Carla Kelly (52 page)

Della nodded. “I'm so sorry,” she said again. “I had no idea the snow was so deep.”

“That's the canyon for you,” Emil said. “Perk up. No harm, no foul. I'd hate to have lost my dinner buddy, though.”

Emil took her temperature after the men went next door. He nodded, satisfied with the reading. “Mabli, can you find her nightgown? I'll leave this to you two, unless you need some help.”

“I can manage.” Mabli left the room and came back with Della's nightgown. Emil left the room, while Della dried off her legs and pulled on a dry pair of woolen hose. Mabli helped her get her into her flannel nightgown.

“My bed's wider than yours. I'll take Dafydd's spot by the wall.” Mabli took her hand and led her into her bedroom. With a sigh, Della lay down and let Mabli cover her.

Owen and Richard returned, and she heard them talking in the kitchen with Emil as they filled hot water bottles. She yawned, sleepy now. She opened her eyes when they brought in the hot water bottles, pulled back her nest of covers, and packed them around her.

“I'm staying here tonight,” Emil told them. “It's too far back to the hospital. Richard and Owen are going as far as Richard's because Angharad is there. Warmth in numbers, eh?”

He went in the other room with Richard, but Owen sat down on the bed, looking at her. “Words fail me, Butterbean,” he said finally.

“That's rare for you. Do you know, I remembered what you told me about the cave in and I started singing. I sang ‘Lead, Kindly Light,’ first.” She closed her eyes as the warmth of the water bottles penetrated her cold body. “The alto line is a bit dull by itself. I needed a tenor. A soprano would have been nice too. Bass was optional.” She yawned. “Don't tell Brother Pugh I said that.”

“I'm glad you can joke.” Owen ran his hand down her shoulder. “How about a song now? A lullaby. You know the one.”

He sang “All Through the Night” to her in Welsh, and she harmonized in English, secure, safe now, and drowsy. She wasn't totally sure, but it felt like someone fingered her curls when he finished.

Emil stayed the night, true to his word, checking on her every hour, warming the hot water bottles, and sitting beside Mabli's bed.

“It was a terrible scare,” he whispered to her. “Once you were lost, you did all the right things.”

“I didn't feel brave.”

“You were, though.” He chuckled softly. “If I could sing as well as Owen, I'd sing you back to sleep. I can hold your hand.”

He did. She tucked it under her cheek, at peace.

It snowed for three days, which meant church and school were cancelled. Della heard the tipple, so she knew the men had gone into the mines. Nothing stopped the coal, but she already knew that. Mabli and the hot water bottles kept her warm that first night. By Sunday afternoon, the snow had stopped. The next sound was shovels everywhere as Winter Quarters residents dug out of their own snow caves. By Tuesday, there were paths everywhere and towering mounds of snow. On Wednesday, school resumed and life went on as usual.

Della's escort that night to and from the library was much more numerous, to her embarrassment. The latest train had brought a mound of newspapers, so she kept her newly appointed escorts busy sorting and organizing them. The talk around the table circled around a small article in the
Salt Lake Tribune
, announcing Pleasant Valley Coal Company's talks with the secretary of the US Navy. The men passed it around, discussing the news with each other in various languages.

“I thought it was just a rumor,” Emil said, when he stopped in to see how she did and saw the article. “That would mean steady work here, even in the summer.” He looked at her. “Why isn't that making you happy? Believe me, the miners will be thrilled.”

“There's a man in Provo who wants Owen to put up the wainscoting in his dining room this summer and line his closets with cedar.”

“Della, he's a coal miner, not a carpenter,” he reminded her.

I know
, she thought, irritated with herself.
Maybe I'm turning into Miss Clayson, wanting no one here to go in another mine
. “There are safer jobs,” she said, but it sounded so puny.

He leaned closer, for her ears only. “Even school teaching has its perils, I will remind you. You came pretty close— too close—to peril.”

“You know what I mean,” she said, grouchy now.

“I do. All we do here in this canyon, or in Salt Lake, or probably even Timbuktu, is live our lives as best we know how. If danger comes, it comes. We do our best.”

He was right; she knew it.

January faded into February, distinguished by even more snow and cold and school closings that just made her restless as she stalked about Mabli's small house. There was too much snow for sauna, sometimes too much snow even for church and the library, and definitely too much snow for Saturday nights in Scofield with Emil. Mostly there was too much snow for Angharad and Owen to visit. She also chafed, knowing she had no time to spend with Billy Evans and look for even the smallest signs that he was ready to read. There was never too much snow for coal, even though the miners had to trudge down the railroad tracks to get to the mines, and even walk up the long incline to Number Four, too slick and snowy for horses to haul the mantrip.

She reluctantly had to tell Mari Luoma good-bye. Her pregnancy was showing now, which probably bothered no one except Miss Clayson and the district school officials, if they had any inkling in the first place that the Finnish bride had been attending the lower elementary grade class. “I'll come see you before I go back to Salt Lake, and we'll figure out how to keep learning,” she told her friend.

Della did go back a few days later when the Luoma sons brought their parents to Winter Quarters. The sons had pooled their resources and arranged for ship's passage from Finland for Aapi and Kaisa Luoma, since most of their sons and grandchildren now lived and prospered in Utah. “They are so pleased to be here in this good land,” Mari told Della in her careful English. She patted her growing belly. “I will have an American citizen in June.”

The first week in March marked the first week of no snow, and then another, which made Della smile. She stepped out of Mabli's house one Monday morning in mid-March to see the sky again, that intense blue found in high altitudes, and the sun so bright on the snow that it hurt her eyes. Sure enough, there was her escort, consisting of children now, older boys who had been told by their parents to make sure their teacher got to and from school. They helped her down to the railroad tracks and she floundered along with them, arriving tired at school, but at least arriving. They sang on the way, of course. “Daisy Bell” became a particular favorite once she explained what a bicycle built for two looked like.

She had thought that sunny day to stay after school and correct some papers, but her youthful escorts had other ideas. “Fifteen minutes,” she begged. “You can walk ahead and look back and I promise …”

“No, miss,” one of Miss Clayson's seventh graders told her firmly, already a leader. “My da hasn't spanked me in years, and I intend to keep it that way.”

“I have a better idea.” She took a quarter from her purse. “This is called a bribe. You five take it to the Wasatch Store and buy yourselves five cents each of penny candy. Eat it slowly. By the time you finish, I'll be ready.”

The seventh grader laughed and caught the coin in midair that she tossed to him. Smiling to herself, Della finished grading papers in her empty classroom. They returned in half an hour, her chief escort waving two letters at her.

“Mail for you, miss.”

She took the letters, one from Mr. Auerbach, always welcome, and the other from Uncle Karl, not so welcome. She felt the thick envelope, feeling another letter inside. Silent now, serious, Della walked with the boys up the canyon. She forced herself to laugh at their jokes as she asked herself why Uncle Karl had written. She hadn't thought she would ever hear from him again, not after that dinner party.

Another bribe to her escorts always involved cookies from Mabli, so she said thank you, shooed them next door, and opened Mr. Auerbach's letter first. It was nothing more than news from the store and the reminder that she was due to start work for him on June 1. She read it through twice anyway because she didn't want to open Uncle Karl's letter.

His letter was just a note on office memo paper, but it had her on her feet, reaching for her coat, unable to open the other letter.
I'm not that brave
, she thought as she left a note for Mabli so she wouldn't worry. She needed a brave man.

She hesitated to knock on Owen's door, but he opened it anyway. “I saw you coming up the walk. Why didn't you knock? Is Billy finally ready?”

She smelled food cooking. “I shouldn't …”

“Believe me, it's no loss to bother
my
cooking. Angharad's playing at the Parmleys’.” He peered at her more closely. “It's not Billy, is it?”

Wordless, she held out the opened letter to him. He pulled out Uncle Karl's note. “ ‘Dear Della, Caroline and Ellen are visiting Vassar right now, since Ellen is determined to go there this fall,’ ” Owen read out loud. “ ‘I was going through old correspondence and came across this letter. It was never opened by me. Caroline read it, but I doubt she shared it with you. She should have. Your Uncle Karl.’ ” Owen looked up, a question in his eyes.

“The return address is from my father. The postmark is 1876,” Della said. Her lips trembled. “I'm just not brave enough to read it. I need
you
.”

He smiled at that, leaning against the doorframe. “I can't invite you in, Della. It wouldn't be proper.” He thought a moment, just watching her. “I'll take the pan off the hob. I was going to the Parmleys’ anyway to fetch Angharad.”

He took her hand as they hurried along, slowing down when she struggled to keep up with him. Sister Parmley opened the door, a question in her eyes, when they stood there.

“The girls and I were going to walk Angharad home,” she said, then looked from one to the other. “This is something else.”

Della nodded. In the parlor, she stood by the window, wishing her hands were warmer, while Owen talked to Sister Parmley in a low voice and showed her Uncle Karl's letter. When he touched Della's elbow, she jumped.

“Sister Parmley says for us to use the bishop's study.”

Della followed Owen into the study, where he shut the door. Afraid to look at him, she paced back and forth in front of the window as Owen sat in the easy chair and opened the letter from her father. She darted glances in his direction as he read but kept walking, as though trying to put miles between her and whatever bad news the letter contained.

She stood still when he finished the letter, searching for some clue on his face. When he started to smile, she sank into the chair next to him, her eyes still on his.

He held out the letter. “Don't be afraid. Take it.”

When her hand closed around the letter, Owen sat back, his eyes intent on her face. She started to read the anguish of one brother to the other in Salt Lake City, as Frederick told Karl about her birth, and how her mother, Olympia Stavrakis, was pulled away from them both by her father, a miner from Cyprus, who swore never to give his daughter permission to marry an American, no matter how she pleaded. She looked up at Owen, tears in her eyes.

“Butterbean, she wanted you.”

Gently, he took back the letter. “ ‘He snatched her while I was in the mine, to where I have no idea,’ ” Owen read out loud. “ ‘My neighbor said she was screaming and crying and clutching at Della, but he forced her to leave our baby.’ Della, she wanted you very much.” He swallowed. “Come here.”

He held out his arms and she sat on his lap, her face turned into his chest, beyond tears now. She heard the door open, felt Owen shake his head, and heard the door close quietly. She listened as heavier footsteps went away—the bishop's. Wordless, she sat on Owen Davis's lap.

“How could her own father be so cruel?” she said finally.

“It happens. It's hard for some immigrants to leave the old country behind. He could just as easily have been Italian or Slovakian or … or Russian or German. Maybe even Welsh, though I doubt it. We are such kind, humble people.”

Della chuckled at that, which she knew he intended. “She wanted me.”

“Very much, think on. As much as Gwyna and I wanted Angharad.” He held her off from him then, his hand under his chin to raise her view to his. “Della, can you live with this?”

She looked at his dear face and nodded. “I had a mother who wanted me.”

“I would wager she still does.”