Carla Kelly (55 page)

She nodded, too shy to look at him. “It's probably not the wisest thing I ever did.”

“Time will tell. I still intend to take you out to dinner every Saturday, unless a certain miner tells me to back off. And if he does, what will
you
say? It's a chancy life. You've seen what can happen.”

“I honestly do not know what I will say.”

She didn't. Maybe it was a blessing that Owen was gone for a few weeks. She had decided the first week that she would have some small idea how a life without him felt, even though the most intimate thing they had done was kiss. After all, she was nearly twenty-five, used to earning her own living, and confident that she could earn it anywhere. She had written numerous letters to a school board in Phoenix that Miss Clayson had mentioned and torn up each letter.

By the end of the first week, she was nearly starved to hear Owen call her butterbean. Singing in church next to an equally fine second tenor who wasn't Owen Davis had felt like a desert. She realized just how often Owen had touched her fingers under the cover of the sopranos and first tenors in the first row.

She had broached her greatest fear to Annie Jones on the Saturday Angharad's friends had gathered by special invitation to a dollhouse day. Della had pulled the dollhouse into the front room so all the girls could fit around it and play. She and Annie made bread and butter sandwiches. Amazing how cutting the crust off Annie's oat bread, buttering it, and slicing it on the diagonal was enough to make the girls clap their hands in delight. Mabli's contribution of little cream puffs and actual lemonade had nearly been too much for the simplicity everyone was used to.

Della had sat with Annie and Martha Evans on the little front porch. She worked up her courage to ask them, “How do you keep from worrying every time a shift starts?” She put her hand to her warm face. “Maybe I should never mention it …”

Annie glanced at her friend Martha. “We were wondering when you would ask us.”

“Really. What do you
do
? I'm not sure I'm that brave, even though my father was a miner too.”

“Has Owen declared himself yet?” Martha asked.

Della shook her head. “He's getting pretty close.”

“I supposed as much, considering how you two hold hands in choir when you think no one knows,” Annie teased.

Della laughed out loud. “And he thinks he's so discreet!”

“Men,” was all Martha said, and it covered the subject.

“Seriously,” she said. “I have to know.”

The friends exchanged glances again. Martha took Della's hand in hers. “We just love them and hope for the best. When you have children of your own, they'll occupy your days and your thoughts. That helps.”

“Even when you know something has happened?”

“Then you fall to your knees and pray,” Annie said simply. “And when your man comes out of the mine with that dirty face and teeth looking so white when he smiles, you're not sure whether to smack him or kiss him. I can't answer your question.” She looked at Martha again. “I think we all find our own level of coping.”

“Annie, would you … would you marry Levi all over again, knowing what you know?”

“We married in Salt Lake Temple when we came here, same as Owen and Gwyna did. Levi is mine forever.”

“But the now! I just don't know,” Della exclaimed. She had spoken too loud, so she listened for the girls in the front room. She relaxed as their chatter continued. She looked across the wagon road toward the tipple. “Can I be that brave?”

“You already are,” Martha said. “You just don't know it yet.”

Owen wrote to them both, two letters in one envelope, the letters with coal dust fingerprints. Angharad had stared in awe at the unopened envelope, addressed to her. “I've never had a letter in my life,” she told Della as they sat outside the Wasatch Store. Clarence Nix had presented the letter to Angharad, along with a stick of penny candy. “I always do that for a first letter,” he assured the child.

Angharad slit the envelope with a hairpin and handed the letter to Della. “There are two letters. You take yours.”

Eyes wide, Angharad unfolded the letter slowly, savoring the event. Della glanced at it. He had printed his letter to his daughter, so she would have no trouble reading it. Della opened her own letter.
Dear Butterbean, we're having a time of it here
, she read to herself.
There's no end of work, shoring up a blast sight. I don't envy the men in Castle Gate Mine
.

He had included little drawings of them sizing and sawing, then propping the timbers and nailing them in place. She held the letter closer.
I miss you. I know Angharad is in the best hands. I want her to always be in your care, no matter what
.

She looked away then, her eyes filling with tears.
Don't talk like that, it's bad luck
, she thought, thinking of the patient women on his porch, sharing their fears with her. She turned back to her letter.
Give me some time when I return, Della. Just a little time to think. Love, Owen
.

“He drew a picture for me too,” Angharad said. She held out her letter, which had a little picture across the bottom of her father eating his sandwich and sitting next to Nicola Anselmo, strong man. She looked at Della's pictures and her face clouded over. “I like my picture better than yours.”

Della put her arm around the child's shoulders. “I like your picture better too.”

Her eyes worried, Angharad burrowed closer. “He asked me what I wanted for Christmas last year. I told him I wanted him out of the mine.”

Della hugged her, her lips against Angharad's hair. “Tell him that for your birthday and for next Christmas too. And the one after that until he listens.”

After an excruciating evening watching Mari's joy at her growing belly, Della finally took her fears to Mabli Reese. When Mabli went to Della's room to wake up Angharad for the walk to her own home, Della stopped her. “Let's talk first.”

Silent, Mabli led her into the kitchen and closed the door. She poured them both some peppermint tea and brought a plate of oatmeal cookies to the table. Della shook her head.

“You've never turned down a cookie in your life, I'll wager,” Mabli said. “Out with it. I think this conversation is overdue. You've been in love with my brother-in-law a long time, think on.”

“Since at least Christmas.” Della looked away. “Oh, who knows? Maybe since I saw his box of wooden letters in my classroom! Mabli, my heart's breaking. He told me about Gwyna's bad heart, but I think there is more.”

“There is,” her landlady said promptly. She pushed away the cookies, too. “Of course Gwyna knew about her bad heart! She knew before she was ten years old, and Owen was twelve and headed to the mines. The doctor sat us all down and told us, but she wasn't listening. She loved Owen when she first saw him too, I think. He has that way about him. Could a woman ever tell the man she loves about such a heart?”

Della shook her head and wiped at her eyes. Mabli handed her a napkin without a word, and kept the other for herself.

“When she was fourteen, Owen figured out that he loved her. He was a full-fledged miner by then. When he wasn't on the afternoon shift, he sat in our parlor and held her hand for four years! My stars, the man was persistent. He proposed when she was eighteen and she said aye without even a blink.”

“Did anyone … ?”

“Try to reason with her? We all did. No one had the courage to say anything to Owen. Mam even sat her down and held her tight by the shoulders and reminded her that with her heart, to marry and then try to bear a child would be her death.” Mabli looked away and put the napkin to her eyes.

Della grasped her hand. “I love that man too, and I know exactly what Gwyna told your mother.” She waited until she could speak. “She probably said she would rather have a few months with that beautiful man, if that was all she was allowed, than spend a long life starving without him.”

Mabli nodded, her eyes bleak. “Who can reason with that?”

“No one. I understand Gwyna completely.” She squeezed Mabli's hand. “You should tell him what you've told me.”

“Maybe someday.”

She thought about Mabli's confession as she helped a sleepy-eyed Angharad through her nighttime rituals and tucked her in bed in her own bedroom. Since she was so tired, Angharad made no objection to Della singing “All Through the Night” in English this time.

“We should learn the other two verses,” Della said. No answer. She smiled at the sleeping child and took the songbook into the front room. She read the second verse, nodding, but stopped on the third verse and closed the book. She set it on the floor. Once glance and the words had burned themselves into her brain: “Love, to thee my thoughts are turning all through the night; All for thee my heart is yearning, all through the night. Though sad fate our lives may sever, parting will not last forever … ”

There was more; she couldn't read it.

Owen and his crew returned a week later, thinner, but with news that passed quickly from house to house, almost as soon as the crew got off the train. By early afternoon, the news traveled from classroom to classroom by that peculiar kind of osmosis common to public schools. The Pleasant Valley Coal Company had indeed signed a contract with the US Navy to provide two thousand tons of coal a day, starting May 1.

“That's good news,” Israel Bowman had commented to Della after school. “Maybe I should throw over teaching and go into the mines.” He laughed. “Heaven knows teaching doesn't pay!”

Owen had telegraphed ahead, so Della had already removed her clothing and personal items from his house before the crew arrived, or thought she had. He and Angharad came over that night, Angharad carrying Della's toothbrush.

“You'd have missed it before bedtime,” Owen said. “Thank you for watching my daughter.”

“Nothing simpler.” She looked at him. “Didn't anyone feed you in Castle Gate?”

“We could have eaten more,” he agreed.

She felt shy around him, considering their last kiss. Here he was, looking so calm, when all she wanted to do was kiss him again.

He seemed no more able to carry on casual conversation than she was, until she prodded him about the contract. “Is it a rumor or true?” she asked.

“True indeed. No oatcakes this summer,” he said cheerfully. “And here's more good news: Bishop Parmley is toying with the idea of transferring his brother William to Castle Gate and moving me up to foreman of Number Four. I'd be salaried and working for the company instead of contracting coal. He hasn't decided, mind you, but he's considering it.” He looked at her. “You're not exactly in transports of delight.”

She tried to choose her words carefully, distressed that she sounded so wooden to her own ears. “You were going to do some carpentry work this summer in Provo.”

“I'm a miner. That comes first,” he reminded her, his eyes taking on a wary expression. “I didn't sign any contract with anyone in Provo.”

She couldn't think of anything to say and hadn't the heart to remind him what Angharad had asked for last Christmas. From the look on his face, he wouldn't have heard a word. She went to the window, not willing to look at the man she loved, because she wanted to smack him into next week.

“Even your shoulder blades look upset,” he told her, coming up behind her to rest his hands on those shoulder blades. “I'm a miner,” he repeated. “My friends are all miners.”

“You can make new friends in Provo,” she said, her voice small, because she knew she had lost. “You can find plenty of work there.”

“Gwyna is buried here.” He removed his hands. “Well, she is,” he said, defensive, as if arguing with himself.

“I know that, Owen.” He wasn't going to change. She saw that clearly. She knew it was time to write a letter to the Phoenix School District and not tear it up. The mine had won.

ella was so frosty at church that
she
didn't even like herself when sacrament meeting ended. Worry in his eyes, Richard Evans asked her to stay behind for a chat. She mumbled something about spending the evening in her classroom, getting ready for Monday, and hurried up the canyon. Even the men in the boardinghouse steered clear of her as she slammed pie and cake on the dessert table and dared them to reach for it.