Carla Kelly (21 page)

She walked into the entrance hall as the children came up the stairs. Her satisfaction deepened as she saw Milton Hood, who had engineered her blessing last night, generously sharing his own father with her. She couldn't thank him today—separation of church and state, after all—but she knew where to find him on Sunday.

There wasn't any law against touching his shoulder as he came in the door, eyes wide, some fear in them. “Milton, you're a prince. Thanks for coming to my classroom today.”

His smile brought one of her own and must have been contagious, because it spread to other youngsters his own age, students new to the business of learning.

Angharad Davis came with the Evans children, so Della knew Owen was in the mine. Della stayed in the hall, and her pupils naturally clustered around her. Before directing them downstairs for the opening assembly, she admired Angharad and Myfanwy's starched pinafores and Billy Evans's handsome cravat, probably a relic of his father's.

His arm in a sling, the next little boy through the door must have been the Finnish child whose arm Emil Isgreen had set yesterday during Sunday School. Della made a mental note to ask him if he needed a pillow to rest his arm on, in class. She accepted a flower cleverly folded from newspaper, then came to Mari Elvena Luoma, who lingered in the doorway.

“Good morning, Mrs. Luoma,” Della said. She pointed to the basement stairs and held out her hand. “Come with me?”

Mari nodded. Holding hands, they waited together until the last child was in the building. Della felt the woman's hand tremble in hers, but Mari did not hesitate to go down the stairs.

The students had gathered in the gymnasium, seating themselves on the floor and looking at Miss Clayson, who stood before them, dressed always in black and tapping a ruler in her hand. Israel Bowman stood beside her, a big grin on his face.

Nothing seems to daunt him
, Della thought with amusement. A weekend in Provo with his fiancée must have been a positive restorative. She reminded herself that she was brave too because she had been given a blessing.

With a little squeeze of reassurance, Della released Mari's hand and joined her fellow teachers in front of the students. While they waited in silence for a few tardy scholars, Della admired the Winter Quarters Elementary School students—clean faces, well-combed hair, and an air of expectancy. The Parmley children were dressed a little better than the others, but not by much. She suspected Sister Parmley was far too wise to flaunt her family's superior status.

With an ache in her heart, Della remembered her first day at Stake Academy in Salt Lake City, wearing the best she had, because Aunt Caroline had made no effort to buy her anything better to replace the clothes she had worn in her own mining camp classroom, where everyone was equally poor.

Della glanced down at her own tidy shirtwaist with its small green and white flowers, and gold watch pinned there, a far cry from Miss Clayson's funereal black. She smoothed her brown skirt.
Two inches from the ground and just brushing my shoe tops
, she thought, remember the Rules for Teachers.
I can't do anything about my wild hair, Miss Clayson, but I am a teacher
.

At eight thirty on the dot, Miss Clayson began what was probably her usual first-day lecture, full of admonition and warning, as she continued to tap that ruler. Breathing heavy and their cheeks flushed from running, two children came in after she had begun. Miss Clayson paused and gave them an icy stare that made Della's stomach start to ache, and
she
had arrived on time.

“Starting tomorrow,
that
will earn you an hour after school, writing 150 times on the blackboard, ‘I will never be late again,’ ” the principal commented. She continued her speech, after another glare at the two offenders, paler now than snow.

When she finished speaking, the gym was absolutely silent. Della couldn't even hear anyone breathing and wondered for one irreverent moment if Miss Clayson had included not breathing in her lengthy list of things not to do in school.

She wasn't through. As Miss Clayson took a leisurely look around the silent gym, Della had to grudgingly admit that the principal knew how to command a crowd. Not a child moved.

Miss Clayson turned to her left and indicated Israel Bowman with a flick of the ruler that made him flinch involuntarily. “You older students remember Mr. Bowman. He is teaching the fourth through sixth grades.”

Della couldn't help but notice a sudden relaxation among the students in that age group, and a few smiles.

“Mr. Bowman is from Provo,” Miss Clayson explained, giving
Provo
the weight of a word not generally spoken of in polite society or groups younger than twelve.

Heavens, even towns don't measure up
, Della thought.

“He is a graduate of the University of Utah and has been teaching here for three years.”

She turned to her right, and Della felt her stomach tense. “Miss Anders will be teaching the first through third grades,” Miss Clayson said. “She is from Salt Lake City and has a teaching certificate from the University of Utah.” To Della's ears, the way she said teaching certificate made it sound like an object scraped from the bottom of a shoe.

“I have the seventh and eighth graders,” Miss Clayson concluded.

Della had to bite the inside of her cheek to suppress the laughter that threatened. Everyone not in grades seven and eight had audibly sighed, even Mari Elvena Luoma, who didn't speak much English. Had he been in attendance, Della doubted that even Bishop Parmley could have resisted a sigh of relief.

Her amusement was followed by shame. Since she was standing so close to her, Della couldn't overlook Miss Clayson's own little sigh at the students’ involuntary reaction. She thought of Andrew Hood's blessing, and his admonition to think of others kindly.
I can begin here
, Della thought.
I'm not certain how, but I must
.

Della jumped, along with everyone else, when Miss Clayson slapped her ruler in her hand. “Classes dismissed. Pupils, follow your instructors!”

Miss Clayson looked at her first, and Della nodded, struck again by the slightest wounded look in the principal's eyes. Della turned her attention to the littlest ones in the room. “Come, children,” she said. “Let's go learn.”

When the warning bell clanged at five minutes to three o'clock that afternoon, Della looked up in surprise from the table with all the construction paper leaves, wondering where the day had gone.

“We have run out of time,” she said to her students, who clustered around the table, turning in the leaves with their names spelled on them. “Let's put these on our tree tomorrow morning, before we begin our arithmetic. Do you remember what I have asked you all to do tonight? Make sure you take some of my magic paper with you. Remember: draw me a picture of something you did this summer.”

Each student selected a piece of shirt cardboard, the magic kind from the inside of men's ready-to-wear shirts. As she watched them, Della congratulated herself again for rescuing all the paper from her summer job in Auerbach's Menswear department. She had applied for the job on a whim, never thinking the menswear department would have her. Her employer assured her that ladies made the best salesmen. Once she survived her initial shyness, she had proved him right. One reward was all the stiffened shirt paper she wanted that would have been discarded.

Her first week's salary meant a mound of Franklin Rainbow Crayons from Auerbach's stationery department. Her triumphant return upstairs after lunch, with a stack of Rainbow Crayons, had made her boss laugh and tell Samuel Auerbach himself. That afternoon, the boss of all bosses had asked to meet the lady in Menswear who bought crayons with her first week's salary.

When Della calmed her nerves and told Mr. Auerbach she wanted them for the Westside School, which couldn't afford much, he had generously bought her even more crayons, presenting them with a flourish on her last day of summer work. She had left those crayons for Westside and still had enough for Winter Quarters too.

It was a pleasant memory. “You each have a box of crayons now. Take them home tonight but bring them back tomorrow, along with your picture. We will have Mr. Bowman's class select the best one of all, and I will send it to a kind man in Salt Lake City. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” her students chorused back to her. They were learning already.

The bell clanged and class was over for the day. “Draw something lovely tonight,” Della told them.

When the last student left her room, she sat down and leaned back in her chair, pleasantly tired.

Israel Bowman stuck his head inside her open door. “Survive it?”

“Yes, indeed,” she told him. “We've learned our names and can spell them mostly.” She clasped her hands on her desk. “Israel, I'm wondering just how much Miss Forsyth taught them last year.”

He came closer and perched on her desk. “Between you and me and almost everyone in this canyon, Miss Forsyth didn't have much on her mind except the mining engineer.”

Della rolled her eyes. “Checking my older students’ reading comprehension today, I was afraid of that! I'm quite tempted to teach
all
my students this first quarter at a second-grade level. The third graders will get rudiments they lack, and my bright little first graders will probably shine at that grade.”

“Why not? Do it.” He looked around, then picked up a ruler from her desk and slapped it in his hand like Miss Clayson, then whisked it close to her nose. “And
don't
fall in love with anyone in Winter Quarters Canyon!”

She crossed her heart and pretended to spit in her hand. After Israel returned to his own classroom, Della straightened up her room and looked over the stack of slates on the table next to her desk, checking addition and subtraction on the older students’ slates, and numbers from zero to nine on her little ones’ slates. She had taken three slates from the closet to give to those without them and thanked Bishop Parmley in her heart for the extras.

She looked at the Regulator on the wall. If she hurried, she could thank him in person, if he happened to be in the Wasatch Store. Quickly, she swept out her classroom, took a good look at the broom, and carried it next door to Israel's classroom, where he was going over class work too.

“Going to find a new mode of travel in and out of the canyon?” he joked and ducked when she pretended to throw the broom at him.

“How does your fiancée tolerate you?” she teased in turn.

“She thinks I'm wonderful.”

She held the broom up to her. “Remember what Miss Clayson told me about Billy Evans?”

“Ah, yes. He's the little fellow who just can't seem to read.” He tugged his hair as though to pull it out by the roots. “Miss Forsyth used to tug at her hair whenever she talked about him. I swear she developed a bald spot.”

“Don't joke. He needs to learn to read,” Della retorted. “When I asked him today, he took this broom, held it like I'm holding it, and promised me he'd read when he was taller than the broom!”

“I give him credit for quick thinking,” Israel said. “Trouble is, he doesn't seem to grow much.”

She returned to her classroom, taking one more look around before she closed the door. Indecisive, she stood in the hall a moment, part of her wanting to stick her head in Miss Clayson's classroom as casually as she had dropped in on Israel, to ask how her day went. The discretionary part of her suggested she tiptoe from the building so Miss Clayson wouldn't hear her leave. She listened to the discretionary part.

She was in luck at the Wasatch Store. Bishop Parmley was just coming down the outside stairs as she started up. She stepped back and waited for him, still embarrassed about her reaction yesterday to his innocent church call.

“Bishop, I owe you an apology.”

He waved her to silence, his expression good-natured. “My, dear, it's now a matter between you and the Lord. When you two decide, just let me know.”

She continued home, happy to unhook her shoes and just wiggle her toes and flop on her wonderful bed. She closed her eyes and thought about her students and then about the builder of her bed and his quiet apology outside her door yesterday.

“I should apologize to him,” she murmured to the ceiling. “Better than that, I should explain to him why I didn't like being bullied.”

She thought about apologizing all during supper preparations next door, where, thankfully, Mabli was moving too fast to wonder why Della was so silent. After a close call with her fingers as she grated carrots, Della forced herself to pay attention to supper. While eating in the kitchen, she turned around in surprise to see the French miner and the German miner standing in the doorway.

“We're going to escort you to the library,” the Frenchman said. Maybe it was the French way; there was nothing in the tone of his voice that indicated she might have a choice in the matter. In fact, the slightly militant look in his eyes told her what he thought about a Frenchman—even a coal miner—allowing a lady to walk
anywhere
unescorted after dark.