Young Nettie’s Cogitation

By Susie Schade-Brewer

Mama and me were sitting in the morning room, me still in my morning dress, expecting Sarah Jane to bring breakfast through the door any minute.  I hadn’t taken the time to fix my hair, just ran my fingers down the length of it before I’d come downstairs. 

That would have been good enough for an average day, but this turned out not to be so average. Had I known that we would have so many visitors, or that panic would run through the whole household even before the clock struck eight, I’m sure I would have selected a better day dress and had Sarah Jane help me put it on proper.  I don’t like looking slovenly for visitors.  Especially Mr. Winfield.

Frank Winfield had come to southern Missouri from somewhere up north to be a preacher’s assistant.  He’d been told at some time or other in his life that he’d be a good minister, cause he had a heart soft as goose down.  Well, I don’t know so much about that.  But I do know he had the most admirably beautiful face anyone had seen in these parts for a long while.

Anyhow, there I sat waiting.  I drummed my fingers on the table, the smell of the biscuits and red-eye gravy from the kitchen nearly nauseating me.  I would rather have been in the stables saddling up my Sally for a morning ride, but Mama said etiquette was an essential part of being a proper young lady.  How eating biscuits and red-eyed gravy ever made one proper or a lady, I have yet to figure.

Well, just about the time I decided I’d make a break for the door, Sarah Jane came in carrying a steaming gravy bowl between her hands, and Bastian right behind her with a tray of golden brown biscuits.

“Mama,” I complained and sank down in my chair, “couldn’t I just have strawberries today?  I believe all this gravy is gonna turn me into pure mush.”

“Now, Nettie,” Mama always called me Nettie, even though my name was Victoria Emaline.  “Red-eye will put roses in your cheeks.  You’re near sixteen.  Soon you’ll be old enough to attract a proper young man.  Those roses will help you do that.  Now do you see the need?”

Mama kept talking, as she often did, so I covered my ears with my hands.  She shook her head at me and got a queer disgusted look on her face.  But I’d heard it all before.  I knew there’d be no sense in arguing. 

Then suddenly, her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. I just had to uncover my ears to find out why.

“Did you hear that?”

I listened close.  But I didn’t hear a thing.

“There!” she gasped and pointed to the window. “Did you hear it?”

I shrugged.  “I didn’t hear a thing, Mama.”

“Sarah Jane, Sarah Jane, come back in here quick and listen!”

Sarah Jane rushed back through the kitchen door. She bent at the waist beside Mama, the whites of her eyes sparkling.

“I don’ hear nuthin, Miz George-Ann.”

The room became so quiet you could have heard a fly land on the plate-glass window.  Both Mama and Sarah Jane’s faces were wrenched in such curious contortions as I ever did see.  I put my hand over my mouth to hide my snickering.

“Hush,” Mama glared at me.  “You listen, too.  Your ears are better than mine.”

“Okay, but what am I listening for, Mama?”

“There, it did it again!”  She pointed her stiff digit at a small copper bell that hung in the corner of the room over the big window.  It dangled from a cord run through the wall from the outside.  “Did you see it that time?”

“I see it, ma’am.  But I don’ believe it!”  Still bent at the waist, Sarah Jane began to back away, like she’d seen an evil spirit.

Mama jumped up from her chair.  It toppled over backward.  She smacked both hands down hard on her chest.  “Jeremy, oh dear god, Jeremy!”

“Jeremy?” I said astonished, cause now she had my full and serious attention.  “Uncle Jeremy?”  I looked disbelieving at the bell hanging above the window.  But this time, I saw it for myself.  The little dinger in the middle of the signal bell plinked softly against its sides.

“Quick, Nettie, run get your father,” Mama hollered in near panic. 

I darted up from my chair.  My petticoat caught on the rung; the chair flew over sideways.  Sarah Jane disappeared into the kitchen and wouldn’t come back even when Mama called her. 

I ran for the front door, hoping to catch papa’s carriage before it made it to the avenue.  I knew my petticoats were flying higher than any proper lady’s should, but for heaven’s sakes, what do you expect.  Uncle Jeremy was signaling us from the grave, and I just had to catch the carriage before it was too late.

I’d no sooner told papa what had happened than he spun the carriage around and high-tailed it back to the house.

We found Mama in near hysteria at the front door, her hands still pressed against her chest and breathing so fast I thought she’d for sure faint like Aunt Getty always did.  She grabbed papa’s hand and dragged him into the morning room, me fast on their heels. 

“Mama, what does this mean?” I asked out of breath. “Is Uncle Jeremy alive then instead of dead?”

“Go to your room, Nettie.  This is too distressing for a young lady.”

But I thought Mama was the one that was too distressed, and I didn’t go to my room.  Instead I pulled the chair I had toppled over up under the bell.  I climbed on top, stretched onto my toes to reach my ear close to the dinger.  All of us watched, ever so faithfully.  But this time, much to Mama’s chagrin, it was still as stone.

She began to fret like a nervous cat under a rocking chair.  “It moved, Clarence!  I swear to you it did.  Didn’t it move, Nettie?  Tell your father.”

I turned my face toward him to corroborate Mama’s story –  nodded forceful as I could.  Just as I did, the sound came again, a tinkle from the bell just above my head.  My mouth dropped open.  In disbelief, I pointed my finger at it. 

“Oh my god,” papa exclaimed, “what have we done? Hurry, Nettie.  Go get Doc.  No, run get George from the shed house, then go get doc.  No, I’ll go get George, and our shovels.  Nettie, you go get doc.”

Papa dashed toward the kitchen to run out the back way and fetch our man-helper.  Just as he reached for the doorknob, he stopped to look back at me. “Nettie, you go put on some proper clothes first.  But hurry, child!  Hurry!”

I ran for the stairs, made it up so fast I don’t remember my feet touching the steps at all.  Before I knew, I had my plaid day dress on and was outside heading quick as I could down the avenue toward doc’s office.

“Doc,” I slammed through the door, yelling out before I even saw him.

Startled, Doc Wainscot poked his head out the door of his examining room.  “What’s all the ruckus about?”
     “Doc, come quick” I panted, “Jeremy has rung the bell!”

Doc flew out the door with me, which was hard for him cause he was pretty old.  Together we ran the two blocks, me holding onto his hand so’s he wouldn’t fall. 

We headed straight for the grove of cherry trees on the hill where Uncle Jeremy had been laid to rest not a week earlier. 

Mama was already there, and papa without his suit jacket on, digging frantically alongside George.  I ran up beside Mama and stopped.  Doc ran ahead to see papa.

“You for sure heard the bell?” I heard doc ask papa.

“Yes, doc, for sure.  I saw and heard it myself.”

Without wasting a second, Doc grabbed for a pickax lying in the grass beside Uncle Jeremy’s headstone and swung it high over his head.

As Mama watched, her breathing became faster, but her face shone with a strange contentment.  “I knew the bell was a good idea,” she said.  “I knew he wasn’t dead.  I just felt it in my bones.”

Confused, I took her hand.  “Then why did we bury him, Mama?”

“Oh child, it was so long he laid on that bed not breathing.  We thought his heart had stopped for sure.  How could we have known?”

 For near half an hour, the three men pounded away at the dirt.  They worked at a pace that would have killed them had they not been so excited and afraid for what they’d done to poor Uncle Jeremy. 

I began to think about the wonderful signal device, how it was going to save my uncle.  I twisted backward, my eyes following the cord that had been strung from a pipe coming out of the coffin to the house and through the wall above the window of the morning room.  I thought it was beautiful the way the sun sparkled on the dew-covered cord, how it drooped in shallow arcs between tall posts planted every ten feet. 

That’s when I noticed a whole crowd of townspeople had rushed into our yard and were heading toward us.  I guess all the commotion and my running through town with my petticoats flying had caught folks’ attention.  In no time at all, our curious neighbors had squeezed in around us under the cherry trees. Our back yard began to look like the Pentecostal prayer meeting Pastor Shockley had arranged last spring under the big tent.

“Oh, the very idea,” Mrs. Watley, our next door neighbor exclaimed in disbelief after she stepped close.  “Jeremy alive!  It’s preposterous.”

“I even heard the bell myself, Mrs. Watley,” I blurted out so she wouldn’t think Mama addled.  

Just then Frank Winfield came to stand beside me. I smelled his cologne long before I saw him.  When he looked at me, he lifted his top hat and smiled wide.  "Good morning to you, Miss Nettie.”

This was one of the few times I ever wished I’d been called Victoria.  Nettie didn’t sound exactly right passing between his beautiful pearly whites.

“Yes sir, Mr. Winfield.”  Completely unnerved by him peering straight into my eyes, I tried not to stutter.

“I was passing by when I saw the crowd,” he continued.  “A man on the street told me Jeremy had rung the bell.”

“Yes sir, Mr. Winfield.” 

Ooh, I could’ve slapped myself.  My chance to finally speak with the inimitable Frank Winfield, and all I could do was repeat the words, ‘Yes sir, Mr. Winfield”.  He probably thought I was addled.

“Well, do you think it’s true?”

“The bell is not to be questioned, Mr. Winfield,” Mama proclaimed.  “It is a patented invention to save those poor unfortunate souls prematurely put into their final resting places.”

“And it’s a good thing, too.”  I dared to speak again.  “It will be most auspicious to see my wonderful uncle again?”

Just then someone from the crowd pushed against me. I stumbled forward.  Mr. Winfield caught me around my waist and pulled me back. My heart froze with his touch; my breathing came to an abrupt stop.  I batted my eyelashes to convey my undying gratitude.

Mama frowned, noticed I was swooning and stepped up close.  “You’re not being proper, Nettie,” she whispered loudly in my ear, “making a spectacle over a man ten years your senior.”

Just then,  papa’s shovel clinked against the iron belt that girdled Uncle Jeremy’s coffin. Everyone gasped.  We all held our breath, waiting for what would come next. 

“Oh, I can’t hardly believe,” Mama grabbed my hand, squeezed it so hard I thought I’d end up a cripple.  “It’s truly miraculous!”  With her other hand, she began to fan her face.  She looked awful peaked, and I got worried.  Digging up Uncle Jeremy was becoming more distressing than when we’d first found him dead and Mama had fainted.

Just then, a blackbird took to flight from the highest cherry tree above us.  I watched him fly high into the sky and circle.  Something about that bird purely held my attention.

Again and again he circled.  Eventually he headed toward our house, all the while screeching out some horrible caterwauling, like he was proclaiming, “Look at me?  Do you know what I can do?”   

At that moment a most frightening possibility struck me.  I began to walk back toward the house – and that bird – cause I thought, oh my god, what if?

Faster and faster I walked, and by the time I reached the back door and flung it open, I was at a full run.  I ran past the bushels of beets and turnips set in the cold spot and through the kitchen toward the morning room.  

Peering ahead, I saw how the whole room was now illuminated with beaming sunlight.  A shadow passed through it, a dark swooping silhouette in the shape of a large bird. 

Just as I came through the door, I heard the tinkle of the copper bell.  “Oh my goodness,” I stopped, mortified. 

I ran toward the window. There before my eyes was the most distressing thing I think I’ve ever seen.  The blackbird was perched on the sparkling cord.  His haunting black eyes stared straight at me, and I swear he winked. Then he lifted his wings for flight and swooped away.  The bell above my head tinkled again. 

I gulped deep and hard, cause now I knew for certain who had rung that bell.  And it wasn’t Uncle Jeremy!

I looked toward the hillside.  Five men were down on their knees, reaching into the open pit.  “Gracious sakes alive,” I screamed. 

My main concern was for Mama.  She would be wringing her hands like they were dishrags, and I just knew she’d be breathing too fast.  I had to get to her quick, tell her about the blackbird that had landed on the cord and rung the bell. 

I headed for the back door and outside.  As I entered the sun-filled yard, the men were setting the casket into the grass. George was stepping up with an iron cutter; the crowd was pushing in closer.

I sucked in a deep breath, threw my head back, and forced my legs to run faster up the long hill.  In my ears, I could hear the wild beating of my own heart.  But I just had to get there before they opened the box.

Just about the time I crested the hill, the crowd pulled back slightly.  I saw Doc’s aged hands reaching forward to grasp the broken iron clasp.

“Doc, wait,” I screamed through my terror, though all my energy was nearly spent.  But no one heard, and if they did, they paid me no heed.

     Rushing past Mr. Winfield, I grabbed Mama by the arm. “Mama, Mama, I just gotta tell you something.”

     As I looked pleadingly into her face, I saw her lips were quivering; her eyes were teared and red. 

“Oh, Nettie.  I shall see my brother alive again!”

     “No, Mama, listen to me …” 

Too late.  The hinges of the coffin screeched eerily as Doc lifted the lid.  

Overhead the blackbird circled, screaming out his horrible teasing vulgarities.  I screamed, too, loud as I could, though I couldn’t hardly breathe.  But no one cared.  And I was just sure Mama was going to faint.

(2607 words)