Read A Song for Nettie Johnson for Free Online

shouts.
    “Oh be quiet,” she says.
    They meet in St. John’s basement, cold and smelling of cement, four members of the music committee: Hilda Munson, Grace Olson, Olga Jacobson, and Leif Stenson. They sit at a wooden table in the centre of the room, surrounded by grey walls decorated with children’s crayon drawings: green trees, pink and yellow butterflies, red birds flying under many-coloured rainbows.
    When Jonathan arrives, he stalls for a moment in the narrow hallway in front of the closed door and listens to the muffled sounds from within. Then he pushes the door open and enters the room. The talking stops.
    He walks to the table, looks first at Hilda, who’s staring at the butterflies on the wall opposite her. Then he looks around at the others. Leif is gazing down at some papers in front of him on the table, Olga is rubbing her chin with her thumb, playing with a tuft of coarse hair growing there. Grace Olson sits with her eyes closed.
    “So here we are,” Jonathan booms, too loudly. “Who would like to begin?”
    Hilda looks at Leif. He’s the only man on the committee, the preacher will listen to him. Olga and Grace would never speak up, especially Grace, scared of her own shadow. Why she gets the best solo every year with that tinny voice of hers no one knows.
    “Well, then,” Jonathan says, “maybe I could share some of my own thoughts.”
    Hilda leans forward in her chair. “I think Leif might have something to say.”
    But Leif says, “Let the preacher begin. I’ll add my two cents’ worth later.”
    Hilda sits back in her chair. Jonathan speaks.
    “All of us are aware of the problem we’ve had with the Messiah . With Eli in particular. We’ve known of his weaknesses when it comes to drink. Now we know of his other weakness.” He pauses, clears his throat, looks at the wall across from him. “I’m referring, of course, to his...new life out at the quarry.”
    Hilda glowers at Leif, Leif looks at Grace, Grace stares at the door, Olga examines her cheekbone with one finger.
    “But I think we need to consider something else here,” Jonathan continues. “We’ve been at this thing for five years now. We’ve struggled through all those notes, and now we’re close to getting the whole thing together for the first time, and doing a good job of it. Maybe it’s not such a good idea to quit right now.”
    He coughs, feels a tickling sensation in his neck.
    “Let’s think about Eli as well,” he says, his voice higher now and tighter. “None of us approves of the situation out at the quarry, but let’s try, just for now, to look at it from another angle. If Eli does continue directing the Messiah , the message of the music itself could work a change in his life, a repentance if you will. And who among us would want to deny him that?”
    Again, Hilda waits for Leif to speak, but he doesn’t. No one does. They’re sheep, Hilda thinks. All of them. So it’s up to her then. She’s no sheep.
    “Pastor. Of course we believe that the Messiah is good. I don’t think any of us have a problem with that. Or with repentance either, for that matter. But what we’re concerned with here is something else. We’re thinking about the community, about...” She stutters, stumbles for words. Finally Leif comes to the rescue.
    “What I think Hilda is trying to say is we’re worried about the influence Eli has on young people. On children....”
    “Yes,” Hilda continues. And she tells Jonathan how the children of the town sneak out to the quarry to watch the goings-on out there, even those from good families, and then try to copy what they see. She doesn’t mention the Lund children by name, but Jonathan suspects she’s including them. Later, when he questions the children at the supper table, he knows for sure. And he knows what he must do.
    Jonathan drives his maroon-coloured Plymouth down the creamery road and past Jacobson’s pasture. When he reaches the quarry hill, he parks, gets out, and