The Trials of Nellie Belle

by Sydney Avey

  “The book is a special edition of The Man Without a Country by Edward Everett Hale,” the pastor said, drawing out each syllable as if he were illustrating a significant point in a homily. Nellie stopped doodling on her offering envelope and sat up straight. Might there be a reward? He made no mention of that. Instead, he segued cleverly into a sermon on the sin of carelessness.

  Nellie was still thinking about the lost book when the pastor stopped in the pews to chat with Mr. and Mrs. Carter. He dropped his hand down atop Nellie’s head, and let it rest there. His palm lay heavy on her hair, neatly parted in the center and hanging in damp braids that absorbed the chill of cold sunlight shining through the high, leaded glass windows.

  I’m glad I washed my hair this morning. Nellie sat perfectly still, feeling the weight of his words in the large hand that commissioned her into service.

  “We are asking all the children to keep an eye out, Mrs. Carter. If Nellie should happen to find the book, there might be a little reward.”

  Nellie raised her chin and searched his pale, wintery face with her round dark eyes. “What is the story about?”

  “What does that matter?” A man of great height even when he wasn’t standing in the pulpit, he looked down as if seeing her for the first time. “It’s about a man who renounces his country and has to spend the rest of his life on a sailing ship with no news of home. But that’s of no consequence; what is important is that this particular book had a patriotic verse penned on the flyleaf, with the name and address of the young man who lost the book written below. That is what you want to look for.”

  Nellie drew herself up and thrust her chin a smidgen higher. “How did the young man let such a gift land in the donation pile?”

  The Reverend removed his hand from Nellie’s head as one would withdraw from a source of heat reaching an uncomfortable temperature. “As I said in my sermon, he was careless, as many rich people are. You weren’t listening.” He waggled his finger at her. “He did not guard a treasured gift from his grandfather.” His eyebrows knit together in accusation. “There is a lesson for you in that.” Then he laughed.

  “I’m not rich.” Nellie tossed her braids with the backs of her hands and smoothed her bangs. “Just the same, I am sorry for his loss.” These were words she often heard people say when they wished to end a conversation. They had the desired effect. The pastor reached his arm out over her head to shake the hand of another parishioner.

  “I will keep an eye out,” Nellie assured him. Her words were absorbed by the damp, slightly acrid smelling shirt fabric that clung to his armpit.

  And if I find it, maybe I will turn it in for the reward, but not before I read it.

  R

  Early the following winter young Nellie was leading her horse through Indian grass in the chalky hills, searching for a stray lamb, when the sweet strains of “Lead, Kindly Light” reached her ears. So unusual was the sound of a human voice on the barren plain she often roamed, she turned her horse to follow the music.

  Coming upon a sod house so near the color of the ground it was indistinguishable as a habitat, she discovered a large family of children. They invited her inside. Nellie’s eyes had to adjust to the darkness before she could identify which child sang the hymn so sweetly.

  A little girl sitting on a ragged pallet in the corner turned her face in the direction of Nellie’s voice. A waxy veneer coated the pupils of the child’s eyes. The film reflected the thin winter light that streamed through the open door in the way moonbeams bounce off a shallow pool of water. Blind from birth, Nellie discovered, the girl had never been taught to walk for fear she might wander off. The other children explained that their sister occupied herself singing hymns they taught her.

  The child’s name was Helen. This particular hymn came from a hymnal they had found in a box of donated books.

  “How does she know the tune?” Nellie asked the other children. She looked around the room to see if she could spot the box.

  “My daddy plays the fiddle.” Helen spoke up in a voice so clear and musical it startled Nellie.

  She is blind, not deaf and dumb, Nellie chided herself. She kneeled down beside Helen. “You are a church-going family then?” Perhaps they knew about the search for the missing book.

  “Oh no. We have no clothes for church, but Daddy knows a few church tunes from when he was a boy. I can sing most any hymn to the music my daddy knows how to play.”

  “Where is your mother?” Nellie asked the children.

  “Our mother died with the last baby,” Helen said.

  “I am sorry for your loss.” As the words marched from Nellie’s mouth, her face began to burn. Brave, motherless children. At this point, her mother would be planning donations of hand-me-downs and food baskets, whereas she was absorbed in the challenge of getting her hands on their box of books. Only because she had promised the pastor, she told herself.

  “Well, you have a very pretty voice, Helen.” Nellie patted the girl’s hand and turned to the other children. “May I see the books you were given?”

  In the way of children who only ever had one thing to call their own, they proudly showed off their stack of books. At the bottom of the pile, Nellie found the little book that had made its way from a rich man’s library to a poor child’s heart.

  The child who laid claim to that particular book reluctantly gave Nellie permission to return the book. Nellie promised the children a reward.

  She kept the book for a month, read it twice, and then asked the pastor about the reward.

  “Reward?” He glowered at her. “The reward is knowing you have gladdened the heart of a young man who has lost a treasure.”

  “But you said …”

  “I made no promises, young lady. Should that young man decide a reward is in order, a donation to the deacon fund would be appropriate, wouldn’t you think?” He raised his eyebrows and smiled broadly at Nellie, showing his teeth. “Have you, by chance, found the book in question?”

  “No.”

  “No?” He was standing very close, his big face leaning down over her, his pockmarked jowls hanging loose, like sunflowers heavy with seed.

  “No sir, I was just curious.” She looked up into his face, eyes wide and lips pressed into a whimsical smile. Giving her shoulders the merest shrug, she turned and skipped away.

  Nellie used her egg money to mail the book back to its owner. Before she wrapped the slim volume, she slipped a note between its pages.

  Dear Sir:

  I read your book with the greatest interest. I hope you don’t mind. I thought about what I would miss most if I had to live on a boat in the ocean for the rest of my life. I would miss my horse (of course!), but mostly I think I would miss my family.

  Yours truly,

  Nellie Belle Carter

  In time, she received correspondence from one Eustace William Carver. In a lovely script on monogrammed stationery, the young man acknowledged Nellie’s supreme effort to restore the treasured centerpiece of his grandfather’s legacy.

  My dear Nellie,

  Words cannot express my gratitude for your perseverance against the odds of discovering the whereabouts of the book my grandfather intended for me to have. How I regret my carelessness in not safeguarding the precious volume against thoughtless members of my staff, who scooped it up with less esteemed works and sent it to Kansas to relieve the misery of those who are famished for spiritual and intellectual food, as well as meaner sustenance.

  I shall one day travel to meet you. I was much taken with your description of the blind child with the lovely voice. I should very much like to meet her. Keep a gentle eye on her for me, will you?

  Your servant,

  Eustace

  Folded inside the note was a crisp ten-dollar bill. Nellie hid the note and the money in a letter box she had just received for her fourteenth birthday from her aunt who lived out west.

  Eustace began to fill her thoughts. He took on the character of a shining diamond among the roug
h men who worked the family farm. Every word of his letter fired latent desire within her. Perseverance against the odds--she looked the word up in the dictionary. It meant steady persistence in spite of difficulties. Nellie’s mother often called her a tenacious sort, especially when she set herself against her brothers. Perhaps her mother meant it as a compliment.

  By his own account, Eustace was a man with a grateful heart: a gentleman with compassion for the less fortunate, a squire with means and education. In her estimate, he was a prince with the wherewithal to rescue her from a life of farm labor. She thrilled to delightful sensations as she imagined their meeting.

  In her dreams, he would step down from a private train car and catch sight of her standing apart from the others waiting for arrivals. He would approach, take her hand in his, and murmur, “Nellie, you are even more lovely than I pictured.”

  Their courtship would be short; the wedding a discreet perfection of white satin, flowers, and violins. Eustace would whisk her away to the East. She pictured a future where he would teach her how to manage a staff. She, in turn, would educate him about the needs of the poor. Together they would exceed her mother in good deeds and charitable works.

  A week after she received the letter, she rode her horse out to the sod house and gave the ten-dollar bill to the children.

  R

  Nellie’s impassioned correspondence with Eustace over the two years that followed was nothing compared to her excitement when she learned that he would be making a visit to her family’s farm. She re-read all his letters, looking for his responses to her many declarations of regard for him. She concluded that he must be a formal sort, the kind who would express emotion only when the circumstances were right. That would be up to her, of course.

  “A good thing we have the new house,” Nellie told her little sister Jessie. “Wherever would a gentleman like Eustace stay if Mother and Father had not had the good sense to get us out of that dirt hovel at the first opportunity?”

  “Will you take him to see Helen?” Jessie sat on the floor of the bedroom they shared.

  “I suppose I will have to.” Nellie pulled down the corners of her mouth. “I don’t understand his interest in her. It’s maudlin.”

  “What does that mean?” Jessie danced her rag doll on the floor.

  “It means to go all mushy, Jessie. Helen can walk now, for heaven’s sake. He doesn’t have to feel sorry for her.”

  “But she still can’t see, can she? I feel sorry for her.”

  “Pshaw! You’ve never even met her.” Nellie stood in front of the mirror that hung over her sister’s bird’s-eye maple dresser.

  “I have too.”

  Nellie narrowed her eyes. “You have not.” She continued looking in the mirror as Jessie stood up, letting the doll slip from her hand to the floor.

  The little girl stood on tiptoe to peer over Nellie’s shoulder. She began to imitate her sister’s movements, lifting her light hair off her neck, arranging it this way and that.

  “I saw her in church last Sunday when you stayed home. Remember? You said you had a cold.”

  “I’ve never seen her in church.”

  “She was wearing a pretty dress, one of your old dresses, I think.”

  Nellie whirled around. “What? How?”

  Jessie shrugged. “Mother donated it to the Ladies Aid Society, I guess.”

  Nellie frowned. “Why didn’t she save my dress for you, like she always does?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she thought girls like Helen would go to church if they had a dress to wear.”

  So now I have to see my old clothes walking around on strangers, Nellie thought. “Well, good for her.” She gave her sister a quick, small smile and pinched her cheek, a touch somewhere between fondness and irritation.

  Jessie rubbed the side of her face and made round, innocent eyes at Nellie. “The pastor called her up in front.”

  Nellie froze. “What did she say? Did he say anything about a book?”

  “A book? No, he asked her to sing a song.”

  “Oh, of course. Helen has a beautiful voice. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to hear her sing.” Then Nellie turned back toward the mirror. She piled folds of her dark hair on top of her head. “Jessie, do you think this makes me look older?”

  The little girl cocked her head and wrapped her bottom lip over her top lip. “No, not really. Well, maybe. My teacher wears her hair up.”

  Nellie let her long, dark locks drop back down on her shoulders. “Well, I certainly don’t want to look like somebody’s teacher.”

  “What do you want to look like?”

  “Like a lady.”

  R

  Silver Beach

  The waitress removed Nellie’s barely touched dish and stacked it on top of Mack’s clean plate. She set small bowls of spumoni in front of Mack and Nellie and splashed more coffee in their cups.

  “A long, boring story, forgive me.” Ravenous now, Nellie spooned some of the pink, green, and white frozen custard laden with pistachios, chocolate bits, and cherries into her dry mouth.

  “Not at all.” Mack scooped dessert into his mouth in two bites. You were a saucy little thing. But we are just getting to the good part. I want to hear about Eustace. Was he your first love?”

  The restaurant had emptied. The waitress circled the room, blowing out candles and lowering blinds. She laid the bill in front of Mack. Nellie reached for it. “Let me have that.” She gave Mack a sweet, complicit smile. “We will let the court pay.”

  Mack let her pick up the tab. “I’m not going to hear the rest of this story, am I.” He stood up and reached for his hat.

  “Not this visit, I’m afraid. You may escort me back to the Marsh House, and we will say our good-byes at the door.”

  On the bottom porch leading to the veranda that hugged the Marsh House, Mack took a step back and surveyed Nellie. The full moon rising behind him cast a light over his shoulder that shone kindly on her face. “You are, you know.”

  “What?”

  “A real lady.”

  Although she had never witnessed the process, this must be what a maple tree felt when sunlight hit it after a crushing winter, and the sap began to flow. She might burst with the pressure of holding back. She stood still for a moment and then extended her hand. “I enjoyed your company at dinner this evening, Mack.”

  He took her hand in his firm grasp, pulled her slightly to him, and leaned in to brush her cheek lightly with his lips—soft lips still warm with coffee and smelling of sweet cream. Then he stood tall, straightened the Stetson that had been knocked slightly askew, and took a step backward. “Good night, Mrs. Scott. I look forward to working with you again.” He pivoted and strode back up the road to town, whistling “Cuddle Up a Little Closer” into the wind.

  Nellie stood for a moment and watched him go. Nothing subtle about you, is there Mack? It would take her awhile to get to sleep tonight.

  9 - Whistles and Bells

  9

  Whistles and Bells

  Portland, 1910

  Nellie did not like to think of herself as a grandmother. If only it had been Johnny who had settled down, married, and presented her with a granddaughter. But it was Opal.

  Nine months ago, Nellie had received a letter postmarked New York from Opal saying she had married Jack Barry, a fellow dancer on the vaudeville circuit. They were expecting a baby, she wrote. The sequence of those events was not at all clear.

  With both mother and daughter traveling, communication was difficult at best. Nellie had been in Portland for several months. She was on contract as a court reporter while the burgeoning city’s administration tried to build up staff to handle the heavy caseload. It was Jessie who got the call. Opal had given birth to Mabel Leone Barry in Chicago, where the young couple had rented an apartment. The baby’s father, however, had returned to New York to fulfill his contract. The tour was supposed to finish in Chicago.

  “Opal told me he plans to join her after the season,” J
essie told Nellie in a phone call. The phone line was quiet. “Nellie, are you there?”

  “Why didn’t she call me?” Nellie asked in a small voice.

  “She said she couldn’t find your latest number.”

  “It’s not like her to lose track of things. Besides, you could have given her my number.”

  Again there was silence on the line. Then Jessie spoke. “She’s had a lot on her mind, and you are often hard to reach.”

  It was probably true. Opal was not one to retaliate against what she might have perceived as disregard. For the first time, Nellie wondered if she should have traveled to be by her daughter’s side when she heard of her pregnancy. Word had not reached Nellie until the baby was near due. Too late for regrets.

  “In Chicago? Is that where they plan to live?” Nellie asked.

  “I don’t know. Opal didn’t say.” Jessie had nothing else to tell Nellie. After their goodbyes, Nellie went for a walk to clear her head. Tourists crowded Portland’s city streets, drawn by invitations to attend the increasingly popular Rose Festival. They brought an energy with them that usually infused Nellie with a sense of well-being, but not today.

  Now that Opal was a mother with family responsibilities, her dance career was surely over. Nellie trudged along, head down, shoulders drooping, weaving in and out of the onslaught of people. How would the little family make it on a seasonal paycheck? Would the baby’s father give up the stage to settle down and take care of his family? Surely Opal did not expect Nellie to give up her career and move to Chicago to help out. Nellie’s body tensed. The ranks of the National Shorthand Reporters Association were 580 professionals and growing, and she was contemplating a position on the organization’s governing board. Now was most certainly not the time for her to toss in her pencil. The different scenarios simply did not want thinking about right now. Don’t borrow trouble, she told herself. It will all sort itself out.

  R

  The more time Nellie spent near the Oregon coast, the stronger her affinity for the coastal climate grew; so much so that she began to feel this was where she belonged.