Carla Kelly (54 page)

He smiled as though he had a private joke on her and sat down in one of the children's desks, keeping some wise distance between them. “Will you thrash me into next week if I tell you that Billy Evans has been reading at home for the past two weeks?”

Della gasped and threw an eraser at him. She put her hands on her stomach and started to laugh. She laughed so hard that she was desperate to loosen her corset strings, the very last thing she would do with Owen sitting right there.

“You're serious,” she asked finally.

“Never more so. I went to the Evanses’ house last week to suggest the trouser hemming, and Magarad confessed.” He looked at her, as though measuring her capacity for amusement and his own culpability. “I, uh, had mentioned the wager to his brother Richard one slow morning in the mine, and one thing led to another. Evidently, brothers don't keep secrets.”

It was Della's turn to look away. “I … I may have mentioned it to Richard and Martha once in the library.” She laughed again. “But Magarad told you last week?”

“Cross my heart. I hadn't a clue before then.” He sighed as though boulders had fallen off him. “She said everyone in the canyon wanted the best for us and knew it when they saw it, even if we didn't know it.”

He walked her home, idling along, turning his face up to the welcome sun. “I hate being in a mine when the weather's like this.”

“You don't have to be, you know,” she said, tentative.

“And that's something else to discuss. For all that you probably have the most magnificent lips in the intermountain region, I'm not one to rush.”

“I understand,” she said, pausing at Mabli's door. She nudged his shoulder. “At least you have your reward.”

He gave her a look of surprise, wide-eyed, amazed, and completely duplicitous; she knew him. “No, I haven't, Della. You'll recall that
you're
the one who kissed me in your classroom.
I
didn't start it. You still owe me. See you tomorrow.”

She shook her head and watched him go down the hill, face up to the sun again. He turned around once to wave at her, and her heart was full.

There was a different feeling in the canyon Thursday afternoon, and it was nothing she could put her finger on. The first coal train had moved noisily past the school at the usual morning hour, but the late afternoon train still waited on the tracks, loaded with coal but not moving.

“That's a little strange,” Israel said, standing beside her on the outside steps. “What's it waiting for?” He shrugged and ambled back to his classroom.

Della had removed the last of the construction paper snowflakes and clouds made of cotton wadding from one bulletin board. She was cutting out her stenciled “Think Spring!” sign to replace them when she noticed Owen, Nicola Anselmo, Victor Aho, Richard Evans, and Thomas Farish walking past the school, their children trailing after them. She looked closer. The children were carrying satchels. Curious now, she watched them go to the Wasatch Store. After a few minutes, Owen came back by himself. She waved to him from her window, and he took the steps two at a time, his face serious.

“What's going on?” she asked. “Something's wrong.”

“Aye, miss. There was an explosion last night after the afternoon shift in the Castle Gate Mine.”

“No, no,” she murmured, putting down her scissors and coming to him as he stood by the door. “Please tell me no one died this time.”

“No one died. Remember what I told you about Castle Gate? It's a gassy mine and prone to methane. Because of that, the boyos don't shoot down the coal when they're in the mine. They set the charges at the end of their shift, which are detonated by an electric switch when everyone's out.”

“I wish you did that here,” she said. “It scares me.”

“No worries, Butterbean. We're not a gassy mine.”

“How can I not worry? What happened?”

“A sizeable portion of the mine exploded. Frank Cameron—he's the supe at Castle Gate—telegraphed Bishop Parmley and asked for a shoring crew. Bishop put me in charge and told me to get four of the best men. We're going to Castle Gate now to help their crew.”

She reached for him, clutching his sleeve. He tried to back away, but she could tell it was a halfhearted effort.

“Nay, lass, I'm wearing my work clothes!”

“I don't care. What will you do there?”

“I won't lie. We'll be crawling over and under fallen timbers and trying to see how to shore it all up, so the men can go back to work.” He looked toward the store. “I picked the best men I know. Richard's little and limber like me, and the others are taller and stronger. They can do the heavy lifting.” He smiled. “And Tommy Farish is just the best miner I know.” He touched the frown line between her eyes. “Hey,
m cara
, don't worry! We'll be fine.”

“But … you told me you don't get paid if you don't mine.”

“You may look Greek, but that's said like a Welshwoman! Bishop made an exception for us. We're actually going to be paid for something besides mining coal. Makes sense. If you can't get into a mine, you can't make money.”

He came closer and put his hand on her waist. It was a tentative gesture and struck her as a little quaint, considering their fervent kiss yesterday. “I asked Angharad where she wanted to go. She wants to stay home, and she wants you to stay with her. I asked Bishop what he thought, and he assured me there's no impropriety. Will you? She'd rather be home.”

“Of course I'll stay with her,” Della said quietly. “Miss Clayson will understand. How long will you be gone?”

“Two weeks at the very least. Will Pugh will arrange the singing for Sunday and lead the rehearsals.” He gave her a long look, as if he wanted to stay where he was. “And that's it.”

“Are they holding the train for you and your crew?”

“Aye, miss. I have to go.” He pursed his lips and regarded her long enough to make the heat rise from her chest to her neck. “You know, I still need to collect my reward, since you jumped the gun yesterday. Now?”

She nodded, and let him pull her close this time and kiss her with that same careful, methodical discovery of her lips. She already knew he wasn't a man to rush things, except this time there was a timber crew, a train with four engines on front, and many tons of coal waiting. His hands strayed a little from her waist, which wasn't part of the original agreement, but Della didn't care. She kissed him back, stroking his face, then running her fingers in his dark hair.

The whistle blew on the first engine and she jumped, which made Owen laugh. “I think they want me to hurry up,” he told her, his lips still brushing against hers as he spoke. “We need to have some serious conversation when I return, think on.”

She nodded. He left the school, running now. He looked back once. Della watched until she saw the train leave the canyon. “You called me
m cara
,” she murmured. She looked at her shirtwaist, gray with coal in spots. She returned her attention to the canyon mouth, wishing he had not left.

he shoring crew was gone three weeks. In that time, Billy Evans read five Horatio Alger books, and Della learned the first verse of “All Through the Night” in Welsh. She settled into Owen's little house, rearranged his spartan kitchen, and started cooking things on his stove that made Angharad assure her that nothing had ever tasted so good from that kitchen.

“Da told me once that the problem was his kitchen range,” Angharad said one night as she spooned down a stew that Mabli had taught Della. “I sort of believed him.”

“Now you know he was pulling your leg,” Della said, and they laughed together about Da.

She relished the quiet moments with Angharad. When school was over for the day, sometimes Angharad would sit at her desk and draw. She had a flair for bulletin boards, which meant several little girls stayed after class and created a wonderful bulletin board to honor Admiral Dewey. The crowning glory was Dewey's battleship, its guns blazing, steaming into a Winter Quarters idea of Manila Bay. Myfanwy Jones had the good idea to make the ship gray using coal dust on the white construction paper.

“Papa told me there is going to be a dance in the new Odd Fellows Hall on Dewey Day,” Mary Parmley told the other little girls. “He said everyone's invited, but we have to leave room on the dance floor for our parents.”

Angharad went with her to the library three nights a week, which enlarged Della's escort supply. It touched her heart to see how much the older boardinghouse miners enjoyed being around children. Nicola had told her shyly one night that he was saving money to bring his childhood sweetheart from their Italian village to his Utah canyon. He had rolled his eyes. “And then, Signorina Anders,
bambinos
of our own!”

Angharad had asked her what Nicola meant, and Della explained as best she could that when two people marry, they liked to have children. It was enough of an answer to satisfy the child, but Della knew Owen was going to have to start supplying his own answers to such questions.

It could become my responsibility
, Della thought that night after tucking Angharad in bed. She stood in the doorway of her little room, created out of Owen's only slightly larger bedroom. “Bambinos of my own,” she whispered.

She carried that thought with her on Thursday night to sauna. Mabli had agreed that Angharad was too young for that experience, so she put her niece to work helping in the boardinghouse kitchen while Della joined her Finnish friends. The snow fence was gone from behind the sauna, so the women rinsed off with cold water from the creek, brought into the sauna in a big barrel.

Mari only stayed for ten minutes in sauna now. Della sat beside her, making her speak in English, because she suspected it was Mari's only chance right now to hear the language. One night, Mari put Della's hand on her belly to feel the baby kicking.

“It is Heikki's heartbeat in my body,” she said in her quiet way.

Angharad's greatest pleasure came when Emil Isgreen bowed to the little girl in the library and invited her to dinner with him and Della. Angharad had insisted on her Sunday dress and French-braided hair for the occasion. Della loaned her the precious wheat sheaf pin, which Angharad touched all the way to Scofield, making certain she did not lose it.

She had spent a long time studying the half-page menu, which made Emil smile at Della. He had laughed out loud when she solemnly declared, “This is a rare and memorable treat.”

“Oh, you Welsh,” he had said as the patient waiter, smiling, took away the menu. “You have a way with words.”

He laughed when she declared in all dignity, “It is one of our many special gifts.”

“I believe you, Miss Davis. Who wouldn't?”

She touched his sleeve, and probably his heart, when she asked, “Do you think that waiter would let me keep the menu as a souvenir?”

“Why don't you ask him?” Emil replied. When she left her chair to follow the waiter, he looked at Della. “I admire my canyon children. They have so little, but it never bothers them, because they have so much.”

“ ‘Your children’? You too?” Della asked softly, watching Angharad, who was returning to the table in triumph with the menu. “Amazing isn't it, how they wrap themselves around your heart.”

“Speaking of hearts,” he said after dinner, when Angharad skipped ahead on the road back to Winter Quarters, waving her menu. “Della, I've enjoyed our Saturday night dinners, but your heart is already taken, isn't it?”