wrappers still lying on his chest.
THE SOFA SHOULD HAVE BEEN a rare pleasure. Instead, his sleep was plagued by absences: Why did the night withhold its panoply of sounds? Where were the bodies of the dogs that warmed him in the dark? He drifted near sleep like a buoy off a shore, until sometime in the night the great rock python Kaa materialized and looped his iridescent coils around Edgar’s legs and chest. It was comforting to meet a figure he recognized, yet how oddly like cotton Kaa’s reptilian skin felt under his fingertips, warm and downy and shot through in places with something almost like a turned hem. The wedge of Kaa’s head swayed before him, lisping nonsense, but even that master hypnotist couldn’t draw him deeper into sleep. Missing dogs. Smothering quiet. Snake’s coils.
When dogs began to bark, Edgar jumped up, electrified by the alarm in their voices. He didn’t bother to disentangle himself from what he knew to be a dream figment, but somehow Kaa had passed into the waking world and taken the form of a blanket wrapped tightly around his legs. Considering how briefly he remained vertical, Edgar gleaned an admirable amount of information about the situation: there was Essay and Baboo and Tinder, hackles raised, fixated on something across the room; there was Henry Lamb, the object of their attention, wrapped in a threadbare checkered bathrobe, standing puffy-faced and startled in his bedroom doorway; and beyond the living room window there was a perfectly nice summer morning pouring itself into the yard. Then all Edgar saw were chair legs and carpeting, because he was busy crashing to the floor. The dogs turned to look at him. Their shoulders drooped and they began to sweep the air with their tails, gulping and panting in postures that said, possibly, they’d overreacted. Baboo pressed his nose into Edgar’s ear and slobbered to make amends.
Henry slumped against the doorway. He attempted speech, but only a grunt came out. He shuffled past and into the kitchen.
“Coffee if you want it,” he croaked after a while.
Edgar settled the dogs and knelt beside Tinder. The bandage was still on his foot, which surprised Edgar and worried him, too. Had Tinder been healthy, he would have chewed it off in the night. With his hand under Tinder’s belly, Edgar coaxed the dog into taking a few steps.
Good, Edgar thought, watching Tinder hold his foot aloft. At least he’s not going to try walking on it.
When Edgar came into the kitchen with the dogs, Henry was sitting at the table cradling a coffee cup. Edgar tipped open the door and Essay and Baboo began trotting around the weedy lawn between the house and barn. Edgar lay his hand on Tinder’s back to guide him outside. The dog hobbled a few steps, urinated, and hobbled back. When he stepped back into the kitchen, the shower was running and Henry’s cup sat empty on the counter. Edgar poured himself some coffee. He found milk in the refrigerator and sugar in a little bowl by the window. The result was bitter and thick but it shocked him awake. He sat on the stoop next to Tinder.
Henry walked outside, car keys jingling in one hand, a lunch bucket in the other.
“Had time to think about what you’re going to do today?” he said, easing down next to them.
Edgar shook his head. This was a lie. What to do that day was exactly what he’d been worrying about, watching Tinder and trying to guess how long his bandage would last if they started walking. Or if Tinder could walk at all.
“How’s your dog?”
Edgar shrugged.
“Right. Probably too soon to tell.”
They sat watching Essay and Baboo.
“Okay, here’s the thing,” Henry said. “While I was showering I tried to figure what most people would do in my place. Like, what’s the ordinary way to handle this? Call the police, I suppose, tell them I’ve got a lost kid and three dogs on my hands. That’s my first instinct, so I don’t trust it-it doesn’t show much imagination, you know?”
Edgar nodded.
“So I’m not going to do that. I mean, I don’t think I’ll do that.”
Henry turned to give Edgar a look-a meaningful look-though Edgar couldn’t be sure exactly what its meaning was. It struck him again how there was something likable about the man’s defeatist sincerity. Henry Lamb saw the world as filled with road blocks and difficulties, or so it seemed. He conveyed, somehow, the impression that no bad news would surprise him, that every situation was a double-bind waiting to be discovered.
“Look,” Henry said, “I’m telling you right now I’m not trustworthy. I was once, but not anymore. No promises. Nowadays I’m reckless and unpredictable.” He said this without a hint of irony in his voice.
Edgar blinked.
“I’m going to leave the house unlocked. You can stay if you want, give your dog’s foot time to heal.”
Edgar nodded his head. They sat on the edge of the stoop and looked at the sunflowers. It was very early in the morning, and the sun was just preparing to slip over the horizon, but already their enormous dished heads were tipped eastward.
“I don’t suppose you’re planning to rob me blind.”
Edgar shook his head.
“Well, what else could you say? But if I kick you out and lock the door, you could just put a rock through the window, so what good would that do? I’ve got to either trust you or call the police and take most of the day off to deal with that.”
He pushed himself to his feet with a grunt and walked to his car.
“Could be, I’m stupid. Just in case, I’ll tell you right now there’s hardly any money in there, and nothing much valuable you could carry on foot-no jewelry, nothing like that. No guns. Kitchen’s stocked up, though. I just went shopping yesterday. Eat anything you like-you look like you’re starving. Stay out of my bedroom. Don’t mess with this car”-he gestured to the wreck on blocks-“and the TV’s busted. Anything else you want to know?”
No.
Henry backed his sedan around. As he pulled up to the house, he leaned over and rolled down the passenger-side window. “If you do leave,” he said, “lock the door. But don’t, otherwise, unless you want to wait outside until I come back-the only other set of keys is in my desk at work.”
He idled down the driveway and then there was the sound of tires on blacktop, fading in the direction of Lute.
EDGAR STAYED ON THE STOOP, sipping Henry Lamb’s noxious coffee. The house sat in a pocket of morning shadow behind the sunflower field; the cloudless sky was shot with white rays, as if someone had thrown powdered sugar into the air. A faint turpentine odor drifted off the sunflowers.
Essay and Baboo were snooping along the perimeter of the barn. When Tinder whined, Edgar signed a release and the dog hopped forward. He stopped and solemnly nosed his bandaged foot, then persevered until he reached the other dogs, tapping his foot lightly on the ground as he hitched along. The dogs sniffed one another. Then Tinder limped back to the stoop and lay down, sighing.
Watching the dog move told Edgar it would be two weeks-two, three, even-before they could travel, assuming Tinder’s paw didn’t get infected, and he hadn’t cut a tendon or ligament so vital he would (as Henry had so delicately suggested) be crippled. The irony was that if any of the dogs was going to hurt himself through foolish exploration, it should have been Essay, not Tinder. Tinder had just been unlucky-and hunting frogs, no less, always harmless in the past.