Carla Kelly (28 page)

Owen looked at her again, not taking his eyes from hers. “That's really why I came here this afternoon. I don't give a fig what you decide about the calling. It's this: I don't think anyone else noticed your terror in the library the other night, but I did. All of us coming toward you, looking like the wrath of demons. I was watching your eyes, and I saw your fright. Forgive us for frightening you for even a moment. We didn't know you had been bullied by masters for years and years.”

She nodded. “How could you know? I never said anything.” She took her own turn, looking across the canyon. “You can see why I never wanted to say anything. The shame …”

He gave her a blank look then. “Who's shame?”

“Well, mine!”

His arm went around her again, more gentle this time. “Maybe I don't understand what you are telling me. Two people meet, mate, have a baby and it's the baby's fault? I can't buy that.”

“You mean that, don't you?” Della asked when she thought she could speak without tears. It sounded so simple when he said it.

“With all my heart.” He stood up and held out his hand. “We'd better start back. You keep talking, and that's an order. If I punch a tree, just remember, you're not the reason. I
really
don't like Aunt Caroline.”

She smiled at that as she took his hand and let him haul her easily to her feet. “I'll tell the good stuff then.”

“I need that right now.
Diolch
. That's thank you in Welsh.”

“
Diolch
.
Diolch
. I'll try to remember that.” They started walking slowly. “About a month after I had that skirt and nice shirtwaists, Miss Ordway told me about a little job in the branch library near our neighborhood. It was just a few hours after school each day, for fifty cents a week.”

“Coal pays better, but not much,” he commented, and she laughed, touched beyond measure by his attempt to cheer her.

“For the five years, I walked a mile to the public library after school and shelved books. After another month, I was able to buy a pair of shoes and stockings. Call me proud, but I returned the shoes to her that she had given me, because I think I was desperate for dignity.”

“You wanted to let her know you were self-sufficient at thirteen. You're a wonder.”

“No, I'm not.
You
were in the pit at thirteen,” she reminded him.

“Aye. Maybe I'm a wonder too.”

They looked at each other in perfect charity. She continued. “Soon I could buy a new petticoat, and eventually … other lady things.”

“Good!” He chuckled. “Gwyna gave me a look hot enough to coke coal once when I complained after she bought a wee bottle of rose water. It was a week before she let me off the sofa and back to bed.”

Della plopped down on a rock by the road and laughed. It was a small boulder, but Owen sat beside her, laughing along. “It's a good memory now. Thanks for reminding me, Della. It's easy for a husband to be a fool. Ask any wife, think on.”

“When school was out, the neighborhood library asked me to work six mornings a week,” Della said when they started walking again. “By the time school started in the fall, I had several skirts and shirtwaists and a coat that was nearly new.”

“The taunts?”

“They never went away, but I had Miss Ordway and the library,” she said. “Isn't it amazing where books can take you?”

“Aye, miss.”

She nudged him hard enough to make him lose his balance, then grabbed his arm before he fell down. He just laughed.

They walked in silence. Della watched dusk come.

“Was church any kind of a refuge?” Owen asked finally. “Wait a minute. You said your father was the black sheep. Were you even a member?”

“Aye, mister,” she teased back. She thought before she spoke. Maybe he wouldn't notice that she wasn't answering his question. “Funny thing about my father—he vaguely remembered that children were supposed to be baptized. He thought it was ten.”

“Better late than never. Did you know anything about the church?”

“Not a thing. One morning, Papa told me we were taking the train to Pueblo. Said we'd walk around until we found a Mormon bishop.”

“Did you?”

“Finally! It was late afternoon when Papa found him. It was hot and I was tired.” Della chuckled at the memory. “He was an undertaker. When Papa told him what he wanted, the bishop sat me on a coffin in the display room and told me what baptism was. I didn't have a white dress, but he found one in the mortuary. Oh, don't shudder!”

“I'm not. I'm just trying not to bust wide open with the biggest laugh you'll probably ever hear, considering my enviable vocal range,” Owen said with a perfectly straight face.

“We found a dammed up creek and he baptized me. It was either eat dinner or buy two train tickets home, so we ate dinner. Papa helped me onto a flatbed, jumped on afterward, and we rode home to Hastings.” She made a face. “I seem to have a long history with flatbeds.”

“That's not your average baptism, I hope you know,” he said, much subdued now. “Had you even seen a Book of Mormon?”

Della shook her head. “The bishop told me it was true, and I trusted him until I had a chance to read it and find out for myself.” She looked at him, remembering. “When I finally read the Book of Mormon, it kept me alive, especially that part in Mosiah where God hears the silent prayers of the people of Alma and makes their burdens light.”

Owen didn't say anything. Della handed him the soggy handkerchief, and he took it without a word.

They walked steadily, off the ridge now. “There is one thing—give me your opinion, Owen.”

“Aye.”

She looked around—no trees to punch. “It's this: Aunt Caroline let everyone at church know about, well, what I told you.”

He interrupted her there, holding up his hand. “I was wondering if you were going to answer my question about the church being a refuge.”

“You should have been an attorney,” Della said mildly. “She told me she did that because she didn't want someone to think I was something I was not.”

He muttered something in Welsh; she knew better than to ask him to translate.

“When I was older, a young man I met at the library asked me out for ice cream. When he escorted me home, Aunt Caroline told me I was obligated to tell him everything if he did that again, so he wouldn't be fooled.”

“What did you do?” His voice sounded tight, and Della was afraid to look at him.

“I fobbed him off and he quit asking. Mostly I just don't get involved with people.” She ignored his silence and forged ahead. “It's this: Emil Isgreen asked me out to dinner last week and I enjoyed his company. He asked me again this week and I put him off.” She stopped walking, turned around, and started up the slope again, agitated.

“Come back.” He said it so soft.

She turned around, wanting the distance. “Aunt Caroline is nowhere near me now, but I still hear her voice reminding me I'm poor and illegitimate.”

“It'll take time. We have lots of that here, especially in winter. As for Emil, tell him yes! It's no one's business.” He held out his hand. “Come on. We have something to do, and we're almost at the spot.”

Mystified, she joined him, not taking his hand but walking beside him. He pointed to another outcropping and walked up to it.

“Take my hand and come on up.”

She did without question.

“I want to sing with you, and this is a nice, resonating spot. Believe me, I know them all.”

“You're serious?”

“Never more so. Let's sing, um, let's sing … ‘Did You Think To Pray.’ Know all the verses?”

“I think so.”

“I'll sing the melody in my range, and you sing your part.”

“I'll need a note, since I'm just a poor Greek-Scandinavian girl,” she said, happy to joke, if hesitant to sing with a master.

“Easy. I'll give you your actual note in your range. I'm amazing. Listen.”

Della listened. He gave her four beats and they started to sing. It was the simplest of church songs; she could have sung it in her sleep.
I sound so good when I sing with this man
, she thought, then surrendered to the song, the words, and everything in her heart.

She faltered a little on the verse that began, “When your heart was filled with anger, did you think to pray?” but Owen took her hand and kept singing, until she was ready to match his voice, if that was even possible. Singing there with him, anything seemed possible.

It was her turn to squeeze his hand tighter on the next verse when he struggled over, “When sore trials came upon you,” and “when your soul was full of sorrow.” He had lost the love of his life when Gwyna died in childbirth. She used to think that her sorrows were the worst in the world. Maybe she was wiser now.

The chorus seemed to soar: “O how praying rests the weary! Prayer will change the night to day. So when life gets dark and dreary, don't forget to pray.”

They were both silent a long time. “Why that one?” she asked finally.

He shrugged. “Della, you have a fine voice.” It was getting almost too dark to see him, but his voice sounded full of humor again. “Be a good girl and tell this dirty bird thank you. No apologies, no, ‘oh, but I'm not as good as you.’ Just thank you.”

“Diolch,” she said, remembering, which made him take a deep breath of his own.

She released his hand and they continued down the slope, until she stopped. It was too dark to see, and she wasn't sure of her footing. He took her hand again, twining his fingers through hers this time.

“Well, miss, this calls for the coal miner's song: ‘Lead kindly light, amid th'encircling gloom,’ ” he sang. “ ‘Lead thou me on.’ ”

“ ‘The night is dark and I am far from home,’ ” she chimed in, harmonizing.

“I know where I'm going,” he assured her, “and I don't need a light.” He walked her home, her hand in his, and his staff in the other.

“Where's Angharad?” she asked.

“Playing at the Evanses’. Tell me something: Do you write to Miss Ordway?”

“I wish I could. She died the summer I graduated from stake academy.”

“A pity, that,” he said. “I hope she knew you were headed for university and a teaching certificate.”

“She did. In fact, oh, my.” Della stopped. They were passing the bench at the lumber area where the two of them had sat only two weeks ago. She sat down. “Is there any hope for that napkin?”

“Beyond resuscitation,” he replied. “I have a shirttail.”

“And I have a petticoat. It's dark enough! I had a summer job, but all my contriving couldn't come up with enough for tuition and books. It wasn't much, I suppose, but I didn't have it. I mean, fifty dollars or five dollars, if you don't have it, you don't have it.”

“Aye to that, hence oatcakes in August. What did you do?”

“It's what Miss Ordway did. The librarian at the public library wrote me of her passing. I was a kitchen flunky for a crew stringing telephone wire so I missed her funeral, sad to say. Just as I was about to withdraw my university application, I received a check for thirty dollars from her estate. It was all I needed to make up what I lacked. Owen, she was still watching over me.”

“You've been blessed, Della,” Owen said simply.

“And there's this. You know that fifty cents a week that the public library paid me? There wasn't any job; she told them she would pay it, and
they
would give it to me.”

She went for her petticoat while Owen tugged out his shirttail.

They continued their slow walk to Mabli's. She asked him in, but he shook his head. He looked at her, and she knew the signs now.

“What?”

“Let me tell your whole story to the bishop tonight. Ah, now, now. He'll find a way to inform others that you're an ordinary person like all of us, even if you
are
named Anders.”

“I couldn't bear it if … well, you know …
that
detail.”

“No fears. Tell Mabli what you've told me. She'll be judicious in what she passes on. I know it.” He scratched his head. “We'll have to be quite circumspect around the Finns, or they might take the train to Salt Lake City and burn down your uncle's house.”

She put out her hand. “All right. I trust you.”

He shook her hand. “Don't give the choir a thought. See you in Sunday School.”

Della began hesitantly that night, telling Mabli what had happened. Mabli's reaction put Della's mind at ease. If anything, she was even more indignant about Aunt Caroline's treatment. Between the two of them, they cried and ate almost a whole batch of ginger snaps.

“I'll pass some of your story on to Annie Jones,” Mabli promised. “We talk in this canyon. We also stick together.” She sighed. “All those years and no one to talk to … It's over now.”

“I hope so,” Della said. “If you hear something long enough, you start to believe it.”

“Then unbelieve it,” Mabli declared, ever practical.