A Song for Nettie Johnson (14 page)

“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 blanket 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.”

“But the pain,” Ross persisted.

“Try bland food, warm milk, mild exercise. There may be an intermittent blockage somewhere. Is she anxious? Nervous?”

“She’s quiet, doesn’t like going out, can’t take a whole day at school.”

“Does she have friends?”

“Occasionally a student comes to visit.”

“She should mix more. It would relax her. And try the diet and exercise. Keep the passages clear.”

Back in Stone Creek they had followed the specialist’s directions. But she was weak and always tired. Raising her arms and bending down to touch her toes wore her out. After two or three efforts she’d fall on the davenport, exhausted.

So early one evening Jacob Ross walked the narrow road to Long’s house at the west end of town.

In the front yard Nora was on her hands and knees beside a flower bed, digging out the baby weeds with her trowel: quack grass, thistle, dandelion. He told the woman in coveralls that he wanted to see the doctor, an illness in the family. Nora explained, as she’d done so often, that the doctor no longer practised – he’d stopped five years ago. Jacob told her that he knew that, but this was an emergency, his daughter Beverley, only thirteen years old. Even for emergencies, Nora said, people drove to Shaunavon now, only thirty minutes away. She stood up, holding the trowel.

“Just this once,” Jacob said.

“He has no license.”

“She’s in pain.”

“Well, go inside then, Jacob,” the woman said. Her voice was gentle.

The living room was dim. Thick vines of ivy covered the windows outside. Only small flecks of sunlight crept in, patterning the walls and ceiling with pieces of amber light. The doctor was sitting in a leather armchair, his head resting against the chair’s tall back. The thickness of the chair, the size of its back and arms made the man appear even thinner than he was, a wraith of a man with white hair and beard, white shirt, tweed pants. Nora kept him tidy as much as she could. When he saw Ross he leaned forward to get up, but Jacob stopped him and sat down in the chair opposite. Then he told the doctor everything he could about his daughter.

That evening Mr. Ross and Doctor Long walked together on the road to Ross’s house, the shadows of their bodies stretching out behind them like tall trees.

The doctor looked at her face, her skin. He examined her mouth, touched her hard tight stomach with his fingers. She cried out. He agreed with the specialist – she needed exercise. But she’s sick, she can hardly bend, Jacob explained. Then you’ll have to help her, the doctor said. He asked for a blanket or quilt, something soft to put on the floor. Mrs. Ross laid a yellow comforter on the linoleum, covering the roses.

He told Beverley to lie on her back and raise her legs in the air. He helped her, holding her thin legs in his hands and pushing them over her head to touch the floor on the other side. Then he told her to turn a somersault. She didn’t know how. She couldn’t. “Like this,” he said and knelt on the quilt beside her. He put his head down, ready to turn over. His legs creaked. “Well? Give me a hand,” he said to Ross. And Jacob held the doctor’s feet and rolled him over.

“See?” the doctor said, rubbing his neck. “It’s not so bad. I’ll help you.”

Beverley tucked her pyjama top inside the bottoms so no part of her would show and kneeled on the quilt with her head down. Then Doctor Long lifted her legs with one hand, supported her back with the other, and turned her over. He did this again and again until she cried, exhausted.

Then it came. Streams of sour air from her body. Puffs of stagnant gas, coming and coming, filling the room with pungent vapours. Beverley sat up. She stopped crying, touched her stomach, and smiled. “Good girl,” the doctor said. “You did just fine.”

The congregation sang,
holding firmly to the small black books in their hands.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee...

Freddie Wong
awakens to glass shattering, a woman screaming. It’s the middle of the night; the café is closed. Robbers, he thinks, and sits up in bed.

Then silence.

Then his mother’s long, shrill wailing. And his father, pleading.

Then his name cutting through the darkness, his father’s call to come.

He stumbles through the room, across the hallway, down the back stairs to the café. His father is holding her in his arms. She’s twisting and crying. The mirror beside the freezer is shattered. An iron pot lies on the floor among shards of glass. He has seen his mother dark and sad before, but not like this.

“The doctor,” his father says in Chinese. “Get him.”

Freddie runs to the door, then remembering, rushes back upstairs, pulls on his pants and shirt, then down the stairs again, through the café, and out the front door.

Across the road to the town hall, down the sidewalk past the drug store, turn at the United Church, up the narrow road to the doctor’s house. His purpose and his fear are one: a ball of steel in the centre of his stomach.

He opens Longs’ gate, runs across the yard to the front step. He rings the bell. Again. Once again, until Mrs. Long appears. When she sees the Chinese boy on the step at midnight, she turns swiftly and goes inside to get the doctor.

Now the boy must walk slowly. Old man and young boy walking together on Main Street, narrow shadows under the street light.

Inside the café his mother is leaning over the table. It looks as if she’s vomiting, bent over and jerking her head. Her nightdress is ripped below the waist, a thin leg shows through the tear. His father stands beside her, his face shiny with sweat, his eyes wet and shiny. Neither son nor father speak. They turn to the doctor and look at him.