Carla Kelly (58 page)

By the time the final bell rang, her classroom was a garden of paper flowers of all shapes and sizes and levels of ability.

“Miss, this is a long way from our leaves on the bulletin board last autumn,” Danny Padfield told her as he put another dozen tissue paper flowers to her desk.

“It is,” she agreed. “Those all blew away, winter came, and now it is spring.” Trust Danny to be so observant. A page in everyone's book of life had turned; soon it would be summer. She looked around her classroom, pleased with what she saw—a roomful of little scholars all working at or above grade level and ready for next year.

After the bell, Della's students stayed long enough to pile the flowers into a cardboard box Clarence had furnished from the Wasatch Store. He promised to retrieve it by noon tomorrow and send the flowers to Scofield School, where those students would finish decorating the new Odd Fellows Hall.

Satisfied, Della spent a quiet evening in the library, where all was order, idle chat, and the reassurance of pages turning regularly. The day's mail included a letter from Samuel Auerbach, complaining of rheumatoid twinges but eager to see her in a month.

The surprise of the evening was Miss Clayson, who came in, looked around, and sat down with a copy of the
Denver Post
. Curious, Della glanced her way, noticing that she had turned to the back of the second section, where the classified ads resided.
Looking for a change of venue, Lavinia?
Della asked herself.
Looks like we're all going to step out of our easy place
.

Miss Clayson lingered after the last patron said good night. “Could I take this?” she asked, indicating that second section.

“Certainly. Are you thinking of somewhere else than the canyon for next year?”

“You're a busybody!” the principal said, true to form, but the sting in her words was gone. “I am, actually. What about you, Della?”

“I've decided to accept his offer of marriage,” she said, trying out the sentence for the first time and liking the sound. “I believe you are right.”

“One hundred percent staff turnover,” Miss Clayson said. “We're not going to make the district office happy.”

“Well, I'll be here,” Della said. “If they get desperate enough, they'll have to let me teach, even if I am married.” She held out her hand. “Thanks, Lavinia. I'll always owe you.”

Miss Clayson shook her hand. “The debt's paid in full. You're a fine teacher.” The starch went back into her voice. “Let's wish ourselves good luck
tomorrow
. It's going to be a test of our teaching abilities to keep our little scholars thinking of school and not Dewey Day!”

Dewey Day dawned without a cloud in the canyon. Della yawned, hungry. She had fasted since Sunday, made her decision, for good or ill, and wanted oatmeal. She followed it with two soft boiled eggs and toast, wondering which side of the bed Owen preferred.
The idle brain is the devil's playmate
, she reminded herself. Tomorrow, maybe she and Owen could stop by Bishop Parmley's house to make an appointment for temple recommend interviews for Manti. The stake president was in Provo, so that would mean a trip there for his interview too, maybe next week. There wasn't much time for her to make temple garments, but she could probably enlist the skills of the Pleasant Valley Relief Society.

Mr. Auerbach wouldn't care much for the news coming his way, but he might not feel so bad if she and Owen could get to Salt Lake so he could meet her new husband. Better yet, they could invite the Auerbachs to Winter Quarters for the June Eisteddfod. Before leaving the house, she flipped the calendar page from April to May, where she had circled May 1 earlier, and penciled in “dance.”

Della decided she was going to have more trouble than any of her students, keeping her mind on the day's work. Dewey Day was nothing compared to the reality that tonight she would put Owen out of his misery with the answer he wanted. Six days, six months, or sixty years. Whatever the Lord allotted her with Owen would be sufficient to the day. Miss Clayson was right.

“Now remember, students. We have work to do today,” she told them when everyone was seated, hands folded the way she liked, eyes straight ahead. She pulled up the maps over the blackboard. “Same rules as always: Third graders at your level, but first and second graders anywhere you want. Use each word in a sentence.”

Everyone worked quietly and efficiently, the balm of Gilead to any teacher's heart. She sat at her desk and daydreamed, wondering if Owen would even go to sauna next winter with her.

After her students put their papers on her desk, she divided them into groups, the older children by the window in a group to read to each other, and the younger ones closer to her desk, where she could supervise. She knew that Mary Parmley was quite capable of keeping order in the older group.

She had just glanced at the Regulator, wishing time would go faster, when a monster roar bellowed across the canyon, vibrating the floor. The windows rattled and one started to bow. Della leaped to her feet and threw herself in front of her students’ desks close to the window. Someone screamed.

“Steady, my dears,” she said, breathless, waiting for the windows to break and shower glass on her back. “Get up and go to that wall.” She pointed at the wall separating her classroom from Miss Clayson's. “Move!”

They obeyed her without question, their eyes huge and frightened.

“Someone's celebrating Dewey Day early,” Juko Warela said, his voice unnaturally high.

“Maybe that's it.” Della glanced out the window to see a billow of black rise over the canyon where the men of the Number Four worked the day shift. As she watched, another roar and then another rumbled through the canyon and more smoke belched. “My Lord and my God,” she whispered, as the bottom dropped out of her stomach.

She started for the door of her classroom, but Israel was already there, more serious than she had ever seen him. “Get them in Miss Clayson's classroom. I don't want them looking across the canyon,” he ordered.

She did as he said, gathering her children and shooing them next door. Miss Clayson, her face white, ushered them inside. In mere moments, all the children were crammed in her room, where the windows looked over the swings and sand lot. She touched Della's hand briefly, then assumed command, a small woman in total control, even though Della knew exactly how much it cost her, down to the last tear.

“Children, we're going to stay right here until we know what's going on,” Miss Clayson said, her voice calm. “School policy is to send you to your homes, but we will wait until we know something. Am I understood?”

Everyone nodded. Della watched as the children silently grouped themselves into families, brothers and sisters holding their smaller brothers and sisters on their laps, arms around them. Angharad stood alone, eyes wide with terror, and no one to comfort her. Della picked her up and sat with her, her lips on her hair. She could feel the child's heart pounding like a trip hammer in her chest. Or maybe that was her own heart. “I'm here with you, my dear,” she murmured. “I'll never let you go.”

Then they heard it, farther away at first, then coming closer—the sound of women wailing and screaming. Israel's eyes locked on hers. He made a placating gesture with his hands and edged out of the room. When he came back, his face was as white as Miss Clayson's. “I don't know what to say,” he told the principal, his lips close to her ear. “Something terrible has happened. It's the Number Four.”

Della closed her eyes, her brain empty of everything except an enormous scream that wanted out so badly, even as she forced it down, whipping it back like a lion tamer with a cudgel and chair. The last thing these children needed was for their teacher to lose her mind in front of them. She took her cue from Miss Clayson and sat a little taller, pressed her lips a little firmer, turning herself into a bulwark when she wanted to crumble and die.

The room was absolutely silent. Then she heard, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”

It was Miss Clayson, calm and comforting. “Israel, go see what you can do. Della, go to the women. I'll stay here with the children until we hear otherwise.”

Della nodded and set Angharad down on the chair. The child clung to her, wrenching her heart, until Miss Clayson picked her up and sat down with her. “No one will leave you alone, Angharad,” the principal said. “Miss Anders will find out what is going on, and we will know what to do.”

Della stood on the school steps for a moment, at a loss. Israel was already on the wagon road, shouldering his way past the women, running toward Number Four. Della went down the steps toward the largest knot of women. She held out her arms to include them.

“What will you have us do with your children?” she called.

The faces that turned toward her were familiar to her but unfamiliar at the same time: Martha Evans, Eeva Koski, Tamris Powell, her baby clutched in her shawl, Annie Jones, Mabli Reese. With a start she realized they all looked like the same woman—eyes filled with all the terror in the world, mouths agape. Some of them were shaking visibly. Someone on the edge of the circle had vomited onto the road. Soon others were retching, and Della knew why. Drifting across the canyon from the tortured mine was the odor of burning flesh. She turned away too, raising her skirt to her face, unmindful that everyone in the road could see her petticoat. Other women hid their faces in their aprons. Even more were screaming again. One of the older women was pulling her hair out in hunks.

Della grabbed her, holding her arms tight as she fought back and then went limp. Della dragged her to the edge of the road, looking around for help. There was no one. Each wife and mother on the road was staring into her own soul and had no heart for anyone but their man underground, dead, burning, in peril, breathing his last, clawing to get out, trying to save each other, swearing, praying—the women stared at every imaginable terror without any knowledge of what was actually happening.

Della pulled the unconscious woman farther off the road, seeing that her dress was decently around her ankles, her hands folded. She ran into the road again, looking around for someone, anyone, to restore order. There was no one. She ran to the Wasatch Store and found Clarence Nix, his face white too, going through a box of cards, his hands shaking so badly that the cards were flying everywhere.

“Let me help you,” Della said, trying to imitate Miss Clayson's awesome control. She pushed Clarence into a chair and stroked his cheek until he was calm. “It won't do for you to be this way,” she said, keeping her voice conversational. “Let me alphabetize these again.” She picked up the scattered cards and restored them to order, a librarian's task. They were the coupon books for each miner, to charge expenses against the payout at the end of the month.

The names were so familiar because their children were her special stewardship in Winter Quarters Canyon. She touched the books almost lovingly, knowing in the depths of her soul that more lives were going to be ruined this Tuesday than anywhere else in the world.

“There now, Clarence. Let's leave these here, shall we? What should you be doing?”

“I don't know,” he said, and she heard the shame in his voice. “I just don't know.” He grabbed her shoulder. “Miss Anders, I do know! When they pull the bodies out of the mine, it'll be my task to identify them because I know them all.” He gestured toward the card box. “I issue their coupon books. I know them.”

She shuddered inside and willed herself calm. “Then Mr. Parmley will need you to be quite brave. Do you have any white cards?”

He stared at her as though she spoke Swahili, then nodded slowly. “In the drawer there.”

She pulled out a handful of cards and looked for a pencil, something permanent that would not smear. “I'll go back to my classroom and get my crayons, Clarence. When you have to identify the men, you will write their names on the card and attach it somehow.” She faltered, then gathered herself together again.

She hurried up the road and ran into her classroom, pulling out two boxes of Rainbow Colors, wondering for a tiny moment what Mr. Auerbach would make of the pictures they could draw now—vacant-eyed women, terrified children, and dead men. “Owen, I love you,” she whispered.

She ran back to the Wasatch Store and put the crayons in the counter next to the coupon box. Clarence stood in the doorway now, some calm in his face.

“I have to tell you, Miss Anders. I did something I shouldn't have.”

“It's probably not too important today,” she said, desperate for news, like the gathering crowd of women.

“I tampered with the US mail,” he confessed. “Those letters you gave me to mail to Arizona? I haven't mailed them yet. No one wants you to leave the canyon.” He turned his head and looked out the window toward the tracks below. “I'm sorry.” He looked at her again, bewildered. “Why on
earth
am I talking such nonsense?”

“That's all right, Clarence,” she said gently. “I don't mind. Nothing needs to go to Arizona. I am going to tell Owen tonight that I'll marry him. Except I can't now, can I?” She sobbed and turned away, her skirt to her face again.

He patted her shoulder. They left the store together in time to see everyone surging up the road.

“What's happening?” Della asked, alarmed.