Carla Kelly (16 page)

Della yawned. “Owen … Brother Davis … said I'd be tired for awhile, until I get used to the altitude.”

“So you shall.”

She rested her head on her arms, comfortable at Mabli's kitchen table, trying to remember that last time she had sat with anyone while in nightgown and robe. Aunt Caroline never approved of such unseemliness. She knew she should go to bed, but she was struck with the realization of how much of her home life in Salt Lake had been spent in solitude. The Anderses all kept to themselves, and she had never been invited into their circle. And here she sat with a kind woman she barely knew, content.

She rested her chin on her hands. “Mabli, Brother Davis told me that Angharad stays with the Evans family while he works. What about the late shift?”

“We call it the afternoon shift. He'll go in their pitch-dark house—miners aren't troubled much by darkness— and come out with his sleeping daughter. He always takes her home, no matter how late.”

“It's hard for him, isn't it?” Della asked.

“It would be harder if Angharad had died too, when her mother died,” Mabli said, not even trying to hide her own pain.

Impulsively, Della covered her landlady's hand with her own. “Maybe I understand better why you stay here.”

“I thought you might. Good night, my dear.”

As tired as she was, Della lay awake a long time in her beautiful bed, trying to remember the last time anyone had called her “my dear.” She reached her hand behind her to outline one of the daffodils, tracing it over and over until she grew drowsy, acquainting herself with the smooth strokes of the master carver. She closed her eyes, knowing that when she woke up, there would be little rearing dragons at the foot of her bed.

ella helped Mabli in the boardinghouse kitchen in the morning, turning pancakes until she wondered just how many of them hungry men could eat. When Mabli decreed the mound sufficient, Della fried eggs until she had another mound.

“You realize we could bury medium-sized animals in these two stacks,” she said. Mabli laughed and told her to keep cracking eggs.

“What do they do about lunch in the mine?” Della asked when all the food was on the tables and Mabli had time to sit down in the kitchen.

“I put bread, meat, cheese, and cookies on a table, and they choose. Cake, sometimes, if the mood is on me. Apples.”

“If they're not in the mines?”

“They'll come in for sandwiches, and I'll have stew.”

Della wiped the sweat from her forehead. “Mabli, you should take the one-year teaching certification course at the university. I did, and I don't work nearly as hard as you do.”

“Dafydd taught me to read. I don't think I am university material.” She took Della's hand and lowered her voice. “That's why
I'm
glad you're here. If you can give the boys enough learning, they can be checkers and weighers, and not go in the pit.” She looked away, as though someone had moved the back wall of the kitchen and she was seeing much farther. “They don't need to be in the pit.”

Della thought about what Mabli said, and with such intensity, as she worked in her classroom that day. Even in her fervent plea for Della to teach the boys, Mabli couldn't see beyond the mines. Checkers and weighers meant they would be aboveground, but they would still be here.
I want them to be teachers and shop owners
, Della thought.
Maybe even lawyers
.
Doctors, someday, and scientists
.

As she planned her first month of lessons, Della's mind kept returning to Mabli's words. When Miss Clayson came into her room, her expression militant, Della decided to have the first word, even if she knew her principal would have the last one.

“Miss Clayson, what are we educating these children for?”

Della cringed inside to see Miss Clayson's expression turn from militant to disbelieving. She would have gladly taken back her impulsive question, except Miss Clayson's expression didn't stop at disbelief. It moved on to what Della thought might be a close cousin to concern and softened, making the woman in black look surprisingly close to human.

“That is an impertinent question from a teacher,” she began, and Della felt her heart sink. Perhaps she had misread Miss Clayson's expression. Perhaps not. The principal sighed, and Della saw uncertainty for the first time.

“I asked myself that when I started here ten years ago,” she said finally, and there was no mistaking her uncertainty. “We educate them here through the eighth grade. By then they are fourteen. Some have already started going to the pit with their fathers to pick rock out of the coal before it's weighed, or they open and close mine doors. That way they can take home a bigger paycheck. Some of
your
students will even do that on Saturdays.”

“But they're only six or seven!”

“They're old enough to know rock from coal and open doors.”

Della thought of the young girls helping Mabli last night, everyone working hard to feed their families or others even more in need. “And the girls?”

Her principal shrugged. “They can read, write, and cipher, and they marry miners.” Her expression hardened. “And when something happens in the mine, they rush to the portals and watch to see who comes out alive.” She shuddered. “Wait until you hear their wailing and keening at the portal. You'll never forget the sound.”

“There should be more to life than that,” Della said.

Maybe she said the wrong thing. Miss Clayson's eyes lost their half-wistful, half-worried look, narrowing into an expression that made Della's stomach start to hurt.

“You think I don't know that!” she stormed. “You're coming here all benevolent and superior to tell
me
that! Miss Anders, remember yourself!”

“Oh, I …”

She was speaking to empty air. Miss Clayson left the room with an angry twitch of her skirts. Della put her face in her hands, the day ruined. She thought of her father, dead in a mine, and her own tears when the mine owner told her, then offered her one-way passage to somewhere she had relatives.

“I do know what it feels like to lose someone in the mine, Miss Clayson,” she said into her hands. “Do you?”

Her walk home was thoughtful and slow, no buoyancy in her steps this time.
What do these children need to know?
she asked herself.
Am I the one to teach them?

The shift was changing. She stood still to catch her breath by the Number Four incline, a system of tracks that carried miners and equipment up the steep trail to the portal, located out of sight in an even smaller canyon. Through the day she had heard the distant rumble of what she thought was thunder at first but which she realized were explosives in the mine, since the sky had not a cloud in it.

She had no doubt the men inside knew their work. As she looked toward the portal she could not see, she wondered why they felt such danger was worth it. She had wanted to ask her father that. Since his death, she had asked it over and over. How dare Miss Clayson dismiss her? A moment's reflection gave her the answer:
How is she to know otherwise if you never tell anyone?
Della asked herself.

She walked past a group of miners as black as the coal they blasted and dug. One of them reached out his hand but did not touch her, so she stopped.

“Sister Anders, what do you think of my Annie's oatbread?”

It was Levi Jones, maybe unidentifiable to Miss Clayson, who couldn't tell one miner from another. To Della, Levi was the husband of the Relief Society first counselor and father to Myfanwy, who would be her student soon.

“Brother Jones, that's the best bread I ever ate,” she said, and meant every word.

The contrast of his white teeth against his black face took her out of her own misery. “To tell the truth, I don't care much for oats, so you know it was good if I liked it.”

Levi Jones laughed. “You'd be a sorely tried Welshwoman!”

“An utter failure,” she agreed. “Not only was it good bread, it was kindly given.”

“That's our way,” he told her. “Now
you
be charitable if a certain persistent second tenor asks about choir.”

Della sighed. “I am
not
the caliber of singer you want in the choir!”

“You could let us be the judge of that,” was his mild comment.

Della opened her mouth to reply, then closed it, shook her head, and walked on, only to realize a moment later that she had nearly walked into that second tenor. He took a side step so she wouldn't plow into him and get dirty, but he slowed his steps to match hers.

Better to beat him at his own game. “Brother Davis, I know you mean well, but I am not the singer for you.”

She expected an argument but got none, which surprised her.

“I can be philosophical.”

Della realized it was a subject needing to be changed. “I do have some news for you from Clarence Nix,” Della said. “He asked me be the Wasatch Store librarian on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I'll be in the library from seven to nine on those evenings. Maybe you could pass the word.”

If he thought her crass to ask a favor after turning him down, Owen did not indicate it. “I can. I'll tack up a note at both portals.” He stopped, so she stopped, as other miners grinned and walked around them, heading home. “I'll tell you, though—no man takes kindly to being scolded like a child for dirty hands.”

“I have a better idea,” Della assured him. “I expect clean hands. Pure hearts would be nice too, but I'm a realist.”

He laughed at her joke, waved a dirty hand, and continued up the slope with his friends. She took a more thoughtful pace, part of her relieved that he didn't seem disappointed with her rejection of choir, the other part of her wishing he had protested a bit more.
You can't have it both ways, Della
, she told herself.

She walked to school by herself the next morning, until she passed one of the small boarding houses close to the Number Four incline and Israel Bowman waved for her to wait.

“So you've wandered back from Utah Valley?” she asked, when he joined her.

“You may congratulate me,” he told her, making no attempt to hide the pleasure on his face. “I am now engaged to Miss Blanche Bent of Provo. No applause necessary; just send a wedding present next summer.”

“I'll embroider days of the week dishcloths. Ten months should be enough time for someone with as little talent as I have. I'm happy for you.”

They walked together to the school. When she slowed down, Israel stopped her. “Miss Anders—Della—why do I get the feeling that you're reluctant to face Miss Clayson? If you walk any slower, vines are going to grow over you.”

“She can't think of anything nice to say to me,” Della said. “I know she resents that I'm an Anders, but I can't help that. Why is she so bitter?”

“It's a mystery to me,” he replied with a shrug. “It's probably not personal. She doesn't think I can teach either, so you're not alone.” He scratched his head. “This will be my last year, because I know Blanche doesn't want to live in Winter Quarters.”

“Will you miss it?”

“Yeah, I will,” he said simply. “I like the children and the parents.”