I’ll stay and wait.
“No. Don’t spend any more time here than you have to. When you come in, be quiet and slow. She’s worried now and she’s wondering how to protect her babies. If we bother her too much, she could panic. Understand? She could try to eat her pups to keep them safe.”
Okay, he signed. It wasn’t what he wanted to hear, though he understood the reasoning.
“The next thing to watch for is when she starts licking herself or walking around the whelping box. Once that starts, we’ve got work to do.”
NOW TIME THICKENED LIKE wet cement. From his dresser he dug out a pocket watch he’d gotten for Christmas many years before and wound it and set it and shook it to make sure it was running.
He and Almondine walked the path to the creek, but before they’d gone more than halfway he turned and ran back, slapping through the ferns. They arrived five minutes early for the next check. He sat with his back against the narrow front wheels of the tractor while Almondine dozed, annoyingly relaxed, in the cool grass. When the time had passed, he found Iris lying in her box, muzzle atop folded forelegs; she caught his eye and raised her head. In the other whelping pen, a litter charged the door and tried to bite through the rubber toe of his sneaker when he pressed it to the wire. He went to the house, looked at the watch, compared it with the time on the kitchen clock. He fetched The New Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language and opened it at random. His eyes jittered over the words. Intake. Intangible. Intarsia. He flipped a hunk of pages. Perilous. Perimeter. Perimorph. Ridiculous, impossible names for dogs. His toes twitched, his heels rattled against the floor. He slapped the dictionary shut and knelt in front of the television, twisting the channel knob to Wausau, Eau Claire, Ashland.
His father parceled out small jobs, concocting them, Edgar suspected, more out of mercy than necessity: pile newspapers outside the pen door; lay towels on the newspapers; straighten the bedding in the whelping box; wash the steel pan in the workshop, fill it with water, and put it on the stove; put scissors and hemostat in the pan and boil the water; put a bottle of Phisohex on the towels; set out thread and iodine; get a short lead.
After dinner, when the next half hour had passed, he excused himself and walked to the barn. They always seem to start at dinnertime, his father had said. The dogs were standing in their pens, muzzles slowly turning to track his progress down the aisle.
All it took was one glance. For fear of making a commotion, he forced himself to walk the whole length of the barn, but as soon as the evening sky opened overhead, his legs made the decision on their own and he bolted for the house.
“REMEMBER WHAT I SAID about her getting nervous? She’ll be calm if she knows we’re calm, so move slow. She’s an old hand at this. Our job is to watch and help just a little. That’s all. Iris is going to be doing all the work. We’re just keeping her company.”
Edgar was waddling along behind his father, a basin of warm water sloshing in his arms.
Okay, he nodded. He took a breath, let it out. The setting sun cast his father’s shadow back along the driveway.
“Now,” Gar said, “let’s find out how she’s doing.”
Iris stood in her whelping box, head down, digging frantically. She paused briefly when they entered the whelping room, glanced at them, then turned back to her work.
“Go ahead,” his father said, gesturing at the door.
Edgar stepped inside the pen, carrying the pan, and set it down in the corner. His father handed him the newspapers, the towels, and all the paraphernalia he’d collected during the afternoon. Iris stopped digging and walked to the door. His father squatted down and stroked her face and chest; he ran the tip of his finger along her gum line and put his palm against her swollen belly; in return, she pressed forward until one of her feet was outside the threshold of the pen door. His father placed his hands on her shoulders and eased her back. He had Edgar latch the hook and eye on the inside of the door and Iris returned to the whelping box and lay down.
Now what? Edgar signed.
“Now we wait.”
After twenty minutes or so, Iris stood and circled inside the whelping box. She whined and panted, then sat. After a few more minutes, she stood again. She shivered, turned her head all the way back to her hindquarters, and licked at her hip. She shivered again.
Shouldn’t she be lying down? Edgar signed.
“Sit tight,” his father said. “She’s doing just fine.”
Iris lowered herself nearly to the floor, hips suspended above the bedding. A spasm shook her body. She whined quietly, grunted, then raised her hips and turned to look behind her. A newborn pup, dark and shiny in its embryonic sac, lay on the gray bedding.
“Wash your hands,” his father said. He’d closed his eyes and tipped his head back against the wall. “Use the Phisohex.”
As Edgar rubbed his hands together in the water, he heard a squeak from the whelping box. Iris had already torn the birth membrane away and had turned the new pup on its back. She was running her tongue along its head then its belly and hind legs. Its fur glistened and it kicked its hind legs and squeaked again.
“Has she chewed through the cord?” his father asked.
Edgar nodded.
“Wet one of the small towels and take a dry one and a couple of sheets of newspaper. Kneel over to the whelping box. Go slow. Use the wet towel to clean off the pup. Hold it right near Iris so she can see what you’re doing. That’s right. She’s just checking you; it’s okay if the pup cries a little. Make sure its nose and mouth are clear. Hold it in your left hand and get the dry towel with your other hand and dry it off. You can rub a little. Go ahead. That’s good, you want to dry it off as much as you can. Now set it down in front of her.”
Edgar performed each step as instructed. His father sat with his back against the wall, eyes closed, his voice quiet and even, as if describing a dream in which the pups were born. When Edgar set the pup down, Iris began to lick it again. Edgar took a deep breath and listened to his father’s voice as he walked him through tying the umbilical with thread and dabbing the stub with iodine.
“Now look for the afterbirth. Do you see what I mean by the afterbirth? Is it all the way out of her? Trace the umbilical cord to find out. Put it into the newspaper and roll it up and set it by the door. Don’t move fast. Now go back to the pup. Pick it up. Use both hands. Remember to praise Iris when we’re done, she’s being very good about all this. Very gracious. Don’t be scared if she grabs your hand; it just means she’s not ready to let you touch her pup yet. While you’re holding it, she’s going to be watching you; try not to take it out of her reach, and never out of her sight. Look it over. Does it look normal? Look at its face. Is it okay? Good. Now set it down so its head is near a nipple. Good. Watch for a minute. Is it taking the nipple? Move the pup a little closer. How about now? Is it taking the nipple? Good.”
Iris lay with her neck flat on the bedding, eyes half shut. Breaths like sighs lifted her chest. Edgar discovered he could hear the faint suckling of the pup over the thunderous pounding in his ears. He scooted backward until he could lean against the wall. He took a long, quavering breath and looked over at his father.
“You forgot to praise her,” his father said, his voice so quiet Edgar barely heard it. He’d opened his eyes again and he was smiling. “But wait awhile now. She wants to rest.”
THE PUPS ARRIVED about a half an hour apart. When the third was nursing, Edgar’s father gathered up the newspapers piled by the door and walked out of the whelping room. He came back carrying a pan of warm milk. Edgar held it while Iris lapped, then ran his fingers into the bowl and let her lick the last drops, and then he held her water bowl. She turned to her pups, rolling them and licking them until they cried, and then, satisfied, lowered her muzzle to the bedding.
The fourth pup looked normal in every way, yet it sagged in Edgar’s hand when he lifted it. His father pressed the limp shape to his ear and held his breath. He swung the pup high into the a
ir and quickly down to the floor, listened, and did it again. Then he shook his head and lay the stillborn pup aside.
Did I do something wrong? Edgar signed.
“No,” his father said. “Sometimes a pup just isn’t strong enough to survive whelping. It doesn’t mean you did anything wrong and it doesn’t mean that there’s any problem with the rest of the litter. But now would be a good time to walk her. She’ll relax for the rest of the whelping.” Edgar nodded and collected the short lead and gently slapped his thigh to coax Iris out of the whelping box. She bent her head to her pups and licked them away from her. They began to peep like chicks. She allowed Edgar to lead her into the yard. The night was cloudless and Almondine watched them from the porch, whining quietly.
Not yet, he signed. Soon.
Iris made for the top of the orchard, urinated, then pulled heavily toward the barn. As he closed the barn doors, and the swath of yellow light narrowed against the woods opposite, he saw a flash of eyeshine, two pale green disks that vanished and appeared again. Forte, he thought. He wished he could take the time to walk out and be sure but instead he turned and led Iris to the whelping room. The pen door stood open. His father was gone, along with the stillborn pup. Iris stood over her pups, methodically licking them, then lay and nudged them into the circle of her legs.
Four more pups came that night. Edgar washed and inspected each, offering Iris water and food when he thought she would take it. His father sat against the wall, elbows propped on his knees, watching. After the eighth pup, his father palpated Iris’s belly. There were probably no more, he said, but they should wait. Edgar cleaned the fur on Iris’s legs and all of her back parts, and he dried her with a fresh towel. He coaxed her into the warm night once again. When they returned, Iris went directly to the whelping box and urged her pups against her teats as she had before.
She’s a good mother, Edgar signed.
“She is indeed,” his father said. He guided Edgar out of the whelping room. The bright kennel lights cast circles under his father’s eyes and Edgar wondered if he himself looked equally weary.
“I want you to stay in the barn tonight, but keep out of her pen unless she’s having problems. First, though, I want you to come back into the house and clean up.”
They walked into the dark kitchen together. The kitchen clock read 2:25. Almondine lay near the porch door. She sauntered drowsily over and scented Edgar’s legs and hands, then leaned against his knee. Edgar’s mother appeared in the bedroom doorway wearing her bathrobe.
“Well?” she said.
Three females, four males, he signed. He made the sign for “beautiful,” a wide, sweeping gesture.
She smiled and walked around the table and hugged him.
“Edgar,” she murmured.
He fixed himself a ham sandwich and told her everything. Some of it was already jumbled in his mind; he could not remember whether the stillborn puppy was the fourth or fifth. Then, all at once, he could think of nothing else to say.
Can I go back out now?
“Yes,” she said. “Go.”
His father stood and laid a hand on Edgar’s shoulder and looked at him. After a time Edgar felt embarrassed and looked down.
Thank you, he signed.
His father raised his fingertips to his mouth and held them there. He drew a breath and tipped his hands outward.
You’re welcome.
Almondine squeezed through the porch door ahead of him and plunged down the steps. There were no clouds to obscure the stars overhead or the crescent moon reclined at the horizon. The longer he looked, the more stars he saw. No end to them. He thought of Claude and how he’d been overwhelmed by the sky his first night home.
Whoosh, he’d said. As if a person might fall into something that large.
In the barn, he stopped to collect a clean towel from the medicine room and The New Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language from its place atop the file cabinets and went into the nursery. Iris lay on her side in the whelping box, breaths tidal, her pups chirping and grunting as they nursed.
He would need names now, particularly good names. He stretched out along the passageway floor, using the towel for a pillow, and opened the dictionary. Almondine scented the air and peered into the pen, tail low. Iris opened her eyes and raised her head. Then Almondine stepped over Edgar and lay beside him. He pulled her onto her side and she pawed the air and gave out a little gasp and they looked through the pen wire together. The low barrier of the whelping box hid the pups, but when Edgar closed his eyes, he saw them anyway, shining black crescents tucked against the down of their mother’s belly.
Essence
OCTOBER. DRY LEAVES CHATTERED BENEATH THE APPLE TREES. For three nights running, pearl flakes of snow materialized around Edgar and Almondine as they walked from the kennel to the house. Almondine poked her nose into the apparition of her own breath while Edgar watched a snowflake dissolve in midair, one and then another. Those that made it to the ground quivered atop blades of grass, then wilted into ink drops. At the porch, they turned to look at their footsteps, a pair of dark trails through the lawn.
The four of them played intricate games of canasta until late in the night. Edgar partnered with his mother—they both liked to freeze the deck, slow things down, let the tension rise with the height of the discard pile. Soon enough you got an idea of which cards a player needed and which they hoarded. Sometimes a person was forced to make an impossible choice. His father scavenged the low-point cards, arranging meld after meld on the table. Claude preferred to hold his cards, fanning them, rearranging them, walking them with his fingers until, without warning, he would complete two or three canastas and go out. They harassed one another as they played.
“Your turn, Claude,” Edgar’s father said.
“Hold on, I’m plotting a revolution.”
“Hey, no table talk.”
“That’s not table talk. I’m trying to get my partner off my back.”
“Well, Edgar and I don’t like it. There’s no telling what sort of signals you two have cooked up.”
“All right, here’s a discard. Take it.”
“Ugh. Does your trash never end? Here’s one for my dear husband.”
His father looked at the discard and peered around his tract of melds.
“Jesus, Gar. You play like a farmer.”
“What’s wrong with that? You should thank me. It’s your crop, too.”
“What’s the score again?”
“Thirty-two thirty to twenty-eight sixty. You’re behind.”
“That’s only one natural’s difference.”
“Now that was table talk for sure.”
“I’m just saying what’s true. Every time Edgar scratches his ear he’s probably telling you all the cards in his hand. Look at that devious expression. What’s it mean when he yawns? ‘I’ve got jacks and I’m going out next round’?”
“You wish. I think we’re stuck in this one to the bitter end.”
“You’re the one who froze the pile. Come on, Edgar, what’s it gonna be?”
Wait, he signed, one-handed.
“See there. Now, what’s that mean?”
“It means he can’t decide what to discard.”
Edgar pondered. He slapped his thigh and Almondine sauntered over and he held out his two cards, facedown. Could be either one of these, he signed. She scented one, then the other. She nosed the first. He placed a ten of hearts on the discard pile.
“Okay, nice. You’ve got the dog scouting cards. Remind me to lower my cards when she’s behind me. Pass the popcorn. I need to think.”
Claude chewed a kernel and looked across the table at Edgar’s father. On the wall, the telephone buzzed quietly, the sound like a june bug at a window screen.
“What was that?” Claude said.
“Oh, I don’t even hear that anymore. When they converted us off the party line it half-rings like that once in a while, but when you pick it up, it’s just dial tone. We ca
ll, they say it’s fixed, then it buzzes again.”
“Hmmm. You ever going to put a phone in the barn?”
“No. Quit stalling.”
Claude counted his cards.
“Oh lord, here we go,” his mother said.
“Next game I want to switch partners. My brother’s run out of luck. All he knows how to do is start melds. Besides, with Edgar on my team, I get two for one.”
“You can’t have him. Edgar and I are always partners. Another black three? How many of those do you have?”
“That’s what you’re going to find out. All good things come to those who wait, and I intend to make you wait. Edgar, listen to your poor old uncle Claude. You can get anything you want in this world if you’re willing to go slow enough. Remember that. Words of wisdom.”
“Did you just call yourself slow?”
“A smart kind of slow.”
His father discarded a queen of clubs and looked at Edgar over his glasses. “If you’re the good son I raised you to be, you won’t pick that up.”
Edgar held two cards, neither of them queens. He smiled and pulled a queen off the deck and flipped the new card back onto the discard pile. Claude drew off the deck and tapped the new card on the table and then it disappeared into the mass of cards feathered out in his hand. He looked at Edgar’s father.
“If I’m so slow, then how could I know that’s the sixth queen in that pile? Which is why I can drop this lovely lady and break Trudy’s heart.”
He snapped another queen onto the discards and grinned.
Edgar’s mother pulled out a pair of queens and laid them on the table.
“I’ll be god-damned,” Claude said.
“We don’t use that kind of language around here,” she said, mock-primly, while raking the discard pile over.
“It was for cause. I guess I might as well stretch my legs.”