A Song for Nettie Johnson

by Gloria Sawai

  ”Dandelions?” Mrs. Foster said. She glanced at Jane McFarlane, then turned to Mrs. Campbell again. “Is that really what Mr. Ross plans to do?”

  “That’s what Vera told me,” Mrs. Campbell said. “She said the plan was to cut a gunny sack down one side and across the bottom, spread it out, and then poke a dandelion stem into each of the little holes in the sack.”

  “Every hole?” Mrs. Foster asked.

  “Maybe not in every hole. Maybe every three or four holes, just so the heads of the dandelions lie flat on top of the burlap,” Mrs. Campbell explained.

  “That is going to be the fifth grade memorial?” asked Mrs. Foster again.

  “I’m not finished yet,” Mrs. Campbell said. “When the sack is covered with dandelions so it looks like a soft yellow carpet,” – here she leaned forward in her chair, cheeks flushed, neck pink, “that’s how Vera described it, a soft yellow carpet, you know how smooth those petals are, like velvet really – then they plan to use irises, purple irises to form the letters d-o-c in the centre. For Doc of course.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Abby McIntyre asked, “Where would this memorial go?”

  “Where? Well up there, at the funeral of course,” Mrs. Campbell said, flicking her right hand toward the ceiling.

  “I mean where would it be located at the funeral?” Mrs.McIntyre continued.

  “That’s what I was wondering too,” Mrs. Foster said. “Exactly where would it be situated?”

  “Well, I suppose with the other flowers,” Mrs. Campbell said a bit snappishly.

  “It couldn’t go on the casket,” Mrs. McIntyre said. “Orville’s bringing a bouquet from Regina. Those will have to go on the casket.”

  “I suppose the varnished table in the hall could be brought in.” This from Jane McFarlane.

  Mrs. Foster stood up. “I think we’ve forgotten one very important fact.”

  “What is that, Ellen?”

  “Nora Long hates dandelions.” She sat down abruptly, then stood right up again. “And yellow is not her favourite colour besides.” No one contradicted her.

  It was not unusual in late spring in Stone Creek to see Nora Long, even at her age, in denim coveralls with a blue kerchief tied under chin, kneeling in one spot or another of her large yard, digging around clumps of dandelions. Pushing and prying with a small trowel, pulling the long roots out of their deep holes, careful not to break them, and laying the plants, roots and all in heaps about the yard, to be gathered up later in a wheel barrow and dumped into the garbage bin behind the garage.

  Nora’s yard, everyone agreed, was the finest in Stone Creek. Clumps of lilacs here, a honeysuckle there, maple trees by the front gate; and in wide strips of cultivated, watered, and cleanly weeded earth edging the fence and sidewalk there were flowers. In spring, tulips, hyacinths, irises; and later, pansies, marigolds, petunias, sometimes even gladioli. In a good summer, one with less wind and more rain, it seemed to the people of Stone Creek that there were not as many flowers in the rest of Saskatchewan as there were in Nora Long’s garden.

  Abbie McIntyre broke the silence. “Ellen’s right, of course. Dandelions just won’t do.”

  Mrs. Campbell’s neck turned from pink to bright red. “But it’s half finished and they’ve worked so hard.”

  “Somebody will have to tell them” Abbie said.

  Mrs. McFarlane stood up. “I think it’s time for tea,” she said and disappeared into the kitchen.

  At 4 o’clock, while the women tidied up after their meeting, while thick white cups were arranged in orderly rows on the oilcloth-covered shelves in the church kitchen, the pupils gathered in Ross’s backyard to finish the memorial for Doctor Long.

  Afternoon sunlight poured down on the fence and woodpile, on wood chips and stones and the new leaves of the lilac bush and lilac buds still closed. It made flickering patterns in the quack grass. Fell recklessly on the six people sitting on the back step of Ross’s small white house resting among weeds at the edge of town.

  Mary Sorenson and Vera Campbell sat together on the top step, the half-finished carpet of burlap and dandelions spread out on their laps, covering like a warm blanket their bare knees, the tight skin of their knees, the small round bones under the skin.

  They leaned over the brown burlap, smoothing the thin yellow petals with their fingers. With one hand, they’d push the stem of a fresh dandelion through a hole in the sack, and with the other under the burlap, pull the stem tight so the flower settled into the mass of other flowers.

  When a stem broke before it was secured and the milky juice inside spilled out on their stained fingers, and the air around them smelled green and musky, they would cry, “Oh, no,” and Label, sitting next to Freddie Wong on the middle step, would knock his head with his fist and groan, “Not again,” and call down to Elizabeth and to Annie Pilcher, sitting on the edge of the little group, to these Label would cry, “Another stem crushed. Pass up the flowers.”

  And Annie and Elizabeth would reach into one of the pails sitting on the grass to search for blossoms that weren’t too crumpled or wilted or brown at the edges, and they’d pass the plants to Label, who’d peel off the leaves and hand the flowers up to Vera.

  And all the time Freddie sat quietly beside Label and smiled and looked down on his thin fingers.

  At 5:30, when shadows cast by woodpile and fence made grey and rusty patterns in the grass, Douglas Foster and Mike Donnelly scuffed their way up the alley toward Ross’s backyard. First they stood in the alley, watching. Then they shuffled toward the wooden gate and stood again, digging the toes of their worn shoes into the dirt. Finally, Douglas flicked the gate open with his slim right hip, and they walked in, through the weeds to the back step. There they stood and watched and scoffed: “Some memorial.” They edged closer to the pails; and Mike, glancing at the flower-covered burlap, said, “Well, I guess I can find a better one than any of those.” He rummaged through the pails, and he did find a better one. He held up a blazing golden flower, and with a triumphant sneer, tossed it up to Label.

  There was a shuffling behind them, a quiet scuffing of shoes on the porch floor. And when they looked up, Beverley Ross was standing just inside the screen door. Pale and thin, she was looking down on them through the mesh of screen and smiling.

  No one spoke or moved. Small shadows of bodies lay motionless on the ground. Then Beverley said, in a voice so small it seemed to come from a distant shore, from some ancient land:

  “I’ve brought you doughnuts.”

  Label and Freddie scrambled down to the others on the grass. Mary and Vera followed, holding the yellow-petaled burlap between them. They laid the sack down on the ground, gently as if it were a baby’s blanket, and looked up at Beverley.

  Frail as an old woman, she stood on the top step and held out the doughnuts, warm and sugared, heaped high on the tray.

  “You can have as many as you want,” she said.

  She stepped down, holding the tray up but all the while watching her narrow feet in their stiff brown shoes move cautiously over the wood. Shivering, she stood in front of them and held out the tray.

  One by one they reached out. Then they sat together on the grass and ate the doughnuts.

  “Yes, I would like some more. It’s fine tea. Thank you,” Mrs. Campbell said.

  Mrs. Ross rubbed her left hand against her hip, long fingers sliding over the blue flowers of her dress. She held the teapot in her right. “How nice of you and Abbie to drop by. I’ll get more,” she said and disappeared into the kitchen.

  The two women had come at eight, walking together on the narrow dirt road that led from the centre of town to Ross’s house on the west end. They had hesitated before knocking, huddled there on the front step like two chilly birds. Mrs. Campbell had said, “But you’d handle it so well, Abbie,” and Abbie McIntyre had replied, “It’s you that has a way with words,” then lifted her small clenched fist to the flaked and peeling door.

  Now the two women sat
on the davenport where Beverley had lain before going to bed in her own small room off the kitchen. They sat and looked down on the rose pattern of the linoleum, examining stems and blossoms, gazing at them fondly it seemed, with a certain longing – bright shiny roses in the space behind the radiator, flowers more worn and faded in front of the davenport and rocking chair.

  Jacob Ross leaned back in the rocker and crossed his legs. He looked at the two women staring at the roses, and he said, “You’ve come about the memorial, haven’t you?”

  Mrs. Campbell’s neck turned from light pink to bright red. “The ladies just don’t see how it will do,” she said, “knowing how Nora feels about gardens and flowers.”

  Jacob sat forward in the rocker and clasped his fingers over his bony knee.

  “I understand,” he said.

  On the morning of the funeral Nora Long’s brother from Regina drove up to the Stone Creek school, the tires of his Chevrolet crunching gravel. He leaned for a moment against the steering wheel, then turned off the motor, leaving the key in the ignition. He opened the car door, squeezing his heavy, dark-suited body through the opening, then closed the door carefully and walked across the yard to the front steps.

  Inside the hallway, he stopped Douglas Foster, who had just come up from the boys’ toilet in the basement, where he’d unwrapped his last stick of Juicy Fruit gum, licked off the fresh sugar with his tongue, bitten down on the limp stick with his teeth and chewed as he peed, loud and free in the musty room beneath the stairs.

  Nora’s brother stopped Douglas and said, “I want to see Mr. Ross.”

  Douglas gazed for a moment at the strange man, then ran up the stairs to the second floor to get Mr. Ross, who was right then teaching arithmetic.

  “Orville,” Jacob said, halfway down the stairs.

  “Jacob.”

  “Sorry to hear about Doc.”

  “Thanks, Jacob. That’s what I’ve come about. I’ve heard about the plan.”

  “The memorial.”

  “Yes, the ladies in the church have talked to me.”

  “Tell them we’ve taken care of that. It’s all right. We won’t be bringing it.”

  “I really appreciate your thoughtfulness, but those particular plants,” (he couldn’t say the exact word, it seemed) “she’s been at war with those buggers forever.... I’ve tried to tell her not to be so fussy.”

  “Please. Don’t worry. We won’t be going through with that plan.”

  “Do you have a minute?” Orville asked, a hand on the knob. “Could we talk a minute about this? Maybe there’s some way...”

  Orville opened the door and the two men moved outside. They sat down on the top step. They sat together under the warm June sun and talked.

  The funeral was to begin at 2 o’clock, but people started to arrive as early as 12:30. By 1:30 the sanctuary was full, and the wooden folding chairs in the basement were being set up.

  Jacob Ross had instructed his students to sit in the back pew on the right-hand side of the church so they could all leave together immediately after the Lord’s Prayer, to get ready. Jacob himself sat with Mrs. Ross in the pew opposite. Beverley had not come.

  The pupils stretched and stared. They wanted a closer look at the casket resting on wooden trestles at the front of the church. The casket was open, but from the back pew they couldn’t see anything in it, only a small patch of black. “Probably his sleeve,” Douglas whispered. Even when he stood up to get a better view, he could not see Doctor Long himself, his face a yellow grey, sunk in white ruffles at the bottom of the box.

  But they also wanted to see who was there. To see if their parents had arrived, if there were strangers, relatives perhaps. To see if Sigurd Anderson had come, or Aleck Majesky, or other of Doc Long’s drinking buddies.

  But Sigurd wasn’t there, or Aleck either. At that moment, in fact, they were raising their glasses inside Sigurd’s small house beside the old livery barn.

  “To his memory,” Sigurd said. “A wonderful man.”

  “A very wonderful man,” Aleck said, and emptied his glass.

  “A peculiar thing,” Sigurd said. He swirled his glass in small circles in front of his face and watched the amber liquid slide around inside. “And sad.”

  ”Very sad,” Aleck said.

  “One minute you’re standing in the light of day, your heart just ticking away, tick tick tick...” He rocked the glass from side to side, slowly, like a pendulum.

  “Tick tock,” Aleck said.

  “Then without any warning whatsoever, poof, you’re in the bottom of the pit.”

  “Very sad,” Aleck said. “Very, very peculiar.”

  But everyone else was there, nearly everyone. The Cutlers sat five pews from the front on the left side of the aisle. Mr. Cutler large and prosperous in his pinstriped suit; and beside him, Mrs. Cutler in a purple dress with a strand of pearls resting on her bosom. They had closed their store for the occasion.

  Behind them sat Mr. Wong in black pants and white shirt, the first time people had seen him dressed up, the first time in church. He looked neither to left nor right but kept his eyes on the back side of the pew in front of him. He had closed the café for the afternoon. Mrs. Wong, of course, was not there.

  One pew held several Ukrainian women in full skirts and scarves. Perhaps they were women who’d had difficulty in childbirth, a baby coming out the wrong way, foot or arm first. And the midwife had sent for Doctor Long, and he’d come.

  Even Eric Sorenson was there with his wife, and he never went to any church, not even when his own daughter Mary had a recitation in the Lutheran Sunday School program, or a part in a play.

  Of course, all the members of the United Church were there: Campbells, Fosters, and the rest. The Lutheran minister and his wife were also there. And the old musician from south of town.

  Annie Pilcher peered over the congregation to see if she could find her own mother, but she couldn’t see her. Maybe she was late and had to sit in the basement, Annie thought. But Millie Pilcher was not there.

  She had meant to come. After all, it was Doctor Long who, unlike most of the men in town, was not afraid to touch her: to press his hands on her tight belly, stretch her legs apart, look directly into that gaping hole, and pull the weak and sickly thing out of her. And when it was over and the tiny body was put in the shoebox for burial, the only comfort she’d received, the only consolation had come from him. That was before Annie was born.

  “I’ll see you at the funeral; I’ll be there early,” she’d said that morning to Annie, pleased with herself. She’d examined her face in the mirror, combed her hair, then sat down at the kitchen table thinking of how she was going to the United Church to attend the funeral of Doctor Long, and wasn’t that a fine thing to do.

  But by noon Millie Pilcher was beginning to feel a certain uneasiness inside, a fear of something she knew not what. At 12 o’clock she opened the cupboard door, reached behind the pots and pans, and lifted it out, tall and familiar. She unscrewed the top carefully, laying the cap in the sink, rinsed out a milk-clouded glass, and filled it half full. A little encouragement was all she needed.

  When she finished drinking it, she thought again how good it would be to attend the funeral of the old doctor and she poured herself another glass. The room lightened. Golden rays of sun shone through the window. In the sink, dishes caked with old food looked clean and new. Walls were not stained and greasy. Fluffs of dust caught on sticky plaster shone quiet and silver in the light. And she was still young and pretty, really she was, and she would wear the black skirt and white blouse because that would be the most appropriate thing to wear, and Annie would see her and be proud. But first she would have one more glass.

  And when Annie would return from the funeral and find her mother sleeping on the floor in front of their bedroom door, she would fix herself a slice of sugar bread, eat it, then step over the snoring woman to enter the small room they shared. Fully dressed, she’d crawl into bed, pull a sour blank
et up to her chin, and turn to face the wall papered with faded daisies.

  Suddenly everyone was standing; the whole congregation was on its feet. Through the church’s swinging doors the mourners entered: Nora Long, thin and tall on the arm of her brother, then Nora’s daughter from Victoria with her husband, followed by three grandchildren who looked nearly as old as their mother. While they walked down the aisle to the front pew reserved for them, the minister read the Twenty-third Psalm.

  And Mary Sorenson thought: It’s right for everyone to stand like this when mourners enter. It shows respect and thoughtfulness. She was pleased. That’s how it should be, everyone showing respect for one another, especially in time of sorrow.

  Louie closed the lid of the casket. He rearranged the spray of gladioli that Orville had brought from Regina, moving it from the foot to the centre of the velvet-covered box, then sat down. On plant stands at either end of the coffin were Boston ferns, one from Mrs. Long’s own dining room, one from Mrs. Foster’s front porch. The grade five memorial was not there.

  Then everyone turned in the hymnal to number 692 and the service began. Abide with me, fast falls the eventide.

  In the night they would hear her crying, muffled hiccups against her pillow. They would go to her, rub her back, stroke her hair. Beverley would tell them she was sorry, she tried not to cry, but it hurt. And Mrs. Ross would sit with her so Jacob could get some rest; he would have to teach in the morning.

  They had taken her first to Shaunavon. “Give her Milk of Magnesia,” the doctor there had said. And they did that.

  In Swift Current they were told. “It may be a tumour. She should see a specialist.”

  In Regina the specialist informed them cheerfully that there was no tumour.

  “What is it then?” Jacob asked.

  “We can’t tell for sure. Something she’ll probably grow out of.”