A Song for Nettie Johnson (3 page)

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

“How should I know?”

“It’s what you do if you’re a sinner,” 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.

She reaches her hand to the pillow that Eli lay on just this morning, strokes the cloth with her fingers, smells the faint sour sweetness of his skin and the rum he likes to drink. It would be nice if he did come back. But if he’s at the Golden West, forget it. And if he goes to visit Grace Olson, forget it. And if he’s at St. John’s Church, forget it. Forget it, forget it, forget it. So long, Eli Nelson.

Eli sucks his breath in.
Well, Reverend, he thinks, we’ll see about this, won’t we. It isn’t over yet. He stands up and looks down at Jonathan, still sitting on the bench. “Do you remember what it was like?” he says. “All those farmers belting out the Hallelujah Chorus? Even Sigurd Anderson. He has his problem too, you know, with the booze. But when it’s time for
Messiah,
Sigurd doesn’t touch the stuff.”

“True,” Jonathan says.

“Same with Doc Long. Puts his bottle on the back shelf when the
Messiah
comes.” Eli moves toward the stairs, pauses. “Remember his solo? How he’d roar out the words?” Eli sings the line in a deep, clear voice.
Darkness shall cover the earth....
He glances slyly at Jonathan. “Doc’s United Church, isn’t he?”

Jonathan sighs.

“And you. You came so close last year,” Eli says. “Just so close.”

“What do you mean close?” Jonathan asks.

“The refiner’s fire, remember? The third refiner’s fire?”

“What about it?”

“It should go
a refi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-iner’s fire.”

“That’s how I sang it.”

“No. You left out the last
i.”

“What do you mean?” He sings the line.
A refi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ner’s fire.
“There. That’s how I did it.”

“Wrong. It’s
Refi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-iner’s fire.
Don’t forget that last
i
in there.”

Jonathan tries again.
Re-fi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-iner’s fire.

“Well, that’s better,” Eli says. “Maybe this year you’d finally get it.”

He walks halfway up the stairs, then stops and turns around. “Oh, well, it doesn’t matter now since your mind’s made up anyway. Besides, there are too many problems. Parking for sure. Shovelling all that snow from the vacant lot for extra space. Remember that? All those cars?”

“Eli. I’ll bring it up to the music committee. They’ll make the final decision. Soon.”

Outside,
Peter is bored. He’s thirteen years old and his father’s a preacher. The big event of each week is church, where he has to sit on a hard pew that smells like lemons and think of ways to make the time pass: counting flies that buzz on the window sills, counting people, how many men, how many women, counting letters of long words in the hymnal (Septuagesima: 12). And now it’s October. The air is dry, the sky huge, the land so flat and empty you can see almost to North Dakota. But Peter doesn’t want to see North Dakota. What he likes to see are girls, their arms and necks, their ankles, their smooth round breasts; and to feel the pressure in his groin, the hard lump down there.