The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

When Trudy comes out to the barn in response to Edgar’s note, she finds her son agitated. Their reunion is cut short by the boy’s urgent request that Trudy keep Claude in the house when he returns. Edgar wants to search the barn and needs his mother to keep Claude busy. All he tells her is that he knows Claude “is hiding something here” (504). Until then, Edgar departs the barn and heads to the creek to hide until nightfall.

Edgar takes advantage of the cooling creek water to bathe. So close to home, Edgar nevertheless feels lonely. Almondine is gone, his mother is torn between affections, and his father gone. As he emerges from the creek, Edgar sleeps until he is awakened by one of the dogs bursting into the clearing. Attached to the dog’s collar is a key to Claude’s Impala and an envelope with more than $300. Edgar has no clue what it means.

When Claude tells Glen that he did not find any evidence of Edgar in the barn, Glen is more determined than ever to find the boy and get to the bottom of his father’s death. Certain that Edgar will surface at the farm, Glen stakes out the place and waits in his car, periodically taking a draw from his whiskey flask. His plan is to intercept Edgar when he is heading to the house. Glen will use the Prestone-based ether bomb to surprise the boy and knock him out. He will then drive Edgar to town for a proper interrogation. Glen sees Edgar crossing the field into the barn.

Edgar is intent on finding the bottle Claude hid in the barn, but Glen moves quickly to surprise the boy. He douses a rag with ether and attempts to subdue Edgar. In the ensuing fight, however, Edgar grabs whatever is handy to throw into his attacker’s face. It is quicklime, and Glen feels the searing pain all over his face. Barely able to see, he stumbles out of the barn, leaving behind the bottle of ether. As the fumes from the ether begin to rise, there is an explosion when the fumes touch the uncovered heat lamps overhead. The barn is engulfed in flames.

Alerted by Glen’s screams for help, Trudy and Claude come out. Seeing the barn on fire, Trudy wants to make sure that Edgar is safe. She demands that Glen assure her of this before she gives him water to wash out his burning eyes. Then Trudy and Claude turn their attention to the barn. They decide they must release the dogs and grab whatever records they can before the barn is an inferno.

Edgar is busy freeing as many pups from the burning barn as he can. The barn he knows is gone. Once he knows the dogs are safe, Edgar turns his attention to rescuing as much of the farm’s written records as he can. He cannot move the file cabinets, but he pulls the individual files out in handfuls. He makes many trips into the barn, each time coming out with papers and files. As he pulls files outside, Edgar understands that he might still find the bottle of poison he is sure his uncle hid in the barn. When the flames get too bad, he tells himself, he will abandon his search.

Claude watches as Edgar drags files from the barn. His plan was to have Edgar arrested for theft; it was Claude who sent the dog with the money and the key on its collar. As Edgar works heroically to salvage the family’s business records, Claude grows fretful: “The sight chilled Claude” (536). He hid the bottle of poison not in the floorboards—that would have been too obvious—but rather in one of the lowest drawers of the file cabinets. As Edgar works through each drawer, Claude knows it is only a matter of time before the poison is discovered. 

Grabbing a wheelbarrow, Edgar begins to move files out more expeditiously. As the fire grows, Trudy begs Edgar to stop, but Edgar is gripped by his certainty about the importance of the farm’s history and its records. Suddenly aware that Claude is helping him, Edgar doubles down, determined to bring out as many files as he can.

Claude watches Edgar go in and out of the barn feverishly. When Edgar is out of the barn, Claude runs through the fire to the file cabinets and pulls out the poison bottle and the syringe. He fills the syringe. When Edgar returns, Claude stabs Edgar in the neck with the poison. Pumped on adrenaline, Edgar feels nothing and keeps tossing files into the wheelbarrow. Then he stops and stares directly at his uncle, who is holding the syringe. Edgar grabs a hayfork and thrusts it directly upward through the hanging smoke and into the ceiling. 

Brushing off the sharp pinch in his neck as a “dazzled” nerve (548), Edgar keeps working to bring out more files. The smoke grows thick. Desperate to clear the smoke out, he thrusts a hay fork through the ceiling panels, but it does little good. The smoke “eddied and swirled about…a sweeping, tidal movement” (549). As he begins to feel lightheaded, Edgar wishes he had told Glen how sorry he was about the death of his father. He is shocked to see through the smoke the figure of Almondine who beckons him to follow him. Edgar feels too weak and settles down on the floor. He imagines the smoke is like a river sweeping past him. On the other side of the rushing river, Edgar sees his father, beckoning him. Suddenly, the man is next to him. The boy summons what strength he has and leans toward his father. Edgar smiles and whispers, “I love you” (552). 

Claude coldly watches his nephew collapse on the floor, the poison taking hold. He recalls back in Pusan when he watched the three-legged dog die from the poison. Certain that Edgar is dead, Claude turns now to the business of getting out of the burning barn. But he loses his direction, as the acrid smoke tears into his throat. Disoriented, he bangs about the smoky barn. At one point, he sees the form of his brother in the swirling smoke. Claude struggles to find his way to fresh air. He calls for help, but no one answers.

Trudy waits anxiously outside the barn. As the flames eat through the barn’s shingled roof, she knows that the kennel is lost and along with it her business and her memories of Gar, her lover, and her son. She “lay on the grass, eyes fixed on the open doors of the barn and the sheets of flame that thrust through them like incandescent limbs” (558).

The dogs, released during the height of the conflagration, dart about the farm. Their loyalty to Edgar compels them to wait, uncertain of his fate. As the barn collapses in flames, the dogs understand the enormity of the loss. With Trudy collapsed on the ground, Edgar lost to the fire, and the heat becoming increasingly oppressive, the eight dogs, following the lead of Essay, one of Edgar’s most trusted canines, pass over the fence and head into the uncertain freedom. Forte joins them, and the pack moves forward into the forest, “together now” (562).