black and elongate toward the field. Claude had hold of his father’s closed fist, as if trying to force it open, and they grunted and pushed wordlessly against each other, counterbalanced and shaking with effort as snow settled on their shoulders and hair.
The clench broke and they stepped apart, breath gray in the cold air. Edgar’s father raised a hand and pointed at Claude, but before he could speak, Claude charged, pulling them both to the ground. Edgar’s father’s glasses glittered in the air. He brought his hands down on Claude’s back and hard on the side of his head. Claude’s grip loosened. Edgar’s father climbed to his feet. Claude scrambled up after him but he slipped and fell heavily down, and before he could get up, Edgar’s father was there, foot drawn back. Claude curled his arms over his face convulsively and a shriek filled the yard.
For a time the two men were perfectly still, and the falling snow itself froze in the air. Then Edgar’s father drew a breath. He set his foot down. With a disdainful gesture, he tossed what he’d held into the snow. The keys to the truck. Then he turned and walked into the house, and the porch light flicked off.
Edgar and Almondine panted in unison, their breaths congealing on the window. Almondine had been growling low in her chest, but Edgar only heard it now and he reached over and smoothed her hackles. He wiped a watery path across the fogged glass. Claude clambered to his feet and stooped to pick up the truck keys. The feeble cab light glowed briefly over him as he opened the truck door and pulled himself inside and slammed the door shut. The starter grumbled. The taillights flared and flared as if he were stomping on the brake. The truck sat wreathed in clouds of exhaust. Finally it rolled toward the barn and backed around. The headlights swept the yard where Edgar’s father and Claude had fought, their struggle drawn in snow that glowed white, then red, then darkened again as the truck roared past the house and away down Town Line Road.
A Thin Sigh
HE KNELT BY THE WINDOW AND LET THE IMAGES REPLAY themselves. The snow lay jaundiced under the yard light and the shadow of the house lampblack across the snow, unbroken save for a single skewed rectangle glowing at its core. Light from the kitchen window. Flakes of snow were captured there, drifting earthward like ash. Up through the furnace register his father’s voice rang, tinny and fractured. Edgar walked to his bed and slapped the mattress for Almondine, but she lay in the doorway and would not come. At last he dragged his blanket over to her and arranged himself on the slatted floor. She rolled onto her side and braced her feet straight-legged against him.
Then all the voices fell silent. The light at the bottom of the stairs dimmed. They lay together on the dusty-smelling floor, listening to the timbers of the house groan and pop. Formless light seethed when Edgar closed his eyes. Then he was awake. He put his hand under Almondine’s belly and she stood and stretched her feet out front and bowed her spine until a high whine escaped her, and they crept down the stairs, feeling their way in the dark. In the living room, the tiny candlestick lamp cast just enough light to outline the chairs.
He thought the kitchen would be a shambles, but the table stood level, the chairs snugged evenly beneath. All shadow and silhouette. He walked around the table and touched the chairs in turn, points of the compass. The freezer compressor ticked and engaged and murmured a low electric throb; the blower sighed warm air across his stockinged foot as he passed the register. A silver bead of water blossomed at the threaded end of the tap and fell into the void. He twisted down the faucets.
His mother whispered to him from the doorway of their bedroom.
“Edgar, what are you looking for?”
He turned and signed, but in the dark she couldn’t read it. He walked to the living room and stood near the candlestick lamp and she followed behind, cinching up the belt around her robe. She sat on the edge of her chair and looked at him. Almondine stood beside her until his mother ran her hand along the dog’s flanks, then she downed between them on the floor. Their shadows moved enormous across the walls and windows of the living room as they signed.
Is he all right?
His lip is cut. He lost his glasses. He feels ashamed.
What happened?
It’s … She thought for a moment, then started again. It’s hard to say.
Is he coming back?
She shook her head. Of course not. Not after this.
What about the truck?
I don’t know.
Edgar stood and gestured at the door. I saw where his glasses fell. I was going to get them.
Will you still know in the morning?
I think so.
Then wait until tomorrow. He’ll wake if he hears the door.
Okay.
Edgar stood and walked to the stairway.
“Edgar?” his mother whispered.
He looked back at her.
“This thing between your father and Claude. It’s old, from since they were children. I don’t think they even understand it. I know I don’t. The thing to remember is that it is over. We tried to help Claude and it didn’t work out.”
He nodded.
“And, Edgar?”
He turned to look back at her. What?
“I don’t think your father is going to want to answer a lot of questions about what happened.”
She smiled a little, and that made him smile. He felt some unnamable tenderness toward his father, talking about him in the dark like that. A laugh came up from inside him, like a hiccup. He nodded and clapped his leg and he and Almondine mounted the stairs, the top floor solely theirs once more. And that night, he dreamt of a jumbled world, color and sound without substance, and in the dreaming everything fitted together perfectly, mosaic pieces interlocked in a stately, exquisite dance.
DOCTOR PAPINEAU DROVE THEIR truck back out to their house the next day. Edgar’s father packed Claude’s things in the truck—not much more than the suitcase he had arrived with: a box of magazines, his shirts and pants, a pair of work boots, and a well-worn navy pea coat. In time, they heard that Claude had picked up part-time work at the veneer mill and odd jobs on the side. He worked for Doctor Papineau, in fact. Later on they put the rollaway bed into the truck, along with the little table and the lamp, and drove them into town, too.
THE SNOW HELD OFF until December that year, but once loosed, it seemed never to stop. Edgar and his father shoveled the driveway while flakes covered their caps. Edgar’s father knew the trick of skimming the snow without picking up gravel.
“Leave some on the driveway, would you?” he’d say, reminding Edgar how the stones in the grass shot like bullets across the lawn on the first mowing.
Edgar took his litter into the snow in pairs or trios, Tinder and Essay and Finch, then Pout and Baboo, then Umbra and Opal. They chased one another, sliding on their front paws, reversing, backpedaling, running with their noses against the ground, trenching pale lines in the powder, stopping only to sneeze it out. Those early snows didn’t pack. When Edgar managed to squeeze together a snowball, he tossed it at Tinder. It disintegrated in the dog’s mouth and he licked his chops and looked on the ground for it.
The
