A Song for Nettie Johnson

by Gloria Sawai

  She reaches her hand to the pillow that Eli lay on just this morning, strokes the cloth with her fingers, smells the faint sour sweetness of his skin and the rum he likes to drink. It would be nice if he did come back. But if he’s at the Golden West, forget it. And if he goes to visit Grace Olson, forget it. And if he’s at St. John’s Church, forget it. Forget it, forget it, forget it. So long, Eli Nelson.

  Eli sucks his breath in. Well, Reverend, he thinks, we’ll see about this, won’t we. It isn’t over yet. He stands up and looks down at Jonathan, still sitting on the bench. “Do you remember what it was like?” he says. “All those farmers belting out the Hallelujah Chorus? Even Sigurd Anderson. He has his problem too, you know, with the booze. But when it’s time for Messiah, Sigurd doesn’t touch the stuff.”

  “True,” Jonathan says.

  “Same with Doc Long. Puts his bottle on the back shelf when the Messiah comes.” Eli moves toward the stairs, pauses. “Remember his solo? How he’d roar out the words?” Eli sings the line in a deep, clear voice. Darkness shall cover the earth.... He glances slyly at Jonathan. “Doc’s United Church, isn’t he?”

  Jonathan sighs.

  “And you. You came so close last year,” Eli says. “Just so close.”

  “What do you mean close?” Jonathan asks.

  “The refiner’s fire, remember? The third refiner’s fire?”

  “What about it?”

  “It should go a refi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-iner’s fire.”

  “That’s how I sang it.”

  “No. You left out the last i.”

  “What do you mean?” He sings the line. A refi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ner’s fire. “There. That’s how I did it.”

  “Wrong. It’s Refi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-iner’s fire. Don’t forget that last i in there.”

  Jonathan tries again. Re-fi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-iner’s fire.

  “Well, that’s better,” Eli says. “Maybe this year you’d finally get it.”

  He walks halfway up the stairs, then stops and turns around. “Oh, well, it doesn’t matter now since your mind’s made up anyway. Besides, there are too many problems. Parking for sure. Shovelling all that snow from the vacant lot for extra space. Remember that? All those cars?”

  “Eli. I’ll bring it up to the music committee. They’ll make the final decision. Soon.”

  Outside, Peter is bored. He’s thirteen years old and his father’s a preacher. The big event of each week is church, where he has to sit on a hard pew that smells like lemons and think of ways to make the time pass: counting flies that buzz on the window sills, counting people, how many men, how many women, counting letters of long words in the hymnal (Septuagesima: 12). And now it’s October. The air is dry, the sky huge, the land so flat and empty you can see almost to North Dakota. But Peter doesn’t want to see North Dakota. What he likes to see are girls, their arms and necks, their ankles, their smooth round breasts; and to feel the pressure in his groin, the hard lump down there.

  The three children are sitting on the front step. They’ve done the dishes, Andrew washing, Peter drying with a long dishtowel, using the towel as a whip, snapping it against his sister’s legs. “Stop it, Peter, you’re not the king of the castle.” Eli has already left and is making his way down Main Street, heading back to the quarry.

  “There’s not a whole lot to do in this dump town,” Peter says.

  “Well, think of something,” Andrew says.

  They could go to the nuisance grounds and look for stuff – bottles, magazines, tin cans. (Gussie Skogland found a ten-dollar bill in a soup can once.) Or they could go to Grace Olson’s and hide behind her hedge and pretend they’re cats. Howl. Run when she comes out. Or spy on Eric Sorenson. He and old man Lippoway are Communists.

  “Or we could head out to the quarry,” Peter says.

  “I’ve never been to the quarry,” Elizabeth says.

  “Girls can’t go there,” Peter says.

  “Why not?”

  “Bad stuff happens out there.”

  “Like?”

  “Stuff you don’t know about yet.”

  “Such as?”

  “She casts spells,” Andrew says.

  “Oh, sure,” Elizabeth says.

  “She’s a witch,” her brother says. “She eats people.”

  Andrew and Peter run out the front gate. Elizabeth scrambles after them.

  “I’m coming,” she yells.

  “No, you’re not,” Peter says.

  “Then I’ll tell.”

  “Tell what?”

  “Everything you ever said or did that I know about.”

  The three children race down Main Street, down the creamery hill, and across the pasture. At the foot of the quarry hill they stop. “We’ll have to go around,” Peter whispers. They skid across the pebbles in the creek bed and scramble to the far side of the hill. Then they begin to climb, careful to avoid thistles and loose rocks. At the top, they sneak around the quarry to the trailer. Creep behind the trailer and around to the front corner of it. See Nettie ahead of them. She’s in the chair, facing the pit. They can see only the back of her head. For some reason, Eli is not there.

  Nettie closes her eyes and rests her hand on the blue speller lying on her lap. She hears a rustle from the edge of the quarry and stops rocking, her back stiff. She opens her eyes and leans against the sound, a wary bird, watching.

  “Get out of there you gopher. Scat, little coyote. Beat it, rabbit. I ain’t in the mood for company.” The rustling continues. “Hey, Mr. Badger, what are you up to?”

  Then she hears a thin whistle, a long wire of sound, pierce the air.

  “Oh, ho, so it’s you. You did come back.”

  The whistling lifts, gets louder, circles the air in rings of melody.

  “What way did you come? I didn’t hear your footsteps in the creek bed.” The whistling stops. “I didn’t hear you singing your old tune by the willow tree.” She peers toward the big rock just this side of quarry. “Enough tricks. I know you’re out there. O-u-t.” She resumes her rocking. The chair’s rungs crunch the gravel.

  “I was always very good at spelling,” she says.

  Eli rises from behind the rock. “You’re number one,” he says. He holds a paper bag in his hands and lifts it high above his head.

  Nettie strains her neck to see, but she doesn’t move from the chair.

  “I have something for you,” Eli says.

  “I’m getting a little tired of pickled herring,” she says.

  “It’s not pickled herring.”

  “What then?”

  He sets the bag on the ground.

  “Come and see,” he says, reaching out his arms to her. “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. Come. Buy wine and milk, without money and without price.”

  “You come.” She sits back in the chair.

  Eli waves his arms in the air. His voice when he sings is bold and lusty.

  O, come to the church in the wildwood,

  O, come to the church in the vale.

  No spot is so dear to my childhood

  As the little brown church in the dale.

  Nettie scowls.

  O, come, come, come, come...

  “I’m not coming!” she shouts.

  And suddenly Eli is on his hands and knees, crawling among the rocks and stones and dry strands of quack grass, squatting and lifting his face to the sky and crying out, “Ooowooooo,” his coyote voice full of longing. And Nettie slides from her chair onto the ground. She crawls on stones toward the quarry. And she wails the same coyote’s cry, “Ooowooooo.”

  Then a new sound comes to her, a snake hissing.

  “S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s,” it says, long and sleek.

  “S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s,” she answers.

  And the sound changes, and she hears the warbling of a meadowlark, a trill so sweet she has to lau
gh. And out from the rock Eli emerges. He crawls toward her, and when she sees him crawling, she flattens her body on the ground and slithers out to meet him. They come together, tangled in each other, rocking and laughing on the stones.

  The children are up and on their feet, peering forward.

  “So you won’t tell me what you brought, won’t open the bag, won’t show me what’s in it. Then there’s only one thing I can do. I will eat you. I will bite your tongue off. I’ll chew your ears. I’ll gobble up your fingers.”

  Eli laughs louder. “Oh, I’d like that.”

  Elizabeth grabs Andrew by the arm. “Let’s go home now,” she whispers.

  “No,” Andrew says.

  “Shut up,” Peter hisses.

  “I’ll tell. I really will.” She runs around the back of the trailer and down the hill. Halfway across the pasture, her brothers catch up to her.

  Eli, on hands and knees, opens the brown bag and lifts out its contents with exaggerated care: seven tins of soup. As he puts each can on the ground he intones its name: “Heinz vegetable, Heinz cream of mushroom, Heinz tomato, Heinz celery, another Heinz tomato because it’s your favourite.”

  “Oh you,” Nettie sighs.

  “Heinz cream of chicken,” he continues. Then he holds the last can high in the air and swirls it in circles above their heads.

  “And finally...another tomato!”

  Nettie gazes at the row of cans on the ground. “One for every day of the week! You are something wonderful.”

  The sun is low in the sky. Dry grass in the warehouse yard rustles softly, brown stems swaying this way and that.

  Peter is sitting on the hard ground, his back resting against the warehouse wall, his face turned upward, catching as much of a fading sun as he can. Andrew and Elizabeth sit under a leafless maple. They’ve run most of the way from the quarry and they’re tired. Rusty wheels lean against the grey fence.

  “Let’s play Eli and Nettie,” Peter says. He jerks his head toward Elizabeth. “I’ll be Eli, you be Nettie.”

  “And who will I be?” Andrew says. “A rock?”

  “No. A wolf howling at the moon.”

  Peter slides down onto his stomach. “I’ll slither like a snake and hiss at you. Then you hiss back and we’ll crawl around and then I’ll bump into you.”

  “Then what?” Elizabeth asks.

  “Then you climb on top of me like Nettie did, and Andrew will howl like a wolf and we’ll roll on the grass.”

  Andrew crouches beside a rock, raises his head to the sky. “Wooooo woooo,” he wails.

  Peter slides his lanky body toward Elizabeth. Makes serpentine curves of his movements.

  “S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s,” he hisses.

  Elizabeth sits up. “That’s not what they did.”

  “Well, what then?”

  “They slid around more and went up and down and they hissed louder and they bumped and spit and she rolled right on top of him.”

  She crawls to Peter, hissing and snarling, and leaps on his back, straddles him with her legs, her face close to his neck, her tongue darting in and out of her mouth. She bites his ear and Peter yelps.

  “Pretend, Elizabeth. I said pretend,”

  “It’s more fun if you really do it,” Elizabeth says.

  Peter knocks her off.

  Andrew wails at the fading sun.

  Hilda Munson is standing on the sidewalk in front of the warehouse, staring up at the tin door and wondering which way to turn. Right to the preacher’s house? Left to her own house? Forward into the warehouse yard? She’ll have to tell somebody about this. But who? The preacher? His wife? The committee? Who will she tell? Who will she tell first?

  She did not mean to hear what she heard, to see what she saw. She’d meant only to walk north from her house to the Lund house, passing the warehouse on her way, not intending to stop at all. Not intending to creep around the side of the building, staying as close to the wall as possible, or to come upon this scene.

  At home, she’d changed from her house dress to her best dress, the blue polka dot with the white collar, had combed her hair with the pale green comb, examined her face in the pale green mirror that matched, gifts from Sam years ago when he was young and loved her shyly. She’d put on a white sweater, then gathered up the sheets of music from the piano and walked out the front door. She was on the sidewalk heading toward the parsonage when she heard strange sounds, animal noises, coming from behind the warehouse, and then the voices of children. She stopped, listened, walked into the warehouse yard, stopped again, yes, children’s voices, and hissing sounds. She crept around to the backyard. There she saw a tangle in the weeds, a struggling, and a boy, angry, jumping up from the ground. Her skin tingled, her heart beat faster. What was this? She sensed something dark and moist and pungent, something from deep in the earth, smelling of evil. Then they saw her, and they stood, stiff and straight in front of her.

  Peter said, “Oh, Mrs. Munson,” and brushed dry leaves from his shirt and pants.

  Hilda said nothing, just stared at the boy.

  “There’s no school,” said Andrew. “Mr. Ross went to Swift Current.”

  “We were playing Eli and Nettie,” Elizabeth said.

  “What?” Hilda said.

  “What they did at the gravel pit.”

  “You were at the gravel pit?” Hilda’s shoulders felt weak, her skin tingled, her heart beat faster. “What did you see?”

  “Nothing,” Peter growled.

  “They rolled in the dirt,” Elizabeth said.

  “Mr. Ross has gone to Swift Current,” Andrew said.

  Hilda grunted. “Go home right now and wash your hands.” She turned and walked out of the yard, her music and her blue purse pressed tightly under her arm.

  Now, in front of the warehouse, she turns abruptly toward the preacher’s house. He must know about this, she thinks. But then she turns in the opposite direction. No. She’ll tell the others first.

  In the Golden West Hotel, Doctor Long raises his head from the small table in front of him and stretches his white loose-skinned neck over his half- empty glass toward Sigurd Anderson, sitting across from him. He squints into Sigurd’s face.

  “So, my good friend, is this all there is? This thin liquid?” He taps the rim of his glass with his finger. “This pale thin liquid, here in the Golden West?”

  “Golden liquid,” Sigurd murmurs.

  “Golden yes, that’s true. And you and I, two lost birds in a golden sky.”

  “It’s not so bad,” Sigurd says.

  The doctor lays his head on the table, his cheek resting beside the glass.

  “It is beautiful,” he says.

  Eli and Nettie are sitting in the kitchen, eating tomato soup from white bowls decorated with blue flowers, dishes donated to Nettie years ago by the Sunshine Circle at Saint John’s. Eli is animated, flushed, excited about the Messiah. He will direct it. They can’t keep him from doing that.

  “Handel was German,” Eli says. “Like Bach. And Beethoven.”

  “German!” Nettie snorts. German means the enemy. It means the time when the war took all the good men away. And the only men who came to her were ragamuffins, rejects, and sick men, like Eli.

  “What excitement,” Eli exclaims. “What a flurry of writing. Imagine. The whole Messiah written in twenty-four days. Pages and pages of manuscripts. Thousands and thousands of notes to draw. And he drew them all, every dot, every little stick.”

  Nettie sighs. “Those poor tired fingers.”

  “Imagine. Opening night. Crowds of people. Men in black suits, women in furs. Standing ovations and rave reviews. And now it’s here. From London, England, to Stone Creek, Saskatchewan. Some distance, eh? And it hasn’t been easy.”

  Nettie is quiet, scowling into her empty bowl. She looks up at him.

  “Don’t do that,” she says. She draws a small triangle in the air with her finger, conducting. “Stay here with me. I’ll be good to you.” She cocks her head and smi
les up at him. “Do you know what I’ll do for you? I’ll pick up your socks. That’s number one. Number two, I’ll pass you the salt. Three. I’ll scratch your back. Four. I’ll cover you with a blanket when you’re cold.”

  She leaves her chair and goes to him. She stands behind him and puts her arms around his neck. He lays his spoon on the table, reaches back, and pulls her onto his lap.

  “My sweet lady,” he says. She lays her head on his shoulder.

  “Spell something,” he says.

  “What do you want to hear?”

  “Anything. Your favourite word.”

  “S-t-o-n-e,” she murmurs into his shoulder.

  “Fine,” he says.

  “Do you want to hear rock?”

  “That would be good,” he says.

  “R-o-c-k!”

  “Wonderful. Now tree.”

  “T-r-e-e!”

  “Grand,” he says.

  “G-r-a-n-d,” she says.

  “Lovely,” he says. “You fill the air with your spelling. And it’s very nice.”

  “Oh it’s not that great.”

  He strokes her neck, nuzzles into her ear.

  “Try bird.”

  “I never could spell that one,” she says.

  “Yes you can. Bird.”

  She scowls.

  “Go ahead, take a chance.”

  “I’m too old for that now.”

  “Bird!” he shouts.

  “Oh be quiet,” she says.

  They meet in St. John’s basement, cold and smelling of cement, four members of the music committee: Hilda Munson, Grace Olson, Olga Jacobson, and Leif Stenson. They sit at a wooden table in the centre of the room, surrounded by grey walls decorated with children’s crayon drawings: green trees, pink and yellow butterflies, red birds flying under many-coloured rainbows.

  When Jonathan arrives, he stalls for a moment in the narrow hallway in front of the closed door and listens to the muffled sounds from within. Then he pushes the door open and enters the room. The talking stops.