Carla Kelly (59 page)

“I think everyone is headed to the Number One portal,” he said, more calm now. “It connects with the Number Four and it's easier to get into. They'll start a rescue from that direction. Come on.”

She picked up her skirts and kept up with him, reaching the milling mass of women, silent now and anxious. The look of terror had been replaced by hope. They reached the portal, which was level with the roadway, unlike the Number Four, which was up a steep incline. Standing on the edge of the circle, she watched as a crew of six or seven men started into the mine. The silence was almost palpable, everyone straining forward, eager to see living men.

Her eyes searched the edge of the crowd, where miners stood with their blackened faces, bent over, some of them retching, the survivors. They must have run from the Number One when they heard the explosion in Four. Some of the women in the crowd had run forward now with little cries of relief, grabbing their husbands and sons, trying to hold onto them everywhere, heedless of the carbon transferring to their clothing. Their men were alive. For the smallest moment, Della hated those women with a ferocity that left her shaking.

Her attention returned to the Number One portal, where the rescuers, barely in, came staggering out, two of them carrying a man between them. Another man was slung over someone's back. The portly man—she recognized Bishop Parmley—waved everyone away. “Afterdamp! Go back!”

The crowd edged back and watched as the rescuers lowered one man to the ground. He was clean and Della realized he must have been one of the rescuers who just went in. She watched in horror as another man breathed into his mouth, then turned away, shoulders sagging. Someone else covered the rescuer's face with his own jacket.

“No,” Della whispered. She clutched the man standing next to her, one of the fanway engineers with a son in her class. “Afterdamp?”

“It's the gas that rises after an explosion,” he explained, his voice oddly mechanical. “It's deadly quick and it's killing the rescuers.” He turned bleak eyes on her. “Miss Anders, no one else is going to come out of these mines alive. I'm sorry to tell you that. Seems rude of me. My mother would not approve.”

She shook her head at the odd disconnect of people saying the strangest things. Maybe that was what terror and shock did to ordinarily rational beings. Hadn't she run back to the school for Franklin Rainbow Colors when she knew there must be a drawer of lead pencils in the Wasatch Store?

The engineer forced his way through the crowd and went to Bishop Parmley, who nodded and pointed. A handful of men sprinted to the fan house, ready to do whatever it took to get the air circulating in the mine again.

The full horror of the last half hour descended on the milling crowd of women. Della flinched and put her hands over her ears as the most unearthly wail rose, women keening for their dead, crying for their men who had kissed them good-bye that morning and walked into the Number Four and Number One, Utah's safest mines. Della felt her skin crawl at the age-old sound of mourning for the dead.

Feeling one hundred years old, Della walked back toward the schoolhouse. After a few feet, her legs failed her, and she sank to the road. All the pins in her hair were gone. Her black hair that Owen had fingered at least once, settled wild and curly around her face. She wanted to lie down and die, pulling the soil over her until she was deep underground herself. The only thing that got her to her feet was the thought of Angharad, alone and frightened.

“I will be your dragon,” she said, her words distinct. “I
am
your dragon.”

ella returned to the school, turning around to look once at the mouth of the underworld. Funny that she could get used to the smell of charred flesh. So much smoke still poured from the little side canyon housing the Number Four portal that the sun had dimmed. She watched, her eyes dull, as women from Scofield began to run up the road, heading for the mines.

She turned away, already weary of their anxious expressions. “Heavenly Father, this is going to be the longest day of our lives,” she prayed out loud. “Give us the strength to get through it in a manner pleasing to Thee.”

Della squared her shoulders and walked toward Miss Clayson's classroom. The children looked up expectantly, hope on their faces because they knew teachers had all the answers. She gazed at them, drawing strength from some reservoir not of her own creation. She wanted to smile away their fears, but she couldn't. She glanced at Miss Clayson and cleared her throat.

“I won't tell you that things are good right now. They are not. There is great confusion, and we are better off here. Miss Clayson, I suggest that we go downstairs. I hope that those of you who brought lunches today will be willing to share them. Let's make ourselves as comfortable as possible downstairs.”

She held out her arms for Angharad, who leaned against her.

“Da?”

“I haven't found him yet, my dearest. I
will
find him. Let me get my magic paper and crayons. We can all use them today. Go on downstairs. I'll be there soon.”

Miss Clayson followed her into her classroom, taking the paper and crayons, while Della gathered lunch boxes.

“How bad is it?” Miss Clayson whispered.

“I do not know how it could be worse,” Della said simply. “There appear to be very few survivors from Number One, and they have not even got into Number Four because of the debris from the explosion.”

“Oh, my dear,” Miss Clayson said.

Della just shook her head and walked ahead with all the lunch boxes she could carry. Downstairs, Miss Clayson and the older girls brought more food and utensils out of her little apartment, while the boys arranged chairs. Trust Miss Clayson to find something for everyone to do. Angharad helped her carry the last of the lunch boxes downstairs.

“We could get the rest of the tissue paper and wire twists and make more flowers,” the child said.

“That is a wonderful idea,” Della said.

“I'll help.”

Della looked at Angharad, so willing and so determined to stay beside her. For a small moment etched forever in her mind, she saw herself after Papa died, eyes hollow, trying so hard to make sense out of the senseless. She saw a young girl with a tag around her neck, taking a train to Salt Lake City. As she watched her new daughter, Della said good-bye to that other girl so friendless. Angharad's story would be different; Della would spend her life making it different.

“Where is my da?” she asked, when they stood in the classroom again.

Della knelt beside her. The shrieks were growing louder as the scope of the disaster made itself clear to the newly arrived women from Scofield. For a moment she gently put her hands over Angharad's ears. Just as gently, Angharad removed them, awesome in her own dignity, a child of the mines.

“Da is dead, isn't he?”

“I fear so, dearest.”

In tears, Angharad melted into Della's embrace. They sobbed together, holding tight, drowning out the terrible noise on the wagon road, mourning the man they loved. They cried every tear there was, ever since Eve first realized how much she was going to miss the Garden of Eden. When they finished, they looked into each other's eyes, a family still, or maybe a family in spite of unmanageable pain that would somehow be managed in the years ahead.

“My nose is running,” Angharad said.

“So is mine. Here, I have a petticoat. Blow.”

They both did. “Better now?” Della asked, smoothing down her dirty skirt. “We have work to do.”

Angharad puffed out her cheeks and blew in perfect imitation of her father, and Della turned away to collect herself. When she looked back, she was Angharad's mother.

“You carry the wires and I'll get the paper. March, missy.”

Downstairs, Miss Clayson had organized everyone to form a lunch line, while the older girls set out the food, mostly bread and butter.

“We'll have a blessing, Miss Clayson,” Della said, folding her arms. “That's what these children do. Bow your heads, my dears.”

In a voice that only faltered a few times, Della asked a blessing on their lunch, eaten two hours late, and asked the Lord to look with favor on their canyon. That was all she could say. After the children were served, she shook her head when Miss Clayson held out a sandwich.

Her lips tight, Miss Clayson put it in her hand and closed her fingers around it. “Eat,” she insisted in the tone that meant no argument was allowed. Della ate, keeping it down by sheer willpower.

In a few minutes, Miss Clayson had organized the children into two groups. In one, the older girls took turns reading to the younger children. In the other, Angharad and her friends, their fingers sure and steady, taught the other grades how to make paper flowers. Della felt her heart start beating again to see the quiet order in the gymnasium.

A little later, she heard someone come down the stairs and looked around to see Israel Bowman. He was dirty, covered with carbon, and smelled like death. Moving slowly, so as not to frighten the children, Della and Miss Clayson walked a few steps up the stairs and sat him down.

While Della held his hand, Miss Clayson got a sandwich and a handful of dried apples she had been saving for him. When he shook his head, Miss Clayson gave him The Look. He ate, chewing so long that Della had to gently remind him to swallow.

“Here is what I know and what you must do,” he said when he could speak. “So far there are fifty bodies in the Edwards boardinghouse, since it's the closest to the Number One portal. More are being brought out.”

Without a word, Della and Miss Clayson joined hands.

“Bishop has organized a team of men to remove their clothes and wash them. They're wrapping them in brattice cloth.” He hauled out his pocket watch as though it weighed fifty pounds. “He's having them brought here within the hour. The classrooms will become morgues. I need to get the older boys to help me shove the desks to one side or into the hall.”

Miss Clayson nodded. “We can do that.”

“We'll have to hurry. Sister Parmley is going from woman to woman, telling them to fetch their children and take them home. Andrew Hood will …”

“Oh, thank God,” Della interrupted. “He's alive.”

Israel nodded. “He was at the entrance to Number One and escaped the afterdamp. He's organizing volunteers to push back the benches in the chapel for another morgue.”

Della couldn't help her inarticulate moan. She clapped her hand over her mouth and glanced at the children, who were still busy with paper flowers. Miss Clayson's grip tightened on her free hand.

“It won't be enough, Della,” Israel said. “When things are sorted out here, I'm sure a lot of the … men will go to Scofield's school too.”

They sat in silence a moment, then Della had to know. “What of the Number Four?”

He shook his head. “I came from there. The rescue team has cleared enough of the debris to open the mine.” He leaned against her, and she smelled the death on him. “Oh, Della! They're only in about two hundred feet and everyone is burned to death. One man is alive, but who knows for how long.”

She nodded, her eyes blurry with more tears. Israel stood up. “I have to go back to Number Four. We're putting those bodies in sacks and taking them to the boardinghouse.” He shook his head. “And Clarence is looking at every dead man's face. He's even trying to identify the unidentifiable.”

“He thought that would be his job,” Della said. “Poor Clarence.”