Carla Kelly (10 page)

Miss Clayson was saying something else, but it wasn't registering because suddenly Della remembered the look in the miners’ eyes when they knew she was going to teach their children. She thought of Owen Davis and all the letters he had carved. Heaven knows how long it had taken him, and she was going to surrender so soon?

No, I'm not
, she thought.
I wouldn't dare and call myself a miner's daughter, because that is what I am
. For the first time in her life, that thought gave her strength instead of shame.

“Miss Clayson, I wore this old dress because I plan to clean my classroom today,” Della said, riding over the principal's ongoing critique, even as she cringed to be so rude. “I have shirtwaists and dark skirts that all end about two inches above the floor. My hair is my hair and I do my best. Excuse me now; I have work to do.”

Silence seemed to hum in the air. Della heard the tipple roar in the distance.
I'm doing this for you, Papa
, she told herself as she looked Miss Clayson in the eye. “Let us begin again,” she said, her voice firm. “I am Miss Anders from Salt Lake City, and I have been hired by the district to teach the younger grades in the Winter Quarters School. I have two years’ experience, and I am a good teacher.”

“We shall see about that,” Miss Clayson said, but the bluster was gone. “You'll find a mop and broom in the hall closet. Good day now.” She turned on her heel and left the room.

Before she closed the door, Miss Clayson turned back, drawing herself up tall. “Do bear this in mind, Miss Anders—there will be no fancy airs in my school. I do not care who your uncle is.” She closed the door with a decisive click.

Della dug her toes into the soles of her shoes to keep from running to the door to see if she was locked in.
I am being absurd
, she told herself.

Della sank into the nearest chair. She had never spoken like that to anyone in her life. And there it was again, coming to haunt her. She rested her elbows on the desk, chin in hand. “It appears I am never going to be free of you, Uncle Karl, no matter how hard I try,” she murmured into her hands. “I just want to be Della Anders.”

She sat in silence, wondering what had just happened, and wondering if the woman had a good side.
Was there something I was supposed to say and do, and I didn't?
she asked herself, bewildered. She would have to ask Israel Bowman.

Della took a deep breath and looked around her classroom. Gradually, the calm and order in the empty room crowded out the distress of her first encounter with her principal. She looked toward the front of the room with its blackboard and the usual portrait of George Washington above it. There was an American flag in the corner and a Regulator clock ticking next to George. If Owen Davis was right, somewhere in the room were hand-carved alphabet letters. She stood up, straightened her dress, and walked to the front of the class, counting the desks—twenty-five desks, five to a row. In another week there would be pupils in here, some of them eager, some of them reluctant, and maybe some knowing no English. It would be a class much like the one she had taught on Salt Lake's west side.

She glanced out the windows. Three windows. She had enough construction paper to make autumn leaves for the windows. She would make a few and her students would make more, following her lead because she was their teacher and meant to give them her knowledge, her skill, and her heart. So what if there was a gargoyle living in the basement? Della had signed her contract and she would teach.

Decisive now, she went to the cabinets on the interior wall, opening one after the other to see books in neat rows. Her heart slowed to its normal rhythm as she read the familiar spines and felt her confidence returning—
American Speller
;
McGuffey's Eclectic Reader Grades One through Three
;
Our Amazing World
;
Arithmetic for Elementary Grades
. She reached further into the cabinet and pulled out a poster that made her eyes widen. “ ‘Black powder and blasting caps are dangerous! Do not touch!’ ” she murmured out loud. An attached note read, “Display in all classrooms in Carbon County, by order of Gomer Thomas, Utah Inspector of Mines.”

Very well
, she told herself.
These will be the first words we learn
.

She looked in the top drawer of her desk, found a thumbtack, and tacked the poster to the cork board next to the blackboard. “Miss Clayson is dangerous!” she whispered and chuckled. “Avoid at all costs!”

She opened another cabinet and sighed out loud. “My stars, you are a wonder, Brother Davis,” she said. He must have built the boxes too. A smile on her face, Della lifted out seven wooden boxes, each with four compartments, and set them on an empty table by the cabinets. Each compartment was divided in half, with lowercase and uppercase letters carved simply. She held one up. It would be easy to see from any place in the room.

She looked closer, enchanted to see a tiny carved lion on each piece. She had noticed the lion on the carving over his door, along with flowers.
Who has this kind of patience?
she asked herself as she touched the letters.

Della looked in the cabinet again and pulled out a flat board, sanded and painted white, with wooden pegs in even rows. “You thought of everything, Owen Davis,” she said as she propped the board on the blackboard trough. It would be an easy matter to put up the alphabet for learning, and then simple sentences and more complex ones later on. This was an elementary teacher's dream come true, all from a Welsh coal miner who loved wood.

She had come into the school with a light heart, until Miss Clayson scared away her helpers and bruised her ego. As she looked at the letters, the bruise faded. Humming to herself, Della found the letters for her name and attached them to the board: Della Anders. She started to go to the back of the room to see the effect, then stopped, returning to the board and moving her last name down several pegs. She found the letters for Olympia and attached them underneath Della, then went to the back of the room.

Perfect. “Della Olympia Anders,” she said.

She left the letters on the board and went in search of the broom and mop. There was a pump out back, so she filled the pail in the closet and carried it inside, pouring in some of the industrial powders that every schoolhouse in Utah probably had in its custodial closet. The familiar scent soothed her heart even more. By the time the floor was mopped, her heart was entirely right again.

Chin in hand, she perched herself on a desk in the back row while the floor dried. The room was warm with sunshine. She could clean the windows on Monday and maybe give the books a good dusting. There would be bulletin boards to do, lessons to plan. Maybe if she worked up her nerve, she could ask Miss Clayson if there was a roster of her students, so she could visit them. Probably Sister Parmley and the bishop would know everyone; it might be safer to ask them.

She went to the front of the room again and pulled down the maps, one by one, looking out the window to see miners moving along the one road through Winter Quarters. Maybe it was shift change. She listened for the roar of coal in the tipple and wondered how distracting that would be for her students.

Della returned her attention to the maps, looking at Europe the longest. Aunt Caroline had said they would sail to Southampton and then spend a week in London, followed by a night crossing from Dover to Calais. Paris in late summer was next, followed by the Cote d'Azur, Monte Carlo, and then Rome and Florence. Her hand went to the islands of Greece. She wondered just where it was her mother had come from.

She heard the door open and froze, hoping it wasn't Miss Clayson come to ruin her daydream.

“I couldn't figure out how to attach periods and commas. They were too small for my drill bit and pegs.”

Della turned around with a smile. Owen Davis stood in the doorway, his hands clean but every other part of him black with coal. He set down his round lunch box and moved down the aisle, appraising the letters on the board.

“Olympia. What a magnificent name,” he said. “Olympia. That's a name to dust off and use, every chance you get. Even better than Helen of Troy. Olympia. A name fit for the gods. And goddesses.”

“My father called me Oly, now and then,” Della said, suddenly shy. She blushed and changed the subject. “If you could carve some commas and periods, I think I could glue them to thumbtacks.”

Owen smacked his head and the coal dust flew. “Of course! Consider it done.”

“You're a patient man,” she said. “It must have taken forever to carve all those tiny lions.”

“Dragons,” he corrected. “
Y Draig Goch
. On my national flag—at least, when the English aren't looking.”

“Of course,” she said, smiling. “I have a lot to learn. You did this for Angharad, didn't you?”

“Of course,” he echoed. “She told me last year that she might be afraid going to school and not being with me or with Richard and Martha Evans. We are all she knows. I want her to look at these letters when I am not with her and realize she is not alone.” It was his turn to look shy now. She could see it through all the coal dust, and it touched her.

“I beg your pardon!”

Startled, Della turned around to see Miss Clayson. What happened next surprised her even more. Owen took a step and stood between her and the principal. With desks on either side of him, there was no way Miss Clayson could reach her, even though Della knew that was not her intent. He had acted out of instinct, and it warmed Della's heart.

“You're making a mess in this classroom. I insist you leave at once. Now!”

Secure behind Owen, Della listened for some hesitancy from the principal, and there it was. Miss Clayson must have felt Owen Davis's instinctive protection too.

“I just wanted to see how Sister Anders was doing,” Owen said, moving aside and toward the door, which made Miss Clayson back up.

Maybe he didn't say it with enough deference. “What is your name?” the principal demanded, even as she backed up. “Mr. Parmley will hear from me!”

“Lloyd Llewellen,” Owen said promptly, which made Della turn around and dig deep to keep from laughing out loud. “Good day, ladies.”

Miss Clayson glared at her. “You would do well to stay away from the miners,” she said.

“Yes, ma'am,” Della replied, not daring to look out the window, in case Owen was standing there. She went to the broom she had leaned against the back all and started sweeping again. When she looked up, Miss Clayson had gone.

Laughing to herself, Della started to take her name off the peg board, but she changed her mind. It could stay there through Sunday and greet her on Monday, when she came back to get ready for school and figure out how to sweeten up the dragon that
wasn't
on the Welsh national flag.

She closed her classroom door and went outside, standing on the steps a moment and looking up the canyon toward the tipple. The day crew must have been busy, because the train was already moving down the slope.

“Is it safe?”

Della looked around to see Owen sitting across the road by the storehouse. She put both hands to her mouth and laughed into them, on the odd chance that Miss Clayson was looking out the upstairs window. She wasn't about to turn around and look.

“Coast is clear,” he said, looking up at the school. “The dragon has returned to her lair.”

“You're going to get someone named Lloyd Llewellen in real trouble, if she complains to Bishop Parmley!”

“Not a chance. Lloyd mines down in Castle Gate.”

“Yes, but when you bring Angharad to school, what will she
think
?” Della asked, when she stopped laughing.

“Still not a chance. When our faces are black, we look all the same to people who don't mine.” He appraised her. “But you knew it was I.”

“Of course,” she said, wondering if all men were so dense. “I know the sound of your voice! I'm good that way.”

He seemed to think about that, then looked over her shoulder at the school. “I wonder why she's so sour. She could make your year here a trial indeed.”

“She already wants me to do something about my hair.”

“Shave your head?” he suggested, and she laughed.

“You're hopeless, and I am going back to the bishop's house.”

He just smiled and tipped his hat again. “And I'm off to collect my lovely daughter. See you in Sunday School tomorrow?”

After the Parmley children were in bed that night and the bishop and Mary Ann Parmley were seated in the parlor, Della told them what had happened in the school between her and Miss Clayson. “I don't know what I did to set her off. I thought she would want another teacher.”

Bishop Parmley put down the newspaper and frowned. “Miss Clayson is an excellent teacher, and a firm disciplinarian, but I never have found her unreasonable,” he said, after some thought. “It may have something to do with what happened to the teacher you are replacing.”

“Did she run off with a coal miner?” Della asked, only half serious.