Carla Kelly (35 page)

“Your entire paycheck?” Miss Clayson asked.

Della nodded. “I still thought I would be teaching at the Westside School again, and I
knew
those little ones had never seen crayons before. I wanted them to have
too
many, because they never had too much of anything.”

“Some people might consider you improvident,” Miss Clayson said, but there wasn't any sting to her words.

“I suppose I am,” Della agreed happily. “I just loved those little children. Oh, I
know
I am improvident! After I took the job here, I spent my last week's paycheck to buy more crayons. I left the first crayons at Westside School and bought more for my students here.” She laughed and dared a gentle joke. “I'm not so improvident, Miss Clayson. Auerbach's gives a five-percent employee discount on anything we buy in the store.”

She thought Miss Clayson may have chuckled, but that seemed impossible, so she returned her attention to the letter before her. “ ‘I like to collect good art, and I always pay for it,’ ” she read. “ ‘I've had these pictures framed and they are now on display outside my office, with the children's comments printed underneath. Is five dollars enough?’ ” Della sucked in her breath. “Miss Clayson! Five dollars for the drawings!”

Miss Clayson came around the desk and picked up the envelope. “I don't think you perfectly understand. Open this.” She held out a fat brown envelope.

Della gasped as she stared at twenty-five five-dollar bills, as crisp as if someone from Housewares had ironed them. Knowing the meticulous Samuel Auerbach, that was probably what had happened. “Five dollars
each
? Miss Clayson, these children have never seen five dollars in their life!”

“I know. I was as stunned as you, Miss Anders.” She sat down in a desk opposite Della and reached into the envelope again. “You're not done yet. Look at this.”

Della looked at the smaller envelope. She read the writing on the outside, still in Mr. Auerbach's familiar handwriting, the one that circulated on memos in the store. “ ‘Miss Anders, use this for whatever you need, and let me know how I can help. Samuel Auerbach.’ ” Della ran her finger over his signature, almost afraid to look inside the envelope. When she did, she felt tears start in her eyes. She pulled out three ten-dollar bills. “Miss Clayson,” was all she could say, as she reached for the handkerchief in her pocket.

She blew her nose and sat back, stunned. “I … I just wanted to show him how I was using that shirt cardboard, since he teased me about it before I left. That was all.” She looked away as she dabbed at her eyes. “Maybe I wanted him to know how wonderful our children are.”

“You have succeeded.” There was no mistaking Miss Clayson's pride. The principal folded her hands on the desktop. “How would you like to use that thirty dollars?”

“You decide. I'm in shock!”

“I think you know what to do with it. I may wonder at your methods, but your instincts are sound.” She folded her arms and looked out the window to the children's playground.

Della closed her eyes, seeing Pekka Aho behind them, and his serious face as he rode to the cemetery on his last journey with his father. She opened her eyes. “Let's give it to Pekka's mother. Heaven only knows what is going to happen to her when she has to leave company housing.”

“I like that.” Miss Clayson leaned toward her across the desk. “Would you do this too? When you write your thank-you letter to Mr. Auerbach, tell him about Mrs. Aho. I've seen the posters she drew for your pie auction. Maybe he needs someone like Mrs. Aho in his department store.”

“What a wonderful idea!” Della exclaimed. “I'll just mention her talent, because there is not an Aho alive who would want me to beg.”

“No, there isn't,” Miss Clayson agreed. “Just plant a seed, Miss Anders, something I think you are good at.”

A compliment from Miss Clayson; Della couldn't have heard right. At the principal's insistence, she took the money to her room, where she tucked it in her lunch bucket and fairly floated up the hill toward the Wasatch Store, where she bought small envelopes. That night in the library, she wrote notes to each of her students, telling them where their five dollars had come from.

Della stayed up late at the kitchen table, writing a letter to Mr. Auerbach but not sealing it. Tomorrow, she would have all three grades write individual thank-you notes for their composition class. She wrote where the thirty dollars was going, telling her summertime employer about Mrs. Aho and her lovely posters advertising a pie auction to raise money to have a piano tuned. She wrote about the widow's uncertain future and her brave children.

When she finished, she read through her lengthy letter and realized that Winter Quarters was no longer just about a school. Maybe it never had been about a school. She realized that for the first time since she left Colorado, with a name tag around her neck, that Winter Quarters was more than teaching school or even mining. Winter Quarters was her home, for good or ill.

A week later, before the pie auction, she sent a similar letter to Jesse and Amanda Knight, telling of the funerals, describing what Samuel Auerbach had done, and the astonishment on the faces of her students when she handed each of them an envelope with five dollars in it. She wrote of the bewilderment on the faces of her younger children, most of whom had never seen actual money in their short lives since their fathers were paid in scrip, good only at the company store. She wrote of the dozen beautifully embroidered dish towels left outside her door with a note from Mrs. Aho. She had sent the note and half of the towels to Mr. Auerbach, as Mrs. Aho had requested.

She had an appreciative audience in Owen Davis, as he sat at the kitchen table a few nights later and she showed him how to French braid Angharad's hair.

“Have you thought of copying each letter you send to the Knights and to Mr. Auerbach and keeping it?” Owen asked, putting his hands around hers as she wove the braids. “I'm not going to be good at this.”

“Oh, ye of little faith!” Della chided. She felt the pleasant sensation of his breath on her neck as he stood so close, holding his daughter's hair. She had decided that the faint odor of sulfur and coal was not unpleasant, mingled with Pears Soap and a freshly laundered shirt. “Now hold these strands in this hand—that's it—and weave these strands through.”

“Da, you're tugging my hair,” Angharad said, the soul of patience.

“Never,” he joked. “That's Della.” He narrowed his eyes in concentration.

“No, it isn't,” Angharad contradicted. “She
knows
what she is doing.”

A true artist, no matter what the medium, Owen was not satisfied with his effort. He wanted to start over, but Angharad vetoed his wish, reminding him that Mabli needed them next door to practice pie dough. “Another thing I am not good at,” he grumbled as he let his daughter tug him to his feet. He gave her a kiss and sent her ahead.

“Seriously, copy your letters. Someday you can look back on this school year and remember us.” He handed back her hairbrush. “Tamris Powell said you're going to apply to teach in Arizona next year. You'll never find a choir there like ours.”

“No, I won't,” she agreed. “Probably never find such humble second tenors either. What am I thinking?”

“I don't know,” he said, serious now. “Don't be in a hurry to leave us.”

He was certainly standing too close. She knew she should move back, but there she stood, hairbrush in hand, admiring a man's brown eyes and wondering if coal was permanently etched in the lines around his mouth. She suddenly wanted him to kiss her, but she stepped back instead, gathering up her hairpins on the table, feeling her face growing hotter by the minute.
Conversation, Della
, she told herself, startled at the direction of her thoughts.
Something trivial
. “What kind of pie are you going to make for the auction?” she asked, wishing she did not sound breathless.

“I think humble pie,” he said with a smile. “And if I can't find a can of that in the Wasatch Store, I might try … oh, I don't know. What should I do?”

Kiss me
, she thought. “How about a vinegar pie?”

“You're serious?”

Way too serious
, she thought, dismayed at the unruliness of her thoughts, and suddenly thankful she had a harmless topic. “I learned to make it in Hastings, when we didn't have anything else in the house. Yes, a vinegar pie. And don't look so skeptical!”
Better yet, don't look at me at all, unless you're on the other side of the room
. “It's inexpensive, tasty, and better than oatcakes.”

He gave her a small salute and went next door for his piecrust lesson. Della stared after him, wondering at herself and hoping Owen Davis wouldn't need any more French braiding lessons.

fter a week's discussion with herself, Della decided there was nothing as good for her wandering thoughts as a vinegar pie, tasty and tart in turn. She had wanted to say something to Dr. Isgreen during their dinner in Scofield, but she knew better. One didn't talk about a man to another man, especially one content to kiss her cheek after each walk up the canyon.

There wasn't a single woman in Winter Quarters Canyon she could talk to, either, about feelings she had never experienced before. Aunt Caroline had drummed in her head the improbability of any man ever wanting her, once he knew of her less-than-stellar origins. The old Della had taken Aunt Caroline's harsh lesson to heart; the new Della wasn't so sure. It was perfectly obvious to her that Owen and Angharad Davis were favorites in the canyon, especially since all of the nursing mothers six years ago had given their milk to Owen's infant daughter and probably felt they had a share in the little Davis family. She chose not to say anything, which made the old Della nod and the new Della fret.

On the Saturday before the auction, she made a vinegar pie, pleased with its unexpected sweetness. Papa had requested it for his birthday every year, which was a good thing, since they seldom had the money for an actual cake with flour, sugar, and icing. She could have left it alone, but there was a dab of heavy cream in the icebox left over from one of Mabli's more grandiose desserts. She whipped it into stiff peaks, then cut herself a sliver of pie. She took the first bite plain, as she remembered from life by the Molly Bee. A dollop of whipped cream turned the second bite into a little bit of heaven. Funny how vinegar pie could be such a surprise to the taste buds.

Owen stopped by with Angharad before he left for the afternoon shift. He had taken to leaving Angharad with her and Mabli—“Giving Martha Evans a break” was how he put it. She sat him down for pie and whipped cream. He ate the dessert quickly, then held his plate out for more, which told her something about the state of the lunch bucket at his feet. She sent him into Mabli's house on a fictitious errand and quickly added another sandwich to the bucket, while Angharad watched, sworn to secrecy.

“That's vinegar pie,” she told him when he returned. “You probably have every ingredient in your own kitchen right now, except maybe the egg and allspice.”

“You're putting a lot of misplaced faith in my kitchen,” he told her. He gave Della a look, which she could only label sly. “If you two make that pie for next Saturday night, I'll carve you a box to give to the Knights for a Thanksgiving gift when you go there.”

“What do you think, my dear?” Della asked his daughter. “Should we do his dirty work?”