Carla Kelly (37 page)

He looked at her a long moment, just long enough to make her feel shy. “You continue to surprise me, miss.”

“Don't know why,” she told the closed door after he left. “
You
can't help being charming, and
I'm
a butterbean.”

Della took a last look in the mirror and picked up her pumpkin pie. She walked carefully on the wagon road, which had been cleared off and on when the snow had let up during the week. In the church basement, she and her little committee hung the construction paper chains that the Primary children had made that week, during what would have been lesson time. Butcher paper from the slaughterhouse above Finn Town covered the tables, which were already filling up with pies and the occasional cake.

The old Della made her panic for a moment. Suppose no one showed up? The whole thing was her idea, and it could be a perfect failure. She looked at Tamris Powell, who had taken a moment to nurse Maryone under her all-encompassing shawl. “Will people come?”

Tamris just rolled her eyes. “You're about to discover how much everyone in this canyon likes a party! Did Brother Richard tell you there will be dancing too?”

“My goodness, no. But the whole purpose of this is to tune the piano, so how …”

“Violins, a guitar, drums, more violins, and even a bagpipe, unless someone hides it from Brother Hood! You worry too much, Della.”

“I suppose I do,” Della said. She pushed the old Della into an empty closet in her mind and locked the door.

She wondered why she had ever worried. The lowceilinged hall underneath the chapel was full of canyon-dwellers and families from Scofield, ready to auction pies.

Bishop Parmley's biggest contribution of the evening was Andrew Jackson Franklin, from Number Four, via North Carolina, who proved to be an actual auctioneer. “I heard him muttering to himself in the pit one day, when the Welshmen were singing,” Bishop Parmley said. “Andy, you have the floor.”

The miners looked at each other when the auctioneer held up a cherry pie and started his bid-calling patter. Their fervent applause at his double-tongue ability made him stop and bow before continuing. The cherry pie sold for fifty cents, which astonished everyone.

“It's just cherries, not solid gold,” the cherry pie maker said, dazed. “I give the credit to Andy. He can auction
anything
.”

When Andy held up the vinegar pie, looking humble as all vinegar pies look, and announced its ingredients, Della raised her hand. “I love vinegar pie,” she announced. “Fifty cents.”

Andy grinned and pointed his gavel—someone had borrowed the gavel from the Odd Fellows Hall. “Trust the little lady down front with the curly hair! Fifty now fifty now fifty, what am I what am I bid what am I bid bid bid?”

He got the pie up to two dollars and declared Della the winner. She held up her hand. “Not so fast! Angharad made this,
not
Owen! It's edible.”

Owen clutched his chest to Angharad's delight. She propped him up. “Really, Da.”

With a grin, Andy pointed his gavel at Della. “But you're the one paying. It's a bargain now.”

“
I
want a piano tuned, and I know Angharad is a pastry chef,” Della said. “We didn't even let Owen
touch
it.”

Andy kept going as his audience laughed, then nick-led and dimed the price up another dollar, still declaring her the winner. Della elaborately counted out three dollars and handed it to Brother Evans with a flourish. She curtsied when Angharad handed her the pie, with a flourish of her own.

“I'm having fun,” Angharad whispered. “So's Da, and that makes me happy.”

Della looked around the room. People were eating pie and some were dancing. She glanced at Owen and Emil Isgreen, standing together and laughing. She made another discovery—just a modest one: She was happy too.

wenty, twenty-five, thirty.” Tamris Powell looked around at the choir. “Thirty dollars for one piano tuner.”

“We are rich,” Angharad said solemnly, sitting on her father's lap, her eyes half-closed.

Owen put his arms around his daughter. “It was positively cutthroat.” He looked over Angharad's head to Della. “And when those men in your boardinghouse ganged up on Dr. Isgreen over your pumpkin pie …” He shook his head. “I anticipated bloodshed.”

“Tell me, Della, is this one of those skills you brought from Salt Lake City?” Richard Evans asked as he took the money from Tamris, stared at it a moment, and handed it to Bishop Parmley.

“Brother Evans, I have never organized anything in my life! Choir secretary may be the best thing that ever happened to me,” Della said as amazed as any of them.

“Then you'd better set your goals a little higher,” Tamris teased. “Five dollars for a pumpkin pie?” She laughed. “And pumpkin pie only has a bottom crust. My dear, you are the belle of Winter Quarters Canyon!”

“Oh, that was just a boardinghouse of miners pitching in two bits each,” Della said, embarrassed. “They probably just don't want me to spit in their scrambled eggs come Sunday morning.” She blushed and glanced at the bishop. “Oops. ’Scuze me.”

“Then explain why they all insisted on dancing with you?” Tamris asked, when the laughter died.

“Whatever it was, we can get the piano tuned now,” Richard said. “Della, could you write your Provo relatives and see if they know of a piano tuner willing to risk life and limb to come here in winter?”

“I'll do it tomorrow,” she said, happy to change the subject. Her feet ached from all that dancing, and she wanted to hurry home and soak them in hot water before bed. “How about this? In her last letter, my Aunt Amanda told me I could invite someone to come along for Thanksgiving. That's as good a time as any to make arrangements for a piano tuner, and at no cost to anyone except train fare.”

“I believe you're right,” Richard said. He looked at his wife. “I'd send Martha, but who would cook the Evanses’ turkey?” He looked at Owen next. “I believe we should send the worst cook with you, Della. No one wants him here at Thanksgiving.”

“I second that,” Tamris said.

Owen looked down at Angharad, asleep now. “She goes where I go. Is there room?”

“There is if she doesn't mind sharing a bed with me,” Della said. “I'll write the Knights tomorrow.” She looked around at the choir. “I never thought to ask: Does anyone here actually
play
a piano?”

Half the hands in the choir shot up. “I might have known,” she murmured.

“And that's not even counting the congregation,” Bishop Parmley said. He stood up. “Scatter away now, all of you! Priesthood meeting is still at eight in the morning.”

Tired down to her toenails, Della pulled on her coat and looked out the door. Snow was falling again, but lightly this time, almost like a benediction to the success of the evening. Satisfied, she watched the choir members and their families walk away together, laughing and talking, bumping into each other the way people do who know each other well. As she started up the slope alone, she missed Emil Isgreen. He had been called away to a delivery, which meant she lost her escort.

She saw Mabli walking ahead of her, but William Goode walked beside her. Angharad had been right—the shy Englishman had bought Mabli's apple pie for an impressive dollar and a quarter.

“Slow down there, miss. Where's the fire?”

Pleased, she turned around. Owen had roused Angharad enough to put her on his shoulders, but her head drooped over his. “I'm not gentlemanly enough to walk you all the way to the boardinghouse, but only because Angharad is sleepy.”

She waited for him. “I never expected it.”

“Maybe you need bigger expectations, Butterbean.”

“Would I know what to do with them?” She fell silent then as they passed the school. Della looked back and saw a light burning on the lower level, where Miss Clayson lived. “Do you know, I didn't even invite her,” she said. “I should have.” She shook her head. “Life is full of a lot of ‘should haves,’ isn't it?”

“Too many by half,” he agreed. “How is Billy Evans doing now?”

She knew a change of subject when she heard one. “I know he knows how to read, because his eyes follow the words when I point them out, and he can answer most questions about the book. He's just not brave.”

“Do this for me: Monday afternoon, measure Billy, then leave that broom outside your class. I'll get it on the way up from the pit. It'll be long after school is out and he has gone home, because I'm staying late to shore some timber. I'll have the broom by your classroom door on Tuesday morning. Have Billy measure himself against it.”

“I'll do it. Have you decided what reward you want if—”

“When.”

“—when Billy finally reads?”

“Still thinking. Remember, Monday afternoon.”

She did as Owen asked and leaned the broom against the wall outside her classroom on Monday morning. As she started for home, Della looked back at the Wasatch Store and nearly succumbed, before reminding herself that it was too soon for Mr. Auerbach to respond to her latest letter about Kristina Aho. She also resisted the urge to write to Mr. Auerbach, telling him about the pie auction.
He'll
think I am a pest for writing so often, and I do want that summer job again
, she told herself.

She had thought there would be plenty of time to read a magazine while she sat in the library, but she was wrong. Between recommending books, checking out others, and chatting with the patrons, the Regulator chimed nine before she knew it. She started arranging the newspapers and was soon joined by her German and a swarthy man from Italy who bowed like a count and informed her that he had come to take the place of Remy Ducotel. “I am Nicola Anselmo, strong man,” he said in careful but fervent English as he pounded his chest.

She hid her smile and nodded graciously in turn, already knowing how futile it was to argue with men possessing limited English but boundless chivalry.

When she got home, she went to the boardinghouse kitchen, where Mabli was still cleaning up. “You seem to have lost your cadre of helpers,” Della said, tying on an apron.

“I don't mind,” Mabli said as she swept the floor. “What that tells me is that their fathers and brothers have plenty of work in the mines now and don't need a handout, no matter how we try to disguise it.” She leaned on her broom. “How many hungry days did you have at the Molly Bee?”

“Probably as many as … as my friends have here,” Della said, “only I didn't have a kindly Welsh lady who ran a kitchen.”

Mabli winked back tears. “I wish there had been someone to help you.”

“You can't help everyone in the world,” Della told her, touched. “My Aunt Caroline assured me my growth was stunted because my father was a miserable provider.”

“Shame on her!”

“I don't fault her now,” Della said, surprised at herself for coming to the defense of such a woman. “She just wanted me to be tall, blond, and blue-eyed, like all the Anderses. I used to wish for that too.”

“But not now?”

“No. I like what I see in the mirror.” She giggled and pounded her chest. “I am Della Anders, strong woman!” she declared, which meant she had to tell Mabli about Nicola Anselmo, her new escort.

The broom was waiting outside her classroom door the next morning. She thought Owen might have left a note, but there was none, which disappointed her. When the children hurried outside for their midmorning recess, she kept Billy Evans back a moment and asked him to line up beside the broom.