Carla Kelly (26 page)

When the dishes were done, Della sliced some cheese and leftover hash to put between two slices of Annie Jones's oat bread that had mysteriously appeared during what was probably Levi's walk to the day shift. Mabli filled a pint jar with water, adding it to a cloth bag, with the admonition not to be late getting back, and to sing as she walked, in case there were bears about.

“You're
not
going to discourage me,” Della scolded mildly.

“I would never! Stay on the road, though.”

“I will. You're a dear to worry about me.”

She put on an old skirt and shirtwaist and only one petticoat this time. She had an equally old sweater that she knew would end up knotted around her waist, but it would feel good right now. She subdued her curls with a bandanna that used to be her father's.

Outside the front door, Della smiled to see an elaborately carved walking stick, with a note skewered to the end. She detached the note.
This was my Da's. Use it to ward off bears and bullies. O
, she read.

The day shift was already in the mines, so she had the road to herself as she swung along, getting used to the feel of the stick. She stopped once to look and found more than one dragon wound about the beautiful staff. Obviously, Owen's father had taught his son everything he knew. She thought about that and wondered what her father had passed down to her. She knew she looked nothing like Frederick Anders with his tall, blond good looks and eyes blue enough to challenge the skies, or grey when things weren't going well. As she remembered, they were mostly grey in his final few years.

She remembered how much he liked to read and had taught her when she was younger than most. One luxury she recalled was the Sears and Roebuck catalog. In good years, there were two, one for the back house and the other to read. After she was baptized, he had scrounged up a Bible from somewhere. She never had a Book of Mormon and took his word for it that there was such a thing and she should believe in it.

But the catalog was a constant. Once or twice, when the mine paid, Papa actually ordered a few things for her from the catalog. Most Christmases, she and Papa decided what they wanted from the catalog, cut out the pictures, wrapped them, and gave them to each other.

She started her climb up the switchback road behind the Parmleys’ house and the other, nicer homes that belonged to the foremen and checker and weigher men. The road was steeper, and she used the walking stick, glad of it. She perched for a long while on a boulder that the sun was beginning to warm, hiking up her skirt because there was no one to see her. She gazed down on Winter Quarters Canyon, pleased with the view.

She was too far away now for the noise to reach her. There was no smell of coal or sulfur, just the clean odor of grass dried for months by the sun and still giving off the fragrance of August. She lay back on the rock and watched a hawk wheel high overhead, noodling along on air currents, probably looking for voles or field mice.

She slept then; the sun was just warm enough. Even the red dragons on the end of her bed hadn't been much protection against bad dreams of Miss Clayson chasing her and throwing Rainbow Colors at her, which exploded against the blackboard. When she opened her eyes again, a chipmunk observed her from a nearby boulder.

Refreshed, Della continued her climb, stopping to look back and get her breath. Soon the canyon below was out of view. She climbed for an hour, leaving the road to gather thistles and something resembling Queen Anne's lace. Yellow flowers like the ones in the bouquet Mari Elvena had given her seemed to grow out of the rock, a testament to grit and ingenuity. She stuffed the flowers here and there around the bandanna, reminding herself to take them out before she returned home.

Finally she reached the point where she could look down on hawks below her now in the canyon. She was on a ridge, following it south, keeping company with quaking aspen that she knew would turn yellow in a few weeks.

The road continued along the ridge, and she almost followed it, remembering those trails she and Papa had traveled, her trudging along behind on shorter baby legs.

She left the road and walked into a wide meadow there at the top of the world. She found another boulder and sat on it, removing her sweater, and then her shirtwaist, shy at first then confident. No one was nearby. She unbuttoned her camisole too and let the breeze play on her. This wasn't a corset kind of day. She sighed with pleasure and closed her eyes again.

All was silent except for an occasional birdcall. She thought through the humiliation of the week from Miss Clayson, then measured it against the concern of Israel Bowman, Dr. Isgreen's gentle insistence that she have supper with him again, Angharad's dragon on the magic paper, and Annie Jones's second loaf of oat bread.

Thinking of the oat bread made her hungry. Della sat up and buttoned her camisole again. She ate the hash sandwich. She looked inside the satchel to see that Mabli must have added a fat dill pickle, confined in a twist of waxed paper. A bite of pickle and a bite of sandwich gave her a meadow banquet, swigged down with slightly milky water from a pint cream jar. After lunch, she felt disinclined to move. The sun had peaked overhead and was beginning its slow descent. Clouds billowed to the west, inviting more raptors to coast by on air currents, one audacious hawk even dropping down to eye her as potential carrion.

“What, pray tell, Della Olympia Anders, are you planning to do about your call as choir secretary?” she asked out loud.

She sighed. The bigger question was how could she remain in this close-knit, gossipy canyon and convince its inmates that she wasn't what they thought, without revealing what she was?

Della held up her hand and spread her fingers, looking through them to the sky. “It probably can't be done,” she said.

She wondered again what maggot in her brain had compelled her to snatch that job opening off the board in the education department. She could have found an inexpensive flat in the west side near her school and moved from the Anderses’ house on the avenues. The city was big and she was anonymous. Instead, she had come to a mining camp, trying to find what?

She looked around her, realizing why she had gone no farther. This meadow looked something like the meadow where she had spent most of her childhood. True, the mining camp of Hastings on the Colorado Plateau, home of the Molly Bee, was higher, unlike this meadow, which seemed to be part of a ridge. The flowers were the same; so was the fragrance of drying grass, and the breeze that she knew from experience would turn into a howling rage in winter.

Maybe some ill-natured imp had made her pluck that job card off the bulletin board, tricking her into thinking she could go home again. The more mature part of her brain assured her that she could not. The other side, the one that had been so terrified only a few nights ago, was looking for something or someone, dead or gone or never there in the first place.

She knew that to accept the bishop's calling was to open herself up for the first time in years. One glance at her students’ lovely pictures lined up on the chalk trough had cemented them firmly to her. She knew these children because they reminded her of herself. Maybe coming here was one way of going back to see a younger Della Anders, and maybe change the course of events for them, if not for her.

It was a jumble in her mind and she didn't understand it. Sitting there cross-legged in the high alpine meadow, maybe she hoped to glimpse that little girl again and tell her not to be so fearful. Even if she couldn't change her own childhood, maybe she could understand it.

As she sat so still, she heard water running, gurgling over rocks. She stood up and stretched, took care of personal business, then walked farther into the meadow, holding her hands out to touch the waist-high grass. She found the creek and filled her pint bottle for the return trip, flicking some of the icy water on her face, which felt tight from the sun. As she walked, she decided she liked the people a few thousand feet below her too well to tell them much about herself. Bishop Parmley had said he would rescind the call. She would request that on Sunday.

Funny, though—her decision, once made, left her more hollow than usual. She knew she should pray about it but discarded that thought almost immediately. It was just a silly calling, mattering little in the great scheme of things. The bishop could find her a spot in another organization. She closed her eyes as she walked, remembering how Bishop Parmley had told her he felt it was right in his heart.

Feeling awkward, even in the middle of nowhere, Della knelt and folded her arms. She had no idea what to ask for, except maybe one more chance to tell her father thank you for what he tried to teach her, even though Aunt Caroline had not a good word to say about him.

It was probably no prayer. All she said was “Oh, Father,” not even sure which father she was addressing, maybe both. After a long, silent time on her knees, she said “Amen,” rose, found the walking stick, and started back.

The road was right where she left it, and there was nothing faulty about her sense of direction. She was in no hurry, even though the sun seemed to speed its descent, once it had passed the arc of noon. The clouds boiling from the west rose higher, and she knew there would be rain tonight; this one wouldn't blow over. She liked the sound of rain on the roof and she figured Mabli's roof was watertight, considering that her brother-in-law seemed the sort of man to look after his relatives. She could read a book in bed and look at the red dragons between her feet on the footboard.

She realized she had walked much farther than she probably should have. Well, her time was her own and it was Saturday. No harm done. She started humming “Choose the right, when a choice is placed before you,” because it had a quick, no-nonsense beat that would keep her moving. Her active conscience made her think of the words, and she wondered again about her decision to tell Bishop Parmley no. The succeeding verses did nothing to assuage her, so she switched to “Put your shoulder to the wheel,” which speeded her walk but left her dissatisfied, too. “We all have work, let no one shirk,” was not a chorus designed to comfort the unwilling.

“Della,
you
are the dirty bird,” she said. Maybe “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,” would get her down to Winter Quarters canyon without a guilty conscience.

She started to sing then stopped; someone else was singing. “Oh my,” she murmured, as her face turned red. The owner of the walking stick must have wondered if she was planning to return it.

She stood still in the road, irritated with herself for spending so much time in the meadow that Owen Davis felt she needed to be rescued. Another thought filled her mind, giving her the clearest indication she could have wished for, that her awkward, two-word prayer was about to be answered. Out of habit, she rejected it immediately, then had the grace to reconsider.

Della listened. The tune was familiar, but the words were Welsh. She hummed along, then harmonized softly. She stood there, wracking her brain, until she remembered “Men of Harlech,” which the glee club boys had sung one year. She continued down the slope.

The singing got louder, and then she turned a bend in the trail, and there Owen was, swinging along at a steady pace. He smiled to see her and elaborately wiped imaginary sweat off his forehead.

“There now! I thought I would have to walk to Sanpete County to find you.”

“I wasn't running away.”

“I should hope not. I stopped in at Mabli's after my shift.
She
was getting worried, which meant
I
had to do something about it. Such is the way of women.”

“I'm sorry,” she said, and meant it.

“No fears,” he replied, turning around when she reached him and starting down slower now, to match her stride. “I wanted to talk to you anyway. Was this the worst week of your life?”

She could tell from his tone that he was trying to joke, but she couldn't help her reply. “Heavens no! I've had far worse weeks.”

That couldn't have been the answer he wanted, because he puffed his cheeks and let out a whoosh of air. Still, he didn't seem to want to turn the idea loose. “Surely it's in the top shelf of bad weeks.”

“No, not really,” she said again, hoping she sounded matter-of-fact enough, because she didn't want his pity.

He seemed to think a change of subject was in order. “Did you walk as far as the alpine meadow?”

She nodded. “Lovely.”

“Aye, miss!” he teased, then grew serious. “I went there after Gwyna died, when I had no earthly idea how I was going to survive her loss and raise an infant.”

Della stopped walking, ashamed of her whining. “My worries are paltry by comparison.”

He nudged her into motion again. “I doubt that. Did you arrive at any decisions? I know I didn't.”

“I didn't either,” she told him. “Guess it's not much of a meadow, eh?”

He laughed and said nothing more until another bend in the road. He stopped and faced her, hands on his hips. She had no choice but to stop too and turn his way, to be polite.

“Della, I'm no bully and a dirty bird only on occasion, but you have to tell me what's going on.”

“No, I don't,” she retorted but did not move. His eyes wouldn't let her.

“You do. You're carrying a burden I made worse, even though I don't know how, really. Could you share it?”