A Song for Nettie Johnson Read Online Free PDF Page A

and scramble to the far side of the hill. Then they begin to climb, careful to avoid thistles and loose rocks. At the top, they sneak around the quarry to the trailer. Creep behind the trailer and around to the front corner of it. See Nettie ahead of them. She’s in the chair, facing the pit. They can see only the back of her head. For some reason, Eli is not there.
    Nettie closes her eyes and rests her hand on the blue speller lying on her lap. She hears a rustle from the edge of the quarry and stops rocking, her back stiff. She opens her eyes and leans against the sound, a wary bird, watching.
    “Get out of there you gopher. Scat, little coyote. Beat it, rabbit. I ain’t in the mood for company.” The rustling continues. “Hey, Mr. Badger, what are you up to?”
    Then she hears a thin whistle, a long wire of sound, pierce the air.
    “Oh, ho, so it’s you. You did come back.”
    The whistling lifts, gets louder, circles the air in rings of melody.
    “What way did you come? I didn’t hear your footsteps in the creek bed.” The whistling stops. “I didn’t hear you singing your old tune by the willow tree.” She peers toward the big rock just this side of quarry. “Enough tricks. I know you’re out there. O-u-t.” She resumes her rocking. The chair’s rungs crunch the gravel.
    “I was always very good at spelling,” she says.
    Eli rises from behind the rock. “You’re number one,” he says. He holds a paper bag in his hands and lifts it high above his head.
    Nettie strains her neck to see, but she doesn’t move from the chair.
    “I have something for you,” Eli says.
    “I’m getting a little tired of pickled herring,” she says.
    “It’s not pickled herring.”
    “What then?”
    He sets the bag on the ground.
    “Come and see,” he says, reaching out his arms to her. “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. Come. Buy wine and milk, without money and without price.”
    “You come.” She sits back in the chair.
    Eli waves his arms in the air. His voice when he sings is bold and lusty.
    O, come to the church in the wildwood,
    O, come to the church in the vale.
    No spot is so dear to my childhood
    As the little brown church in the dale.
    Nettie scowls.
    O, come, come, come, come...
    “I’m not coming!” she shouts.
    And suddenly Eli is on his hands and knees, crawling among the rocks and stones and dry strands of quack grass, squatting and lifting his face to the sky and crying out, “Ooowooooo,” his coyote voice full of longing. And Nettie slides from her chair onto the ground. She crawls on stones toward the quarry. And she wails the same coyote’s cry, “Ooowooooo.”
    Then a new sound comes to her, a snake hissing.
    “S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s,” it says, long and sleek.
    “S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s,” she answers.
    And the sound changes, and she hears the warbling of a meadowlark, a trill so sweet she has to laugh. And out from the rock Eli emerges. He crawls toward her, and when she sees him crawling, she flattens her body on the ground and slithers out to meet him. They come together, tangled in each other, rocking and laughing on the stones.
    The children are up and on their feet, peering forward.
    “So you won’t tell me what you brought, won’t open the bag, won’t show me what’s in it. Then there’s only one thing I can do. I will eat you. I will bite your tongue off. I’ll chew your ears. I’ll gobble up your fingers.”
    Eli laughs louder. “Oh, I’d like that.”
    Elizabeth grabs Andrew by the arm. “Let’s go home now,” she whispers.
    “No,” Andrew says.
    “Shut up,” Peter hisses.
    “I’ll tell. I really will.” She runs around the back of the trailer and down the hill. Halfway across the pasture, her brothers catch up to her.
    Eli, on hands and knees, opens the brown bag and lifts out its contents with exaggerated care: seven tins of soup. As he puts each can on the ground he intones its name: “Heinz vegetable, Heinz cream of mushroom, Heinz