Carla Kelly (3 page)

“I left it at the depot. I was planning to get a room at the YWCA tonight.”

Amanda gave Della's arm a tug. “If you weren't so charming, I'd give you a swat!”

Della laughed out loud. “Charming?
Me
?”

“Far more than your cousins, but don't tell them I said that. Think how awkward family visits would become.”

She let herself be led inside, breathing the sharp odor of new paint, happy to sit at the kitchen table and peel potatoes. Amanda set two glasses of lemonade on the table, then went to the door.

“I'll be back to help,” she said. “I'm going to send my yardman to the depot to fetch your luggage
and
my husband.”

Della peeled potatoes, feeling more care slide away. Trust Sister Knight to call him the yardman, when Aunt Caroline would have called him the chauffeur and given him a uniform.

The potatoes were bubbling on the cooking range when the yardman returned with her luggage and Jesse Knight, who made his way to the side porch, where Della and his wife sat. He planted a whacking kiss on Amanda's cheek and accepted a glass of lemonade from her. He looked at Della next, then clinked his glass to hers.

“Della, Della, pretty Della,” he said with that gusto she remembered and which had always made him the most interesting of men. “So you're going to a mining camp?”

Della listened for some admonition in his voice, but there was none. He sounded as relaxed, calm, and interested in her as always, which never failed to surprise her. Jesse Knight was one of Utah's richest men, but she doubted he had a pretentious bone anywhere in his body.

“Aunt Caroline thinks I have taken leave of my senses.”

“Have you?” he asked gently.

“No. I just feel a great need for something different.”

She knew there was more, and looking at Uncle Jesse, as he liked her to call him, she knew he knew. “I remember the mining camp in Colorado. I wasn't ready to leave there, but I had no choice.” She looked at a boy across Center Street who was mowing the lawn. “Aunt Caroline never had a good word to say about my father, but he's dead.” She returned her attention to the man seated beside her. He had unbuttoned his collar in the August heat. “Did you know him?”

He nodded. “We all came across the plains together. He never cared much for church and had an itchy foot. I guess he just kept going. He loved you, though.”

“I know,” she said softly, thinking of the nights he'd come out of the mine, clean up, cook for dinner whatever they happened to have in the shack—sometimes a lot, sometimes a little—then read to her. Sometimes the reading had to substitute for food. “We never had much. Uncle Karl called him a dreamer.”

It irked her that the memories were fading. Frederick Anders was growing more indistinct with each year. “I wanted to be blonde and blue-eyed like my father. And then when I went to Salt Lake, I wanted to be blonde and blue-eyed like my cousins.”
Anything to fit in
, she thought.

“Then you'd look like three-quarters of Utah.” Uncle Jesse took a long gulp of the lemonade and set down the glass with an “ahh.”

“I'd fit in better.” Funny how sitting on the side porch with the Knights limbered her tongue. She'd never said that out loud before. She glanced at Amanda. “Once I asked my father what my mother looked like. He just picked up a mirror and held it to my face.”

“And what a pretty face.” Uncle Jesse turned to his wife, his voice not even half serious. “Amanda, I ask you, why on earth hasn't this … let's see … this shirttail relation of ours … found some lovesick swain to lead around on a leash?”

“I can't imagine,” Amanda said, her eyes lively.

“I can tell you,” Della said. “Aunt Caroline made sure everyone knew my father had never married my mother. Could it be she wanted people to see how noble she was to take me in?”

This was turning into a day of surprises, this first day of her independence. Della had never admitted that out loud, and here she was blurting out family skeletons. Maybe it was the wrong thing to say.

“I spoke out of turn,” Della said, fearful of distressing these kind people. “I thought you knew.”

“We did know, and from that same source,” Amanda said finally, and there was no avoiding the hard sound to her voice. She turned back, and her eyes were filled with tears. “How could Caroline
do
that?”

“She thought it best to warn people.” Della took a deep breath, relieved. “I want to go someplace where no one knows me and no one will judge me for something that I had nothing to do with. My students in Winter Quarters won't care.”

Jesse was silent a long while. Della's dread turned to hope because there was nothing in his face—in either of their faces—of condemnation.

“Maybe I'm just trying to figure out who I am,” Della explained.

“You could have picked an easier place than Winter Quarters,” Jesse chided gently.

“I could have. That's what my bishop said too.” She looked at her hands, the soft olive of her skin more pronounced in summer. “I think I want to pick up where I left off in Colorado, at the Molly Bee.”

“I'm not sure you can do that. It's hard to go back.”

“I can try.”

o Della's infinite pleasure, Amanda Knight let her sleep in the turret-shaped room with the Moorish cupola, even though it was her sewing room. The sofa made nicely into a pull-out bed. They both laughed over the Persian carpet, Amanda telling Della not to stand on it too long, and certainly not to make a wish, or she would be flying low over Provo.

Breakfast was another pleasure, when Uncle Jesse insisted on taking her to Spanish Fork in his private railroad car. “I'm heading south on business, so why not?”

“I won't argue. Tell me something about the miners at Winter Quarters,” she asked over bacon and eggs.

“You can walk from one end of that narrow canyon to the other and not hear a single American accent,” he told her. “The Welshmen are the little dark ones, and every sentence sounds like a question. The Scots think they own the world, the English run it, and the Finns like to roll naked in the snow when no one's watching.”

Della laughed, thinking about the Finns. “Just assure me that the miners are concerned about their children's education.”

He looked at her seriously, all joking gone. “You'll find a hard-eyed bunch of realists in that canyon. They're immigrants and staking everything on their children's success in this new land. They are in deadly earnest.”

She thought about that as she went upstairs again to dress, looking in the mirror to see herself as she was, all wishing aside: young, olive-skinned, and Greek of face with a head of unruly black curls and a nose charitably called aquiline.
I am young, but please let them take me seriously
, she thought.
I can do this.

“Here's another good thing to know,” Uncle Jesse told her, as the train pulled away from the depot with a hiss and a jolt. “Winter Quarters mines are called family mines.”

“Why?”

“They're considered so safe—not gassy with methane, like some mines—that men with families have gravitated there. The camp doesn't look like much, so don't be imagining a thing of beauty and a joy forever. I hear it's a cheerful canyon.”

She nodded and looked out the window when he picked up his newspaper.

He put the paper down and looked at her with the familiar twinkle in his eyes. “Della, did you sing in your ward choir?”

“I did. Contralto.”

“Are you pretty good?”

“Well, I don't wait for a summons from the Tabernacle Choir, but I think so. Should I join the ward choir in Winter Quarters?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Most choirs need altos,” she said. “Have you been to church there? Does the choir need some help?”

He laughed. “You'll find out! I'm not even sure they have a piano. For sure no organ.”

“Heavens. That tells me a lot.”

Well, why not
, she told herself as Provo turned into Springville.
I've been in plenty of so-so choirs. One more won't hurt
. She glanced east to the mountains, seeking out the canyon where the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railway would take her. By tonight she would be in her own place.

She felt a pang, saying good-bye to Uncle Jesse at the depot. Through the years, she had visited the Knights with her Anders relatives, but this had been her first trip by herself to see them. She had been too shy before to see their kindness.

He kissed the top of her head. “Della, you're a fine specimen. I never noticed before,” he said, so maybe she hadn't been alone in her shyness. He motioned for the porter to take her luggage. “Now I'm off to my own mines at Tintic. Come see us at Thanksgiving.”

“I just might,” she said, after the conductor assisted her down the steps, solicitous as only a man can be who is helping someone down from a private car.
I could like this
, she thought.

Uncle Jesse handed her a folded piece of paper through his open window. “I found this somewhere. It'll give you a chuckle.”

She took it and blew him a kiss, sorry to see him go.

“Miss?”

Della turned around to see the stationmaster. “Yes, sir?”

“We are holding the D&RGW for you on that track over there,” he said, gesturing toward the much longer train. “Mr. Knight had telegraphed us to do that.”

She stared at him. “Mercy! I'll hurry.” She grabbed her carpetbag, picked up her skirts, and ran.

Della sank into the nearest seat. She hadn't the nerve to look around the car, fully aware that every man on board— and there seemed to be no one but men—had ample opportunity to gaze at her ankles as she dashed along the platform. The only satisfaction she could own was the knowledge that at least she wore matching stockings and her petticoat was clean. Aunt Caroline did have her uses.

Maybe she could just stare out the window until the train reached Colton, the stop where she would change again for the ride to Scofield. She looked at the man seated across the aisle from her, regarding her with a smile.

He tipped his bowler hat to her. “I know this is forward, miss, but are you the new schoolteacher for Winter Quarters?” he asked, leaning across the aisle. “Mr. Bowman—he teaches grades four through six—mentioned a teacher was due any time now. I'm on the school board.”

“Yes, sir. I'm Miss Anders,” she said, leaning toward him to hold out her hand.

“Emil Isgreen.” He shook her hand. “Do you mind?” he asked, indicating the seat across from her.

I'd better not mind; you're on the school board
, she thought as she gave him her sunniest smile.

He joined her, taking off his bowler and setting his black bag at his feet. She looked at the bag, which had the initials E.I., and looked like a physician's satchel. His eyes followed the direction of her gaze.

“I'm the Winter Quarters surgeon,” he explained. “I've been visiting my folks in Tooele.”

“Pleased to meet you,” she said. She couldn't help notice that his own accent had a lilt to it, which made her suspect he was one of the many in Winter Quarters that Uncle Jesse said were at least some part foreign. “Are there many physicians in Winter Quarters?”