A Song for Nettie Johnson (7 page)

“In the second chapter of the Book of Genesis it is written thus: ‘And the Lord said, It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him an helpmeet for him....’”

Nettie glances at Eli, Eli looks at Jonathan, Peter stares down at his shoes.

There was some confusion at first as to where the wedding party would stand. The bride and groom on the step? Christine and Peter on the ground? All four on the step? All on the ground? It was Nettie who made the final decision: “We will all stand on the ground in a straight line. Nobody’s foot will stick out any farther than anyone else’s.” Peter has found this directive to his liking and shifts his feet forward and back, testing the measurements.

“‘And the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept. And He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh thereof; and of the rib which the Lord had taken from man, made He a woman, and brought her to the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; and shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.’”

“Cleave?” Nettie says. “I wonder how you’d spell that.”

A gopher peeks out of its hole beside a rock; a crow lands on the top branch of the willow tree.

“Christ saith also in the nineteenth chapter according to St. Matthew: ‘What God hath joined together let no man put asunder.’” Jonathan pauses.

“It’s over then,” Nettie says.

“Not quite,” Jonathan says.

Nettie mumbles under her breath, “Is he going to read the whole book?”

Jonathan reads from Corinthians, from Genesis, from Luke. Finally, he comes to the wedding vows.

“I ask thee, therefore, Eli Olaf Nelson, in the presence of God and this Christian assembly: In thy marriage with Nettie Orpha Johnson, wilt thou live with her according to God’s holy Word, love and honour her, and alike in good and evil days keep thee only unto her so long as ye both shall live?”

“I will,” Eli says.

Jonathan looks at Nettie. “In like manner, I ask thee, Nettie Orpha Johnson, in the presence of God and this Christian assembly: In thy marriage with Eli Olaf Nelson, wilt thou live with him according to God’s holy Word, love and honour him, and alike in good and evil days keep thee only unto him as long as ye both shall live? If so, answer I will.”

“I said I would, didn’t I?”

“Then I pronounce you husband and wife.”

The crow flies up from the willow tree and cuts the sky with black and glossy wings.

On the first Monday
in November the sky darkens, the wind takes on a hollow, whistling sound, and the people of Stone Creek wait for snow. They wait in the Chinese café at oilcloth-covered tables beside steaming windows, coffee mugs cupped in their hands. They wait in the Golden West Hotel in a room, dimly lit, where one more drink will warm the winter already in their bones. They wait in the Stone Creek School. Restless in their desks, the pupils twist their bodies this way and that, stretching their necks toward the high windows, watching the sky darken, deep, deeper still, now a dense heavy grey. And the wind, sharp and mournful, slapping at the glass.

And then it comes. Icy flakes spinning in the air, sweeping across the roads, under telephone wires, into ditches. It blows against the café and post office, the furniture store and undertaker’s parlour and the schoolhouse windows. It swirls about the elevators and across the pasture and the quarry and over pebbles and stiff clumps of thistles and all around the empty chair creaking back and forth beside the frozen pit.

Inside the trailer, Nettie peers out the small window over the sink and watches the flakes do their jagged dance in her small yard. She breathes content in the knowledge that now Eli will never leave her.

She goes into the bedroom, opens the closet door, and reaches behind a pile of blankets for the package. She removes the yellowed paper, lifts out a small black autoharp, and carries it into the kitchen where Eli is sitting. She places the instrument on the table.

“Here,” she says. “Play.”

“Wherever did you find this?”

“Never mind. Just play.”

Eli examines it, fingers the knobs to tighten the loose strings, then plucks the strings with his thumb.

“No,” Nettie says. “Use this.” She plunks a thick piece of worn leather into his hand. “It’s what Mama used.” And Eli strums a few chords.

Outside, snow drifts around the trailer, clicks and swishes against the kitchen window. And the wind, blue and hollow, seeps under the door in chilly strips.

“Sing,” Nettie says. And Eli opens his mouth to an old song.

Mid pleasures and palaces, though we may roam,

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.

“Speed it up,” Nettie says. “You’re too slow.”

A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there,

Which, seek through the world, is ne’er met with elsewhere.

“Oh, well,” she says.

Home, home...
Eli sings.

“Home!” Nettie shouts.

Sweet sweet home...
he sings.

“Sweet home!” she shouts.

There’s no place like home, oh, there’s no place like home.

Nettie sighs. “That is so true,” she says.

On the seventh of November
Annie Levinsky dies.

Jacob and his pupils tromp through snow down the hill to the Russian church. Inside, they cling to the wall by the door. The church is crowded, everyone stands, there are no pews. Elizabeth Lund stays close to Mary Sorenson. She has never been in this church before and she stares at everything. In front of her, men in shiny black suits and white shirts, women in black skirts and lace shawls, and children, too, hover around a wooden box that Elizabeth can barely see. And all around them are candles. Purple candles in tall stands that rise above their heads; pink candles in little glass cups set in cubbyholes in the church wall; candles in thick silver candlesticks on the table of the altar. Hundreds of orange flames. And she sees the pictures too, painted on the walls and on velvet banners with red tassels – pictures of old men with beards and of Mary and the baby Jesus. And the ceiling! She gazes up at the blue dome high above, where saints and angels fly in and out among the stars.

Mary takes Elizabeth’s hand. The two girls press closer to the varnished box. And there she is. Annie Levinsky, lying on creamy slippery cloth and wearing a long white dress. Annie with a veil fluffed around her face and holding a red rose in her hand. Her hand is stiff, her eyes are closed, she has rouge on her cheeks, she’s wearing lipstick. Mrs. Levinsky is leaning over her, crying, fussing with the veil so it lies in curves around her daughter’s face. And the bearded priest is swinging a purple cord with a silver cup on the end of it and chanting in a dark strange language. Smoke rises from the cup, and Elizabeth can smell spices – cloves or cinnamon. It’s too much all at one time and she closes her eyes.

And now the men in black suits are carrying the box outside. They carry it to the open grave in the churchyard. And Mary and Elizabeth are standing together by a mound of frozen dirt. Again the priest chants and swings the smoking cup, and smoke rises in thin streamers into the cold grey air. With thick ropes, the men lower the box into the hole, and the people throw chunks of frozen dirt down on it, each clod landing with a thud. Then, for the first time in the entire service, the priest speaks in English, “Let us go forth as light bearers to meet the Christ who cometh forth from the grave as a Bridegroom.”

Elizabeth whispers into Mary’s ear, quietly but with authority, for she’s the daughter of the preacher, “She marries Jesus.” Then the two girls take each other by the hand and begin to cry, softly at first, only a few light sniffles, then louder until they are sobbing, their bodies shaking. Weeping for Annie Levinsky whom they didn’t know really, never played with, hardly spoke to, for Annie was a shy girl, sick and smelling sour. But now, oh wonder, she’s the bride of Christ. And one day she’ll be pulled right out of the dirt to meet her husband in the air.

Annie Levinsky, lying at the bottom of a frozen hole, wearing lipstick and a long white dress, and smelling like cinnamon.

On the tenth of November
the choir, under the direction of Hilda Munson, folds. At their last gathering, Jonathan, the only tenor left, makes a short but glowing speech on the contribution Hilda has made to St. John’s congregation with her faithful service.

“When we were in need, you were there, Hilda, generous with your time and talents.” He stands in the church kitchen around the oilcloth-covered table where five other loyal singers are seated, drinking coffee and eating chocolate cake. Hilda sits at the head of the table, daubing her eyes with a white handkerchief. “And rest assured, Hilda,” he continues, “we haven’t seen the last of you. Your skills will always be needed.”

On November 12,
Eli is reappointed conductor.

Again, Jonathan Lund drives his Plymouth down the road past the creamery, past Jacobson’s pasture, and this time farther still so he can take the back road, the long way around, to the trailer.

“We’re on,” he says to Eli in the trailer’s kitchen. “The
Messiah’s
back.”

“Hallelujah!” Eli shouts.

In the bedroom, Nettie flops down on the blanket.

“Oh piss,” she says.

At supper tables
throughout the parish the talk is of the coming
Messiah
.

“So Doc’s put the plug in the jug again.”

“But how can they get this thing together in four weeks?”

“I hear Eli’s getting some musicians from Moose Jaw to help out.”

“Hilda must really be burning over this.”

However, in the Munson house Hilda seems strangely
calm. She is standing in front of the living-room window, gazing out at the snow-packed street beyond her yard. “Do I have something to tell you, Sam Munson. A real surprise.” She pulls the curtain to the side, bends her head closer to the glass. “You’ll have to wait to find out though.” She backs away from the window. “Grace Olson will be furious, of course, but that’s her problem.”

In the small house behind the frozen hollyhocks, Grace is sitting at her piano, peering at the music in front of her, her thin fingers poised above the keys. In slow, regal movements of her hands, she begins to play “The Holy City.” And she’s at peace.

There is no peace in the trailer, however. Eli promised Nettie he’d never leave her, and now he leaves her nearly every day, trudging into town to practise with basses, tenors, altos, and twice-weekly rehearsals with the whole choir, lasting late into the night. Nettie gets even with him in her own way: Forgets to put salt on the table, loses his socks, sleeps on the edge of the bed with her back to him. She shuts her ears to his singing, makes fun of his directing. And she refuses to spell for him even when he asks for her favourite words.

One afternoon,
after a rehearsal of soloists, Doctor Long invites Eli to his place. He has something for him. Under an amber sky the two men walk slowly down Main Street to the United Church, then west toward the doctor’s house. Their thin bodies cast narrow shadows on the snow-packed road behind them.

Inside the house, the doctor directs Eli into a room that was once a waiting room for patients but now is a place empty and uncared for. The chairs are still there, and a small table holding old magazines. After all, in his dreams the doctor sees himself back in business, his at-home clinic bustling with patients.

Eli sits down in the green Naugahyde chair, and the old man leaves the room. He returns with a long cardboard box which he opens slowly, his hands shaking a little. He lifts out the black trousers, black coat with tails, the stiff white shirt.

“You might as well look the part,” he says.

Eli removes his pants and shirt, lays them over the back of a chair, and puts on the black trousers and white shirt. When he has the coat on as well, he struts about the office, singing and directing with one hand,
And the glory, the glory of the Lord....
With the other hand, he holds up the pants which are too big in the waist. The doctor stops Eli’s movement and kneels down beside him, an open safety pin held between his teeth. He clutches at the trousers, pinches the cloth together at the waistband, and jabs the pin into the fabric. When the cloth is secure, Eli continues directing the song, using both arms.

When the singing and cavorting end, the doctor tells Eli that Nora has something for Nettie, a dress she bought for herself at Cutler’s Dry Goods, that never did fit right and now it’s too late to return it. It’s new, never been worn, he says. Maybe Nettie would accept it as a wedding present, wear it to the concert.

He brings Eli the dress box. Eli removes the cover, lifts up a sheet of tissue paper, and sees the dress underneath. “Well,” Eli says. “Well, well.”

Nettie is standing
in front of the kitchen window, peering out. He said he’d be back early, but already the sun has gone down, and on the horizon jagged slabs of red and orange pile up and spread out. Her heart quickens its beat. Surely he’ll be coming soon.

When she finally sees him appear over the crest of the hill, first his head, then his shoulders, she leaves the window, disappears into the bedroom, and sinks down on their small bed, covering her head with the blanket. She does not hear the song he sings as he approaches the trailer, holding the cardboard box against his chest and clumping through the snow.
Here I raise my ebenezer, hither by thy help I’m come...