Macon leaned one crutch against the wall, and bent stiffly to
push Edward’s rump with a finger. Edward sat. Macon
clucked. Then he straightened and backed away, holding out his
hand, but instead of staying, Edward got up and followed him.
‘Ssss,’ Muriel said, between her teeth. Edward sat down at
once. ‘He doesn’t take you seriously,’ she said.
‘Well, I know that,’ Macon said crossly.
His broken leg was aching, but the lesson went on, and Muriel
went on talking and asking questions. She told Macon how lucky
he was to get to travel to all kinds of places, like Paris, how
wonderful, and write guidebooks about them. She herself had
never even been on an airplane, did he realize that?
When she had gone, leaving a new leash with a special
training collar for Edward, Macon and Edward practiced for the
rest of the day. By suppertime, Edward had learned to sit and
stayed there, complaining and rolling his eyes, while Macon
clucked in praise. A cluck was now part of the family language.
Charles clucked over Rose’s baked potatoes. Porter clucked when
Macon dealt him a good hand of cards.
During the evening Edward chewed a pencil to pieces, stole
a bone from the kitchen, and was sick on the sun porch rug. But
now that he could sit on command, everyone felt more hopeful.
‘When I was in high school,’ Muriel said, tapping her foot at
Edward, ‘my teachers told me I should go to college. But, well,
I didn’t. That was because of Norman, mostly. My ex-husband.
He was just dying to marry me, you see, but we were awful
young to get married. I was seventeen. He was eighteen.’
On the second lesson they had done walking to heel, and now
in the third lesson Edward was supposed to be learning to lie
down and stay. It was not going well. Edward just looked away