A Song for Nettie Johnson (16 page)

In Lent the roads are like this: deep-rutted, sharp, and rigid. Large stones are frozen into the ground. Even if you kick them they don’t move. Even if you kick them so hard your toes hurt, the stones don’t budge. They’re hard as marble. They stay right where they are.

When they reach Travises’ house, they can see Ellen Travis at the window of her front porch. She’s holding back a curtain and peering out. Before they get to the door, she has already opened it and squeezed herself onto the front step. She’s tall and thin and wears a brown jacket. She talks fast.

“Ed has set up a space in the shop,” she says. “It’s handy for him there.” She holds the collar of her jacket close to her neck. “And it doesn’t track up the house with people coming and going. He’s already had a few customers. People don’t like driving all the way to Swift Current.”

They follow her around the house to the backyard, cross over a frozen garden past a clump of bushes, careful to push aside the thorny branches that swing out against them. Mrs. Travis shoves open the gate, and they’re in the back alley. Ahead of them in a large lot is Mr. Travis’s machine shop, a huge garage covered with ragged tin siding and set amidst piles of old tires, engines, metal rims and discs, all rusty and leaning into frozen weeds.

They step into the yard, avoid ice patches under their feet. There is no sidewalk. The wind blows hard against them. When they reach the shop, they stand for a moment in front of the big door. A thin light from the distant sun warms their backs

With a chapped hand, Mrs. Travis clutches at the knob and pushes the thick door open. “We’re here,” she calls into the dimness. They step inside. The door creaks shut.

From where she stands behind her mother, Ingrid cannot see Mr. Travis or the workbench, but she can smell – grease, metal, wood, everything dark and old, kept inside, locked tight.

“So, we’re all here, are we?” the man’s voice calls out.

Her mother takes her hand and they move to the bench. They step around boxes of nails and screws, heaps of rusty chain, to where Mr. Travis stands. He’s short, his stomach round under a blue apron. Except for a rim of hair just above his neck, he’s bald. Light from a bulb hanging from the ceiling shines down on the top of his head; his skin glows.

“Yes,” Mrs. Travis says. “We’ve all come together.”

He smiles. His teeth are white, his face a rusty colour, his eyes friendly. He looks at the girl, and his teeth are smooth and even under his thin lips.

She looks away from him to the bench where the tools lie – hammers, pliers, wrenches, small boxes of nails and bolts. The bench itself is rough and splotched with oil. Beneath it, a few skinny weeds, white-stemmed and almost leafless, have pushed up through cracks in the floor. Outside, the wind rattles the tin walls.

“So you’ve all come together, and we’re going to have a haircut, are we?” He smiles at Ingrid, then steps toward her. She clutches at the sleeve of her mother’s sweater. He leans over her and examines her hair more closely, “We’ll get this cleared out, cleaned up.” He twists a strand between his thumb and forefinger.

“His room’s in the back,” Mrs. Travis says. “He has a nice space there, clean and neat, not like here.”

“Not like here, ha ha,” Mr. Travis says. “Not like here.” In single file they curve around oil drums, engines, bunches of thick rope, to the back of the shop. Mr. Travis leads the way.

The room they enter is swept and tidy. On the back wall a window looks out to a frozen yard. Under the window is a low bench, and on the bench a closed box. In the centre of the room, a metal chair sits on a low wooden platform. Ingrid and her mother hover near the door. Mr. Travis moves to the platform and waves his arm at it.

“Here’s the throne,” he says. “What do you think of my throne? Here’s where the princess sits.” He laughs. The women say nothing. Ingrid, too, is silent. “It’s a throne, you see.”

Mrs. Travis smiles and steps forward. She walks in a wide circle around the platform. “Isn’t this nice?” she says. “Isn’t this a fine barber shop?” She tips her hand to the chair, then moves to the door. “I’ll just go on home then,” she says. “Ed can take over from here, can’t you Ed.” She steps out of the room.

“You bet,” Mr.Travis says. “I’ll take over from here.” He motions to Ingrid’s mother. “You go on too,” he says. “We’ll do just fine, won’t we, princess.”

“No, I’ll stay,” her mother says. “I’ll just stand here by the door. I won’t get in your way.”

“Suit yourself,” he says.

He turns to Ingrid still clinging to her mother, holding tightly to the sleeve of the curling sweater, grabbing onto the little ducks swimming in a row on the edge of the sleeve.

“Now, little princess, if you’ll take your place on the throne, we can begin.”

She doesn’t move.

“It’s all right,” her mother says. She leads Ingrid to the platform, helps take off her coat. “I’ll hold it for you,” she says, and returns to her place beside the door.

Mr. Travis bends over Ingrid, places his hands under her arms, and lifts her up, onto the chair.

“So, we’re going to fix this,” he says, stroking her hair, “get it right this time.” He moves his hand to her shoulder and holds it there for a moment, pressing lightly. Then he steps down from the platform to the bench under the window and lifts up the metal box. He places it on the floor by her feet, and opens it. She sees inside – brushes, combs, scissors, a pair of clippers wound in cord, a white cloth rolled up. Mr. Travis picks up the cloth, shakes it loose, and lays it over her shoulders. It covers her body, reaching almost to the floor.

“Isn’t she an angel now?” he says, “A real little angel.” He laughs, then puts his mouth to her ear and whispers, “It’s to keep all the little hairs off.” His thick hand curls around her upper arm.

Then he stoops down to the box and lifts out the clippers. He unwinds the cord and plugs it into an outlet on the floor of the platform. She looks out the window. A small poplar in the middle of the yard is bending in the wind, its thin branches twisting this way and that. She turns her head to look at her mother, but her mother is examining a calendar on the wall. Her back is to Ingrid. The wind makes hollow sounds against the building.

Suddenly she feels the metal on her neck, the steel hard against her skin. She hears a click, then a buzz; and the steel comes to life, vibrates, twists, pushes forward a little.

His left hand is on her head, spread fingers capping her skull. His right hand moves the clipper, a flick from the centre of the neck to the base of the skull, then back and up again and farther up, and out and back. He moves the clipper a little to the left and up and up. Then to the right, up up up, and her hair falls in yellow tufts onto the platform floor.

With his fingers he combs through the hair on top of her head. He holds up a section in his left hand, pulling it tightly.

“Well, maybe the scissors here, eh?”

He lays the clipper on her lap. It slips into the fold of the white cloth. The muscles of her legs clench. He picks up the scissors and cuts through the clump of hair, then returns the scissors to the box. His hand moves to her lap, and his fingers slide under the clipper and lift it up. “We’ll have an easy go of it now,” he says.

The clipper comes to life, sliding against her skin, moving above her ears, and over the top of her head. Hair falls in little wisps onto her shoulders and down to the floor.

“Aren’t we doing just fine,” he says. “And aren’t you a good little girl, no fussing or complaining. You’re a very good little girl. I wish I had a little girl like you, not five sons, all wild and off somewheres.”

Ingrid is silent. Her mother keeps looking at the calendar.

He rubs the small remaining growths with his thumb – behind her ears, above her neck, and a circle at the top of her head where the cowlick was.

“There. Nearly done. I’ll use my silver-bladed razor for these little stubs that won’t budge.”

She stares out the window at the poplar tree. She closes her eyes, tight, and opens them again slightly, and the tree begins to sway, one moment touching the
ground, the next sweeping against the clouds. She doesn’t
feel the thin scrape of the razor against her skin. Then she sees the tree loosen itself and lift and float up, roots and all, over the fences and hedges and hills of town. It flies far away from earth, and disappears into the sky. She sits dizzy, eyes closed, in the metal chair. When she opens them, Mr.Travis is brushing her ears and neck. He flicks her chin with the brush, laughs, then throws it into the box. He lifts up the cloth, shakes it, and folds it over the brush. He lifts her up, his sausage fingers tight beneath her arms. “Down you go.” He sets her on the floor. “There’s a good angel.”

She turns to her mother, who’s holding the coat in her hand. She’s holding it away from her stiffly. Her arm is rigid, her face pale and stern. Why is she mad, Ingrid wonders. Why is she so mad? Her mother grabs her by the arm, jerks the arm into the sleeve, then the other arm. She pulls her through the doorway and back into the shop.

They move in crooked steps around the kegs and coils and heaps of chains, all the while her mother’s fierce hand gripping. Why is she holding on so hard? I sat still, didn’t I? I didn’t cry.

Outside, they stand a moment on the step. It has begun to snow, not thick flakes but small particles whirling about. They hurry down the path into the alley. They’re about to turn into Travises’ yard, to take the shortcut, when her mother jerks her away from the gate. “We’ll take the long way,” she says, her voice sharp. They stumble down the alley over frozen ridges of earth.

Suddenly her mother stops. She stands in the middle of the road, and her face in the wind is the colour of copper. “Where’s your cap?” she says. “I told you to bring it. I said don’t forget your cap, but you forgot it.” She shakes her daughter’s arm, back and forth roughly, and her voice is stiff and cracked. Ingrid crouches against the voice and against the wind. “You forgot it. You didn’t bring it. Why didn’t you bring it?” Then her mother drops her hand from Ingrid’s arm and reaches to her own mouth. She covers her blue and rigid lips with her fingers, trying to stop the sound, but a cry seeps out. Long and thin, it circles the air around them. Ingrid looks up to her mother’s face and is astonished to see her cry, to hear the sounds of her crying. And she too begins to whimper.

She reaches her hand to her head, feels the bare skin and the tiny growths of stubble here and there, and she catches her breath and sniffles and begins to sob. The wind has risen and the sleet has turned into thin pellets of ice that come down against her, against her face and neck and the skin that fits so snugly over her small skull. She stands on the icy road and wails. And the sound of her wailing joins the cries of her mother and the moaning wind, and fills the space around them from earth to sky.

Then the crying wears itself out, and it’s quiet. Her mother unzips her curling sweater and pulls it off. She lays it over Ingrid, covering her head and shoulders, and puts her arm around her and says, “Let’s go home now.”

It’s quiet
at the supper table. A fork clicks against a plate, her mother coughs, her father asks for the salt. Ingrid takes small bites of mashed potatoes.

She’s wearing a purple tam. She wears it at a slanted angle as she’s seen women in pictures wearing tams, pressed flat against the left side of her head and puffed out at the right.

“Maybe I won’t ask Jacobsons over for coffee,” her mother says, breaking the silence. “We can come right home after the Lenten service; it’s been a long day.”

“Will Freda be at the Lenten service?” Ingrid asks.

“Oh, I think so,” her mother says.

“That tam looks awfully good on you,” her father says. “It looks jaunty.”

“I don’t want to go if Freda’s there.”

“We won’t stay long,” her mother says. “We won’t visit.”

“Cute and jaunty,” her father says. “Very jaunty.”

She sits between
her parents on a varnished pew in the centre of the church. Straight ahead of them is the altar, three wooden arches connected to each other, a tall wide one in the middle reaching toward the vaulted ceiling, and two shorter ones attached at either side. The altar is white, its curved edges trimmed with gold. On the face of the middle arch a painted Jesus, tall and blue and sorrowful, is standing on a rock step and knocking on a door. Vines hang down over the lintel. He holds a lamp in his left hand and knocks with the other.

On the altar’s right is the organ, on the left, the pulpit. Organ, altar, and pulpit form a kind of triangle in front of them.

The church is dimly lit. Fat white globes suspended from the ceiling have been turned off, but small tulips of amber glass, attached at intervals to the side walls, glow in the dimness. One candle on the table of the altar is burning, its flame steady. It sends a thin circle of light up to the feet of Jesus standing on the stone step in front of the heavy door. From her place between her father and mother, she can see the light swirling around his feet.

Mrs. Hjortaas walks slowly up the centre aisle toward the organ. When she gets there, she smooths the back of her navy skirt with her hand and sits down on the bench in front of it, her back to the congregation. She flicks on the light above the keyboard, rustles through the pages of the hymn book. The small door behind the pulpit opens and the Pastor appears. He walks to the altar and stands in front of it, facing it, his head bowed. Then he turns to the group before him and announces the first hymn. Mrs. Hjortaas begins to play. Ingrid’s mother finds the page in her little black hymnal. Her father doesn’t sing. Ingrid remembers the hymn from last year’s Lent.