A Song for Nettie Johnson

by Gloria Sawai

  Then everyone freezes as if in a photograph: Jesus between the two soldiers, the soldiers themselves, all the people on the roadside, the women in the ditch, and Mary. No one moves a muscle. The chains stop rattling, whipping ropes are quiet, there’s not a sound or movement on the road to Calvary, even the clouds of dust are motionless.

  Very slowly his mother gets up off her knees, stands a moment among the thistles, then steps onto the road. She walks toward the soldier who’s grabbing at Jesus’ arm, stands in front of him, and looks directly into his face.

  “That’s my son,” she says. “Be more gentle. He’s only a boy. And try to show him some respect.”

  Now what will happen? Will the soldiers tell him he can go back home with his mother? Ingrid presses against her own mother, sitting beside her in the pew. The soldiers pay no attention to the mother, Mary. They move forward again, dragging the boy between them. And Ingrid knows that this story will end the same way as the other one: three crosses at the top of the hill.

  She closes her eyes, and when she opens them the space above the altar is empty, and her dad is nudging her to stand. The congregation is praying, “Our Father who art in heaven....” It’s time to go home.

  She lies on her narrow bed and looks at the violets in their little yard of light on the wall beside her, delicate lavender flowers, still and quiet. She thinks about the Lenten service and what she saw there, and she wonders if others have ever seen the same thing, and if so why haven’t they spoken up? She’d always heard he was old when this happened, over thirty. No one ever told her he was just a kid – small, thin, scared, mad.

  She looks up at the quiet ceiling and wonders: People know some things, but they don’t know everything. This is something she will have to think about for quite awhile.

  In the meantime, however, now that the Lenten situation is a bit clearer to her, there is one thing she can do.

  She reaches to the lamp beside her bed and turns on the light. Then she gets up, goes into the hall, flicks on the hall switch, and moves down the corridor to her parents’ bedroom. She stops in front of the closed door, raises her hand and knocks. There’s no answer. She leans her head toward the door and listens, then knocks again, louder. Now she hears a stirring, a cough, a raspy voice, her father’s voice.

  “What?” the voice says. “What is it?”

  “It’s me,” she says. “I want to come in.”

  “Then come.” The voice is stronger now.

  She turns the knob, pushes the door open, and stands in the lightened doorway. Across the room her father has propped himself up in bed and is peering toward her in the dimness; her mother is a crumpled mound beside him, under the quilt.

  “Is something wrong?” her father says. “What is it?”

  Ingrid stands against the hall light, a narrow silhouette framed by the door’s moulding.

  “What?” her father says again, and her mother’s body moves beneath the quilt.

  “I’ve got something to tell you,” Ingrid says. Her mother moans softly and her head emerges from beneath the covers, brown hair tousled.

  “Yes?” her father says.

  “I won’t be going to Travises’ again for a haircut.”

  “What was that?” her father says.

  “I said I won’t be having Mr. Travis cut my hair anymore.”

  Her mother lifts her head. “What’s happening? What’s she saying?”

  “She’s saying...she wants to say....”

  “What is it? What do you want to say?” her mother asks.

  “I already said it.”

  Her father explains, “Ed Travis won’t be cutting her hair again. That’s what she said.”

  Her mother sits straight up in the bed. “Oh...oh...so...yes...well....”

  “Of course,” her father says. “Of course. Ed Travis won’t do that again.”

  Her mother’s head and neck stretch forward. She tries to see Ingrid more clearly, to grasp the picture of her in the doorway, how little she is, how strange and unfamiliar, and how she just stands there, her daughter. She calls out, “Of course, of course. Come here then. Come. Let’s have a look at you. Let’s have a hug.”

  “No,” Ingrid says, “I’m going back to bed now. That’s all I have to say.”

  She stands there a moment longer, her thin body centred in the light, her bald head glowing under the lintel. Delicate pink marble. Iridescent rose.

  She closes the door, walks down the corridor, flicks off the hall light, and enters her own room. She lies down on her bed, reaches to the lamp, and turns off the light. She rolls onto her side and shuts her eyes. Her body curls under the blanket. Her head rests on the pillow.

  ~

  Oh Wild Flock, Oh Crimson Sky

  On the day my Haugean grandfather arrived in Stone Creek for his annual winter visit, Ivan Lippoway, who was a year older than me, announced at the skating rink that he was an atheist.

  It was the afternoon of New Year’s Eve. My mother had told us that if we finished our chores early we could skate for a couple of hours before the train came in at 4:30, when we’d go to the station to meet Grandpa.

  How the topic of atheism had even come up I don’t know. We’d just been rambling on about the Christmas holidays that would be over in two more days, who was at our houses, and what we got for presents. Mike showed us his pocket knife that had three different-sized blades in it as well as a corkscrew and a pair of scissors. I told about the book my parents had given me, Rilla of the Lighthouse, which I read cover to cover on Christmas Day. Vera said they’d eaten turkey until they were stuffed.

  Then Ivan said, “I’m an atheist.”

  He said it out loud in front of everybody: me, Vera, Mike, my two brothers, everyone. We were in the warming house lacing our skates up. I was sitting between Vera and Mary on a wooden bench against the back wall. The three of us were in grade seven and stuck close together. My brothers, Andrew in grade nine and Peter in grade ten, sat across from us near the door. Ivan was in the middle of the room in front of the crackling stove, which was sending out waves of heat in every direction. He’d already done his skates up and was standing there on the wooden floor that was gouged and chipped from all the skaters who’d stood there before him.

  I was about to stick the tip of the lace into the top hole of my skate when he said it, but I stopped right then and held the lace in mid-air, I was that surprised.

  The word atheist had been mentioned in our history class before Christmas. Mr. Ross had asked if anyone knew what it meant, and Ivan, slouched as usual in his desk, muttered only two words, No God. I knew, of course, that Ivan was Russian, and I’d heard that Russia was now a godless country; but I didn’t think that just because he knew the definition of the word, he necessarily was one. He’d never even been to Russia.

  In fact, he was born in Stone Creek. His mother died when he was born, and he was raised by his grandparents. No one seemed to know where his father was. Then last year his grandmother died, so now it was only Ivan and his grandfather living in the small house south of the Russian church. And it was small. I’d been in it. That’s all I knew about him except that he was very clever, that he always wore the same pants to school, brown and tweed and rather shabby, and he smelled of garlic, which is their national dish.

  And now I knew this: He was an atheist.

  After the big announcement, he headed for the door, shoved it open with both hands, and went out. One by one the rest of us got up and stumbled after him. For whatever reason, no one commented on his statement.

  Outside, the sunlight was dazzling. The snow sparkled on the huge banks outside the fence. And inside the fence, the ice shone like clear water. The sky was blue and cloudless. A perfect winter day.

  But it was cold. The air stung my face and stuck inside my nostrils so it was hard to breathe. I pulled the wide collar of my jacket up against my cheeks and skated to the centre of the rink, where I stopped sharp, my skate blades scraping sideways on the ice. I look
ed around and saw Ivan at the far end. He was making wide swoops on the ice, his whole body curved forward and his arms swinging out in unison, first to one side, then to the other. He was smooth on skates, I’ll give him that. Of course, his grandfather was a shoemaker and he also sharpened skates in winter, so he had an advantage there.

  Suddenly someone shouted, “Crack the whip!” And we all skated to the far end of the rink. It didn’t take us long to line up against the back fence. Ivan took an end position, saying he’d crack that whip. I took the other end, meaning I’d be the one who’d swing out the farthest and fastest. We all grabbed hands and off we went, Ivan leading. He skated furiously, his body bent forward like a madman and his head down. Then, just after the halfway mark, he stopped short and pulled back hard on the arm of Mike next to him, and the rest of us swung out in a wide circle on the ice. I swung so fast I couldn’t turn soon enough to miss the side fence, and I slammed into the boards. It nearly knocked the breath out of me, and I just stood there for awhile leaning into the fence. Andrew skated up to me to ask if I was all right, and deciding I was, muttered, “Why do you always want to be at the end? You should stay in the middle where it’s safe.” Only after I’d caught my breath and skated away did I feel the full effect of the collision. My right shoulder and arm felt scraped, and my hip hurt.

  In the warming house I sat for a few minutes on a bench near the stove and stretched my legs out in front of me. I felt the pain of the crash gradually subside and I thought, if Ivan Lippoway was a typical atheist then I’d learned something else about atheists: they had a mean streak in them.

  At quarter to four my brothers and I quit skating and walked home. As soon as we got there, we piled into the car for the drive to the station. My mother and dad sat in the front seat, my brothers and I in the back where we engaged in our usual competition, seeing who could sprawl out against the back seat and who would have to lean forward to give space to the other two.

  I knew on the way home my grandfather would be sitting in the front seat with Dad; the rest of us would be squashed in the back. But there’d be no fooling around then. Grandpa was a follower of Hans Nielson Hauge.

  He was also a huge man with a thick chest and wide face. He was dark skinned, and his hair and beard, now grey, had been pitch black in his youth. This, together with his wide cheeks and squinty eyes, made him look more like a Siberian than a Norwegian.

  Ivan’s grandfather, who really was Russian, had light brown hair and fair skin. He was a milder man than my grandfather; the few times I’d heard him talk his voice was gentle. Grandpa roared when he spoke, especially when he got going on his favourite topics: the Word of God, the dangers of Rationalism, and his great Nor-wegian hero, Hans Nielson Hauge.

  Halfway to the station, I saw my father put one arm around my mother and pull her close to him. He stroked her neck in a comforting way. Grandpa was Dad’s father, not hers.

  At the station we piled out of the car and headed up the steps to the platform. The platform was like most station platforms, wide and made of wood, stretching in front of the station house and alongside the tracks in both directions. Tonight it looked like a skating rink. Huge snowbanks were piled high on either end, and the boards beneath our feet were slick with ice. They looked glossy in the snow-speckled light shining out from the station window. Peter and Andrew slid in and out of the light on the slippery boards, Mom and Dad huddled together beside the tracks, and under the lamppost at the end of the platform, old Gibbs, with his cap pulled down on his forehead, bent over his snowy mail sacks.

  Then we heard the whistle, a long and lonely sound that touches my soul, especially on winter nights when sounds are so clear and travel such a distance.

  When the whistle blew, Peter and Andrew skidded over to the edge of the platform; my parents stepped back. I lifted my head to watch the drizzle of flakes above me, and I think I knew right then why Grandpa wanted to visit us in January: He missed the Norway winters of his childhood, missed his mother buried in a snowy grave in Utsira, and he was tired of rainy Vancouver, where he now lived with his daughter, my Aunt Elsa, and her shrill family.

  Again the whistle blew, this time nearer and louder, and we could hear the huffing and panting of the engine.

  Then we saw it, black and roaring, its huge eyeball headlight sending a thick beam of light down the tracks as it headed toward us. We watched the engine car pass by and the engineer high up at his window, waving. We heard the screech of the wheels brake against the tracks, smelled the smoke spewing forth from under the cars. And the train stopped.

  And suddenly there Grandpa was, his dark body filling the passageway. He was wearing a black coat and fur cap and his face held a severe expression. Down the steps he came, one big boot after the other. My dad went to him, and Grandpa’s face lit up and he threw his arms around Dad and shouted, “Takk Kjaere Gud!” in a voice as big as the night. Then he moved to my mother and bowed, and shook hands with me and Andrew. When he saw Peter he pounded him on the head and laughed, “Peder, Peder, the one much loved.”

  Why Grandpa got along so well with Peter I could never understand. Peter was such a fake when they were together, a real hypocrite, agreeing with everything Grandpa said about the power of the Word and the dangers of Rationalism, which Peter knew nothing about but pretended to. “Absolutely,” he’d say to Grandpa. “You’re absolutely right.”

  I doubt if even Grandpa knew as much as he let on. He’d been a fisherman all his life until he got too old. First as a boy fishing for cod in the North Sea, then in Canada, fishing in the Pacific Ocean for salmon.

  Even my dad didn’t agree with everything Grandpa said, and Dad was the Lutheran minister in town and a Haugean himself. He wouldn’t wear a robe when he preached or a cross hanging from his neck. But he was gentler than Grandpa. He didn’t pound on the pulpit when he preached.

  During the ride home Dad and Grandpa talked Norwegian, which they enjoyed doing whenever they got together, even though they both spoke perfectly good English.

  When we got home, we could smell the roasting chicken from the back porch, where we all crowded together, stomping the snow off our boots. Inside, the table was already set, a big wooden table in the middle of the kitchen. We didn’t have a dining room, like they had at Vera’s.

  After we’d hung up our coats, Mom discovered she had no milk, and how was she going to make her special gravy without it? It was New Year’s Eve, the stores would be closed, and also closed the next day. Dad said he’d walk over to the café and ask Mr. Wong if he could spare a quart. Then I blurted out that I’d do it. The café was only a block away and I’d be quick. Dad dug in his pocket for a quarter. “Go ahead,” he said.

  I was getting my coat on when Grandpa announced that he wanted to go with me. After the long train ride the fresh air would do him good, he said. I wasn’t pleased, but what could I do? I waited by the door while he took forever tugging at his coat and pulling on his boots. With Peter right beside him, pretending to be helpful.

  When we got outside, I led the way and Grandpa followed. I could hear his boots crunching in the snow behind me and his heavy breathing.

  “How are you doing, Grandpa?” I yelled.

  “Ya, ya,” he said, puffing. And I slowed my pace.

  As we lumbered along, I wondered if Ivan would be at the café with his grandfather. Since Mrs. Lippoway’s death, the two of them were known to eat there on special occasions. So it was possible. Not likely, though, in this cold.

  Sure enough, when we got to the café, Ivan wasn’t there. Freddie Wong, who was fourteen, the same age as Andrew, stood alone behind the counter. The new lady at the post office was sitting on a stool in front of him, her elbows on the counter and a thick mug in her hands. The windows of the café were steamed over and steamy cooking smells were coming from the kitchen, but there was no sign of any other customers.

  Then the front door opened, letting in a draft of cold air and with it Jackson Armor, who everyone said was missing
a few marbles but was harmless. He shuffled into the restaurant in a way those people often do, his body moving slightly from side to side. He was wearing a bright red cap with the flaps down over his ears, and a plaid jacket, red and black. His mother dressed him in interesting and colourful ways, but I still found him creepy. He flapped his arms against his chest to get warm, and smiled at us. He smiled all the time no matter what the occasion, even at funerals. And he never talked, even though he was way older than Peter.

  Grandpa stood by the counter, eyeing Jackson. I wanted to leave before anything strange happened, so I asked Freddie about the milk and he went into the kitchen to ask his father.

  The door opened again, and Sigurd Anderson and another man came in. They were drunk, which wasn’t surprising since it was New Year’s Eve and Sigurd was usually drunk anyway. They wavered in slow motion to a table against the wall, then took their time getting settled in their chairs. Grandpa looked stern. Being a Haugean, he had no use for liquor. Then Mr. Wong came out from the kitchen and I paid him for the milk. I tucked the bottle under my arm and went over to Grandpa to lead him out of there. But when we got as far as the door, Sigurd shouted, “Hey! What’s the rush?”

  Grandpa turned around and stared at the two men. He stood there like a monument. His black coat and thick boots, his fur cap and wide rusty face made him look even fiercer than before.

  “It’s New Year’s Eve!” Sigurd shouted. “Time to celebrate!” He tried to get up from his chair, but the effort was too much for him. Jackson waddled over to the table to help him. He tugged at Sigurd’s coat sleeve, and finally Sigurd stood, balancing himself with his two hands on the tabletop. He leaned forward, gazing at us with bleary eyes.

  “It’s an order!” he said. “So celebrate. That’s what it’s all about.”

  He laughed and immediately got into a huge coughing fit. Jackson rocked from side to side, smiling.

  Grandpa slowly made his way toward Sigurd. When he got there, he stopped, leaned forward, and peered at him with his Siberian eyes.