A Song for Nettie Johnson (17 page)

A lamb goes uncomplaining forth

To save a world of sinners.

She pulls her tam more tightly against her own head, leans forward slightly, and gazes past her father’s chest to see who’s there. The preacher’s family are sitting in the front pew on the far side of the church. Behind them, next to a window, sits Mrs. Skrukerud. She sits by herself, head bowed over the hymn book as though she’s trying hard to see the print. Her hair is a grey tangled ball, like steel wool. She doesn’t see Jacobsons, or Freda.

He bears the burden all alone,

Dies shorn of all his honours.

On her mother’s left sit the Kvemshagens. They always sit in the same place, Mr. and Mrs. Kvemsagen, and their two boys Johnny and Jerome, their hair combed smooth and slick. And ahead of them, Mr. Reitlo. Even from where she sits Ingrid can smell the cigar smoke from his clothes and hair.

He goes to slaughter, weak and faint,

Is led to die without complaint,

His spotless life he offers.

Mrs. Aasen sits in the front pew, her small son beside her, restless, fidgety, his white Norwegian hair going this way and that in rowdy tufts.

For us he gladly suffers.

She checks the tam again, pressing it into place with her two hands. Has anyone noticed it? The tam is all right, it fits, but it’s not as cute and jaunty as her father keeps saying, not that jaunty.

The Pastor is talking about the road to Calvary and how hard it was for Jesus to lug the cross up the hill, and how all the people were there watching, and his mother too. His mother is the Virgin Mary, she knows that for sure. But who’s his dad, and where is he? He should be there too, on a day like this.

She looks at Jesus. His hair is brown and long, straight but not quite, a bit of a wave on the side. His expression is sad. He’s been knocking for a long time, but no one’s answered yet. Maybe they’re not home. His head is bent toward the door, to listen.

She closes her eyes, lifts her hands to them, and presses down on them with her fingers. Then she drops her hands and opens her eyes narrowly. Through her lashes she sees the vines above the lintel tremble as if a small wind has come up, and Jesus’ long hair move ever so gently, his eyes warm and tender toward her.

And then, suddenly, she hears rattling above her, rusty metal chains and the sound of whips. She closes her eyes tightly and opens them again, and there beyond the altar and chancel, beyond the ceiling itself, high and lifted up, she sees him on the dusty road. He’s small and only partly clothed, no shirt even, just a thin pair of pants reaching below his knees, and he’s barefoot. Two big soldiers are on either side of him. Swords hang from their hips, and their shields are thick and dusty. One carries a greasy rope with nails stuck in it, and he snaps it against Jesus’ bare ankles. The other twists and pulls on his little arm. She looks closely at Jesus’ face. He’s only a boy, her age, eight or nine maybe, and he’s mad and scared and trying to jerk his arm away from the soldier’s hand. He’s crying too. He’s trying not to, but he can’t help it; tears are running down his cheeks. His face is twisted, his hair bloody and tangled. Other soldiers march ahead of him, and thousands are following behind.

Then she looks at the people gathered on the side of the road as if they’re watching a parade, waiting to see what’s going to happen next. And the women are there in the ditch, kneeling on the hard dirt among the thistles. His mother, too, is crouching there.

Suddenly Jesus stops, so quickly the soldiers nearly trip. He stops right in the middle of the road and looks at his mother in the ditch. He yells, “They’re jerks, Mother, just a bunch of jerks. Don’t kneel down to them. They’re stupid.”

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

O
n 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 looked 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.