Carla Kelly (13 page)

“It must have been lovely here before all the trees were cut down for lumber,” she said to her new landlady, and then looked up toward a higher wagon road. She figured a hike was in her future, as soon as she could breathe without gasping.

“Passing on the left,” Della heard behind her.

“Walk with us, Owen,” Mabli said, putting out her elbow so he could conveniently crook his arm through hers.

“Anytime, Mabli,” he said. He hesitated a moment, then crooked out his other arm.

Della didn't hesitate. She put her arm through his. “That's the best choir I ever heard in my life! I looked around and everyone just sang along as though it was an … an everyday occurrence!”

Mabli and Owen looked at each other. “It is,” Mabli said.

The Davises walked with them past their own house. “We have to make sure you get to Mabli's,” he told her. “Haven't you heard of Butch Cassidy and other road agents?”

“We have to make sure she doesn't back out,” Mabli added. “I live close to the tipple, but you'll get used to the noise.”

I wonder
, Della thought, doubtful, as she stood outside the little house, built into the hillside like most of the houses in Winter Quarters. She imagined the racket when the coal ran through the tipple.

“Is this the only tipple?” she asked Owen. “Why isn't there one by your mine?”

“Because of the levels and raises in Number Four, it's easier to get the coal out through Number One,” he said. “They connect.”

Mabli opened her door and they all went inside. The house was small, to be sure, but Della saw order everywhere. Her eyes went first to what must have been a wedding photograph of Mabli and her husband.

“Salt Lake Temple,” Mabli said proudly. “Wasn't he the handsome one? Dafydd. I miss him with every fiber of my heart.”

“Da, I am starving,” Angharad said. “And it had better not be just oatcakes at home!”

Her good-natured complaint cut through the mood. “My dearest, you know there will be oatcakes a little longer.”

Mabli went into the lean-to kitchen, coming back with cookies. “This will help take away the pain of oatcakes,” she said. “Come by tomorrow after breakfast, Angharad. I can almost guarantee an apple turnover.”

“You'll spoil her,” Owen said.

“Good.” She gave him a little shove. “Go on now.” When the door closed, she laughed. “You're wondering why I am so familiar with that good man?”

“Well, I … It's not my business,” Della said.

“His wife Gwyna was my little sister. Angharad is my niece.” She handed Della a cookie. “We're all related here in the canyon. Let me show you your room.”

To call the room Spartan would have been to engage in real prevarication, Della decided. There was a mattress but no bedstead, and boxes everywhere. The only window was small and bare of curtains. “Hmm.”

“It will look better tomorrow. In exchange for a week of meals in the boardinghouse, Owen has agreed to make you a bedstead. If you walk up here slowly tomorrow, it'll be done by early afternoon. I can find some curtains too— thick ones.” Mabli peered out the window. “Your view is the boardinghouse privy, and you don't need that much education, even if you are a teacher. Sometimes they forget to close the door. Men.”

After paying her six dollars for September, Della left a few minutes later. She paused outside the door. It was going to be a long walk in winter, but her shoes were sturdy.

Della walked down the canyon by herself now and perfectly at liberty to pause whenever she wanted. Halfway back to the Parmley's house, she sat by the timber shed, where she had stopped with Owen. Her head ached from the altitude, but she allowed herself the privilege of remembering the Molly Bee and her father. As she sat there, she felt one more tie to the Anderses snap like a flimsy cotton thread. She had deliberately stepped back into the life that her aunt and uncle probably felt they had saved her from. No wonder the Anders were confused; she didn't understand why either.

After lunch the next day, two miners knocked on the door to retrieve Della's trunk. “We'll put it on the flatbed and take it directly to Mabli Reese's house,” the braver of the two said, as the other man twisted his cap. “She promised us apple turnovers.”

“This is really a hard time for them, isn't it?” Della asked as she watched the men head to the tracks with her luggage and a bag of sandwiches from Sister Parmley.

“Coal orders are down in the summer,” she said. “I remember hard times too.” She touched Della's cheek. “You wouldn't know about hard times in the mines, but there is real want.”

“Actually, I …”

She stopped. Sister Parmley had turned away because Florence was tugging on her skirts and demanding attention. She knelt by her daughter, solved her small problem, then turned back to Della. “I'm sorry. You were saying …”

“It's nothing. Maybe I'd better hurry after my belongings,” Della said.
I'm not who you think I am
, she thought,
but if you were to ask me who I am, I am not sure I could tell you
. “I should leave now. I plan to spend some time in my classroom,” she said, holding out her hand to Sister Parmley. “Thank you so much for your hospitality.”

Too bad Mabli Reese's house wasn't as close to school as the Parmleys’ was to church, Della decided as she walked by. She looked up, hoping Miss Clayson wouldn't be staring down, then scolded herself for being a gutless wonder. She tried the front door, which wasn't locked.

The hall was empty. “Miss Clayson?”

“I'm here, Miss Anders,” Della heard from the steps leading to the basement. “You're not my first visitor.” It sounded like second cousin to an accusation. Della sighed.

In another moment, the principal turned the corner on the landing, still dressed in unrelieved black.

“I don't want to think of myself as a
visitor
,” Della said, prepared to be cheerful, no matter what. “How are you this lovely morning?”

“I'm here,” Miss Clayson said precisely, obviously not a woman for small talk.

Doesn't like idle chat. Doesn't care for miners. Doesn't like curly hair
. Della mentally ticked off a list of misdemeanors, all of which she was already guilty of in the principal's eyes.
I wonder how she feels about President McKinley and tariff reform? At least my skirt is no higher than two inches from the floor. Show no fear.

“I wanted to work in my classroom a little this afternoon,” Della said. “Will we … will we be meeting together this week before classes start?”

“We will, indeed, as soon as Mr. Bowman returns from Provo. He has a sweetheart,” the principal said with as much distaste as if Israel Bowman carried typhoid from county to county. “I do hope you have no romantic inclinations, Miss Anders. I had enough trouble with the last lower grades teacher.”

“None whatsoever,” Della said cheerfully. “I don't know a single mining engineer.”

“Neither did Miss Forsyth, until one showed up,” the principal said. “That resolution had better last you through May.”

“It will.”

To Della's surprise, her lips moved upward in faint approximation of a smile. “One thing: That nice Mr. Davis brought you a handful of periods, commas, and question marks for the peg board. He left a few exclamation points too, although I told him we didn't encourage exaggeration in
this
district school.”

“Well, you never know when excitement might strike,” Della joked, then sobered immediately, because Miss Clayson's frosty look dictated otherwise.

“Watch the levity, Miss Anders,” she warned, then softened slightly like a glacier in late August. “I must say, it
was
nice of him to make all those letters. I let him in to deposit them on your desk. Good day.”

Della stifled her laughter until Miss Clayson was down the stairs. Owen Davis was right. Miss Clayson hadn't recognized him as Saturday's coal-black miner. Della could barely wait to tell him. She opened the door to her classroom and stood there in surprise.

Someone—imagine who—had taken her name off the peg board and substituted
Choir practice is Tuesday night at six thirty See you there
all run together because the punctuation marks were still piled on her desk, along with a new box to keep them.

“I distinctly told you I would not sing in your magnificent choir, Brother Davis,” she said out loud. “Don't you listen?” Still, it was flattering. A smile on her face, Della put the letters in the compartmented box and sat down with glue and thumbtacks. She spent the next hour gluing, an occupation dear to the heart of any lower grades teacher.

“Miss?”

Della looked up, surprised. She hadn't heard anyone open the door and here were two people. She recognized Heikki Luoma. Standing close, her eyes so shy, was a lovely blonde woman who just seemed to fit next to him. Della knew she could search for years and never meet a handsomer couple.

“I know you,” she said to the man. “Do come in.” She stood up as they came down the aisle toward her, the beautiful lady hanging back, but her husband—he had to be her husband—putting his arm around her waist to nudge her on.

Della looked at the woman beside him. She didn't think it was possible for a human to have such crystal blue eyes. “And you are … ?”

The woman smiled, too shy to say anything.

“Her is Mari Elvena Luoma. My wife,” Heikki said.

Something about the way he said it, as though he were testing the word, told Della all she needed to know about the length of their marriage. She held out her hand. “I am pleased to meet you, Mrs. Luoma.”

Mari Elvena turned her face into her husband's sleeve, but he spoke to her softly in Finnish. She touched Della's hand. “Thank you and good night.”

That's good enough for now
, Della thought, enchanted. “What can I do for you?”

Heikki thought a moment, the expression on his face telling Della worlds about his own grasp of English. “I want Mari to learn to speak, professor,” he said.

Israel Bowman had told her this might happen. “English? I will be happy to help,” she replied. “And I'm just Miss Anders.”

“Thank you, just Miss Anders,” he said. “She will be good and quiet and learn lots.”

“I believe she will,” Della said. She looked at Mari Elvena. “We will begin at eight thirty next Monday morning.”

Heikki translated, and Mari Elvena touched her hand again then added a curtsy.

Heikki bowed. “You will be happy with her,” he said. “Good night now.”

“I'm happy already,” Della said softly as they left her classroom as quietly as they had entered.

She took off her apron and hung it on one of the hooks lining the inside wall, probably for coats in winter. Miss Clayson knocked on her door and came in.

“I just agreed to add a Finnish woman to my class,” Della said.

“You should have told me.”

Della looked her in the eye, digging up courage from some back room where it must have languished for years. “That's what I am doing right now. Miss Clayson, I'm going to do my best here.” She drew herself up. “I am a certified teacher and I came with excellent references.”

Miss Clayson just looked at her, a frown on her face. She glanced away first, which gave Della a tiny feeling of success.

“I'll have the custodian bring up a larger desk.” The principal turned on her heel and left the classroom.

Della wiped her sweating palms on her dress and let out the breath she had been holding. Before she left her room, she closed the windows and took one last look at the commas and periods drying on her desk.

She stood for a while on the school steps, looking down on the wagon road and then across the road to the canyon. A rank of trees still held its own along the ridge, although so many trees must have been cut down. Winter Quarters was a raw mining camp, destined to last only as long as the coal. She thought of the Molly Bee and wondered if anyone still grubbed about there, hunting for silver. Maybe some entrepreneur had reopened the caved-in section where her father and two other miners had died. “Papa, I will do well here,” she murmured.

She walked the short distance back to the Wasatch Store, feeling as shy as Heikki Luoma's wife but curious. Sister Parmley had sent Maria to the store on Saturday for some forgotten Sunday dinner ingredient. She knew there was food somewhere in the building and she was hungry.

The matter resolved itself quickly. As she approached the store, she saw two women going in with baskets on their arms. They turned around as she approached, smiling at her.

“I need to buy some food and wondered where it was,” she asked the one who looked vaguely familiar.

“Right here,” the woman said, holding open the door. “I'm Sister Annie Jones, and I'm in the choir.”

Of course. She was the soprano who sang half of the sacrament duet yesterday afternoon. “I'm pleased to meet you officially,” Della said.

“You'll have two of my children in your class.” She leaned closer. “They've been told to mind, and they will.”

The Wasatch Store took up most of the main floor in the stone building. “You'll need to bring a basket next time,” Annie whispered. “I have an extra one I can leave at Mabli's for you.”