A Song for Nettie Johnson Read online

  Peter Lund and Joe Boychuk are the first to reach Main Street – grade sevens get a head start. And when they lurch to a stop in front of the United Church, missing the ladies in hats, they see him down the block gazing at the wooden door of the Golden West Hotel, Eli Nelson, thin and worn and very still, standing as though suspended in the dry Saskatchewan air.

  They whip their bodies around and run back to the small troupe that has been following. Peter reaches them first.

  “He’s back,” he says, panting for breath.

  “Who?” asks Elizabeth, his sister in grade four.

  “Eli. He’s back in town.”

  “Tell us another one,” says his brother Andrew, who’s eleven.

  “It’s true,” Joe says. “He’s standing in front of the Golden West.”

  “Is he drunk?” asks Mary Sorenson.

  “Is he throwing up?” asks Mike Downey.

  “Puking in the ditch?” asks Ivan Lippoway.

  “Pissing his pants?” asks Gussie.

  “No, he’s all cleaned up and walking straight.”

  They ponder this a moment, standing on the road’s edge above a ditch of thistles.

  “It must be Christmas,” Andrew says. And they all race over to Main Street to see this thing for themselves.

  And there you are, the young angel, hill-high above the Golden West, and you see Eli too, and you flutter over him, dipping your feet in the prairie wind. He is standing on the sidewalk, examining the letters on the door, Golden West Beer Parlour, and for a long time he doesn’t move a muscle. Then you notice him shrug his shoulders, turn sharply, and walk on up the street. And you call down to him in that melodic, bell-toned voice of angels, “Good for you, Eli,” and whirl on south, over the tracks, the creamery, the pasture, and over the quarry, where Nettie is rocking beside the pit. And you hover ever so briefly above her and shake your golden sun-tanned face and sigh and coo gently, like a sweet and sorrowing dove, “Poor Nettie,” then soar off to the United States, because some things are too hard for angels to endure, too human and incomprehensible.

  Nettie picks up the book, opens it, and examines the words, bending her head to the left of them and to the right, trying to see them from every angle. She touches a word with her finger, presses on it hard. Maybe if her skin and the bone under her skin can reach beneath the print, dig under the letters, press together the parts of each letter, crumble the parts into tiny pieces, discover the ingredients of each piece, then, maybe, she will be able to tell exactly what the words are saying, what each word means.

  In the kitchen of St. John’s parsonage, Christine Lund glances at the clock beside the stove. 12:20. Jacob lets his pupils out at twelve sharp and the Lunds’ back door usually bangs open at ten after. Peter is first, Andrew next, and then Elizabeth, who dawdles. Why are they late? The potatoes in the skillet are crisp and golden brown, the meatballs smell rich of onions and meaty gravy, and string beans she canned in September are steaming in the pan. The table is set, bread and butter, a jug of milk. Jonathan will be hungry, will be wondering why she hasn’t called him. She looks out the square window over the sink, sees only sparrows flitting among the dry branches of the caraganas.

  Upstairs in his attic study, Jonathan sorts through sermon notes he’s written on half sheets of paper (“He knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust”) and arranges them in a pile, sets the pile in the middle of the desk, and leans back in his swivel chair. The attic door is open; he smells the dinner below. He gazes out the small triangle of glass above his desk, the room’s only window, sees a sparrow dart past, hears the wind seep into the cracks that edge the glass. He gets up and stretches. Usually she calls, but maybe he’ll go down regardless. Why not?

  Except for the three Lunds and Ivan Lippoway, all the children have gone home to eat, Mary to the vine-covered house on the corner, Mike to the big house north of town, Joe to the café to eat with his dad, Gussie to the tiny shack below the railroad tracks. Peter, Andrew, and Ivan follow Eli from a distance; Elizabeth trails behind them.

  Eli has reached the town hall, turned right and crossed the street to the north corner of Wong’s Café. Here he stops for a moment as if considering his next step, then walks past the café, past the vacant lot behind it, toward St. John’s church. He cuts across the churchyard and shuffles toward the Lund house. The children run to catch up to him, but when they reach the vacant lot, they stop, wait for their next move. Beside the caragana hedge, Eli pauses briefly, then walks the short distance to the back door.

  Christine hears the scraping sounds on the step, then the knock. She opens the door and sees him standing there, bent forward, his sandy hair blown in tufts from the wind, his jacket worn, shoes dusty. His cheeks have deep wrinkles in them, his skin is hard. He looks older than fifty.

  “Eli,” she says.

  “Eli,” she says again. “It’s you. I wasn’t expecting you.” She stands by the table and looks at him. Thin, gaunt. She’s glad she has never seen him drunk. She’s glad when Jonathan opens the attic door and steps into the kitchen. He stops abruptly.

  “Well, Eli,” Jonathan says. “You’ve come. October, right?”

  Eli looks down at the floor.

  “So let’s go upstairs and have this chat that’s waiting for us,” Jonathan says.

  “No,” Eli says. “The cellar’s fine. It’s always been the cellar.”

  “Suit yourself,” Jonathan says.

  Christine sees Eli’s skinny neck above his collar, his thin wrists stretching out from the sleeves of his brown jacket.

  “Why don’t we eat first,” she says. “Why don’t we all sit down and have a bite.”

  “No no,” Eli says. “None for me. I want to get this thing settled.”

  When the two men have disappeared down the cellar stairs and Christine has closed the door after them, she goes back to the window and looks out. She sees the children in front of the caraganas. They’ll come in when they’re hungry, she thinks, and covers the food on the stove and goes into the living room. She sits down in the soft chair beside the piano. Sits under a bouquet of roses in pink and red needlepoint, flowers stitched by her mother and framed in a soft wood frame.

  Outside, Peter scrambles from the hedge to the small basement window at the side of the house. “They’ll go to the cellar,” he says. “That’s where they go.” He kneels on the ground and peers into the window. The glass is dirty, splattered with bird droppings; he can see nothing. Then a light comes on, and he can see figures moving, dim and indistinct. “I told you,” he says.

  Andrew and Ivan creep up behind him, peer over his shoulder. Elizabeth remains by the caraganas.

  “I know someone who wouldn’t quite approve of what you’re doing,” she says.

  “Shut up,” Peter says, “I can’t hear.”

  Ivan presses closer to the glass.

  “How can you see with all this bird shit?” he says.

  Jonathan sits down on a wooden bench in front of the furnace, Eli on a backless chair facing him. The cellar is dim. One bare bulb hangs from the ceiling. The pale light falls on Eli’s head, on Jonathan, on the cement floor, chipped and dusty at their feet.

  “So,” Jonathan says, “who’ll begin?”

  “You,” Eli says. “The pelicans, remember?”

  “Again?”

  “You can’t beat it,” Eli says. He rests his elbows on his knees, his chin cupped in his hands.

  Elizabeth steps away from the caraganas.

  “I’d stay a little farther from the window if I were you. I wouldn’t bump that glass. Someone we all know would not like this.”

  “Why are they in the cellar anyway?” Ivan asks.

  “They’re praying,” Andrew says.

  “Eli’s repenting,” Peter says.

  “What’s repenting?” Ivan says.

  “You don’t even know what repenting is?” Peter says.

  “How should I know?”

  “It’s what you do if you’re a sinne
r,” Peter says.

  “Do what?” Ivan asks.

  “Put your head between your knees and say how awful you are, and how you wish you were never born, and you are a real miserable sinner,” Peter says.

  “Do you repent?” Ivan asks.

  “Me? I don’t drink whisky.”

  Ivan strains at the glass to try to see repentance.

  “Do you have to do it in a cellar?” he asks.

  Jonathan’s voice is soft in the dim room.

  “My days are consumed like smoke. My bones are burned as an hearth...”

  “Ohh,” Eli says, as if there were a small pain under his rib.

  Jonathan’s voice rises. “My heart is smitten and withered like grass. I forget to eat my bread...”

  “Yes, yes...” Eli sighs.

  “...my bones cleave to my skin...”

  “True...” Eli says.

  “I am like a pelican of the wilderness. I watch. A sparrow alone upon the housetop.” Jonathan sounds passionate, and Eli hears the passion.

  “Pelican in the wilderness,” Eli repeats, “sparrow on a housetop, magpie on a rock, lark on a dry and thorny branch.”

  In the living room, Christine rests her head on the back of the chair. Why did Eli do that anyway, leave town just after his huge success, everyone raving about him, doors opening up to welcome him, and all that respect? And why would he leave his room in Peterson’s basement, not fancy but safe and warm, to trudge out there, that December day after the concert, when the drifts were high, and all that blowing snow? And then stay there? Live there?

  It was Nettie, of course. She had a strange pull with her spelling and rocking and men coming and going, but now only Eli of course. Everyone’s talked about it. They’ve heard the story from delivery men who bring her water, from Peterson who’s repaired her heater. And they wonder how the two of them manage out there. What do they actually do all day? Does she cook for him? Clean and sew for him? Does he read to her? And sing? He is a musician, after all.

  And at night when the sky is black above the quarry, does she lie beside him in their dark bed and spell to him, crooning the alphabet into his ear, the letters of love soft against his earlobe, as the wind whistles in the chimney and rattles the window?

  In front of the cold furnace, Eli stretches his thin neck forward and looks into Jonathan’s face.

  “You haven’t finished,” he says.

  “You never want to hear the rest,” says Jonathan.

  “I want to.”

  “All right then. Listen.” Jonathan lowers his head, clasps his hands together. “But thou oh Lord shalt arise and have mercy upon Zion, for thy servants take pleasure in her stones and favour the dust thereof.” He peers up at Eli. “There it is. That’s the rest of it.”

  Eli says, “But you missed the most important line.” He raises his finger toward Jonathan and directs the words up and down, agitating the tiny particles of dust floating in the grey air between them. “‘Thou hast lifted me up and cast me down.’ Up. Down. There. That’s it in a nutshell.”

  Ivan gets up and heads for the gate. “I’m leaving,” he says. “What’s so great about repentance?”

  Peter, Andrew, and Elizabeth go in for dinner.

  In the dim light under the bare bulb, Jonathan prepares Eli for bad news.

  “It’s thanks to you, Eli, that we’ve had wonderful concerts for the last five years. You get the very best out of the singers. No one can top you. And no one can top the Messiah. Imagine, Handel in Stone Creek. But this year, well, I think you’ve tried people’s tolerance a bit much; we’re considering other possibilities.”

  “But I threw out the last bottle,” Eli says. “I quit.”

  “It’s not the liquor I’m referring to. We’ve handled that before.”

  “What then?” Eli says.

  “Do you even need to ask?”

  Eli is silent for a moment. Then he says, “Nettie?”

  “Men have been coming and going out there for years.”

  “I’m not coming and going. I live there.”

  “And how do you think that looks?”

  Eli leans forward, looks up into Jonathan’s face.

  “Looks? How it looks?”

  Jonathan stumbles, answering. “Well, we both know that Nettie is not like other women,” he says. “Should you be taking advantage?”

  “Advantage? I cook for her, and clean, and shop for groceries. And she sings to me. And spells. We get on fine. No one’s taking advantage. And no men are coming and going.”

  Jonathan shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he says.

  Christine sits at the table with the three children. She asks about Jacob Ross: Why is he going to Swift Current? Is Beverley sick again? How serious is it? How long will he be gone?

  The children inform her that Beverley is always sick, hardly ever comes to school, and when she does she stays in for recess, and she smells bad. But not as bad as Annie Levinsky. Annie is in the same grade as Elizabeth, but Christine has never met her. Elizabeth has never brought her home to play after school.

  “Annie smells real bad,” Elizabeth says.

  “She smells like something died inside her,” Andrew says.

  “Like when the cat died under the steps,” says Peter.

  “Annie Levinsky stinks,” Andrew says.

  “Enough,” their mother says.

  Eli feels a tight knot in the middle of his spine, a pain that spreads up his back, pulls at his skin. He was not expecting this, not after he prayed, not after he confessed and repented. Jonathan Lund has been his ally for years. He stares at the furnace door, digs his heel into the crumbling cement.

  “No Messiah? No Handel?” His voice is high and thin. “Or have you got someone else to direct it?”

  And he thinks. It’s Hilda Munson. Hilda, who moves her arms when she directs, as if she’s scraping beans out of a tin can.

  Jonathan, wishing he were someplace else, wishing Eli were someplace else, explains that it probably will be Hilda who’ll direct the Christmas concert, but it won’t be the Messiah. It will not be Handel. And surely there’s nothing wrong with a break in tradition for a change.

  Eli groans. “Hilda Munson. It’s come to that.” The two men are silent. They do not look at each other.

  How can Eli put into words how he feels? How can he make Jonathan understand? How can he describe how his fingers even now are alive and moving, flicking this way and that, directing the notes inside his head; how his ear is alert, skin and cartilage taut, how those three small bones, shaped so delicately, hover there in that narrow channel, waiting; and his feet, planted here on the dusty floor, how they’re shaped in just the right way to balance his body leaning toward the sound, to hold him steady while the music soaks into his bones and nerves and muscles and alerts them that he, Eli Nelson, is alive and on this planet, affecting the air around him, changing the nature of space itself, filling it with blessing and honour for a few moments here in this dry and desolate place?

  He shakes his head. “Hilda Munson,” he sighs.

  In the Munson kitchen, Hilda has washed up the lunch dishes and put them away in the cupboard: cup, plate, knife, fork. She removes her apron, hangs it on a hook by the sink, and goes into the bedroom. She slips off her dress, lays it on the chair by the bureau, takes off her shoes and places them neatly beside the bed. She lies down on top of the white chenille bedspread. At the foot of the bed is a patchwork quilt, folded in half and pulled in at the centre, making it look like the wings of a giant butterfly. She pulls the quilt up to her neck, the blue and pink and lavender wings unfolding over her shoulders.

  Sam did not come home for lunch. He usually doesn’t. And when he does, he’s distant, dark, critical, snaps at her for the least little thing. What went wrong?

  Thank God she at least has her music. Not Bach or Handel, of course, but there are more pebbles on the beach than those two. And it looks as if St. John’s has come to their senses this year and she’ll get
the choir back. Sing something pretty for a change. Imagine, Eli out there with Nettie Johnson in that old trailer. How can they live like that, him drinking and her half out of her wits? And how do they get along with each other? For a moment she sees them lying together on their bed. Nettie’s head rests on the crook of Eli’s arm, her toe rubs his ankle. Hilda turns onto her side. Sam used to like crawling under the quilt with her, she remembers, even in the middle of the day.

  Jonathan is still in the cellar with Eli, the children have eaten, and Christine lies down on the sofa in the living room and covers herself with the yellow afghan crocheted by her mother. She strokes the soft woolen stitches and thinks of her mother in Wisconsin, of the big house on Segoe Road, of the green yard with huge umbrella trees, of gentle air. It’s not that she hates Saskatchewan. But really, who loves it? Land bare and rocky, the air dry, sharp, and unfriendly. She sees the big lake in Madison and all the green, wherever you look, so much green. She’s glad her mother writes to her and sends her things: needlepoint pictures, pillow tops, candles, recently a book on the life of Eleanor Roosevelt.

  How do other wives in Stone Creek have it? It would be nice if the women in town could get together more. Talk about things. Not just church things. How is it for Ingrid Sorenson, for instance, living with Eric? What do they talk about? People say he’s a Communist. But is he good to Ingrid? Gentle and loving in their bed? It’s hard to imagine sleeping next to a Communist. But a lot of women must be doing it. Not in Saskatchewan, of course, but in the world.

  In the trailer, Nettie Johnson finds a slice of bread in the cupboard, sprinkles it with sugar, and takes it into the small bedroom. She sits on the edge of the bed, holding the slice in her two hands, horizontally so the sugar won’t spill on the blanket. She eats the bread slowly, crumbling the soft pieces between her teeth, crunching down on the gritty sugar. Then she takes her shoes off and crawls under the blanket. She’s tired. Looking at words, trying to see them from all angles like that, is a very tiring thing to do.