Carla Kelly (5 page)

“That's a new one,” Israel said. “I could like it.”

She glared at him, which made Emil grin.

“I've heard a bunch of stories already,” Israel said. “You'd be amazed how fast news travels up and down the canyon. The place had been uninhabited for several years, and winters up here are rough on empty buildings. And summers aren't so warm! The school custodian claims he lit a fire in the kitchen range to warm it up a bit while he swept. He left for lunch, and apparently the stovepipe was clogged with birds’ nests, or maybe old miners. The heat gathered around that spot where the pipe leaves the roof, and it was too much. At least that's the story he's sticking to.”

Della couldn't see any point in mourning the loss of not much. “Mr. Bowman, the district office sent a letter which mentioned that you live in a boardinghouse …”

“… which I wouldn't recommend to any woman younger than eighty-nine,” he said, his voice firm. “A miners’ boardinghouse is no place for a lady.”

“What do you recommend?”

Della wondered how successful Mr. Bowman was at keeping order in his class, because his eyes were so kind. “First, I recommend that you call me Israel. Then I recommend …” He paused. “Um, are you, do you go to … ?”

“I recently had this awkward conversation with Dr. Isgreen,” Della joked. “Yes, I'm a Mormon. See? I know the code words.”

“Then you know where I'm going to take you.”

“The bishop.”

“None other.”

After the short line railroad pulled away to a siding, Heikki and Juho Luoma took her trunk to the track that branched south. Emil Isgreen kept his grip on her carpet-bag, and Israel offered her his arm to help her across the track.

Della looked back at the depot. “We don't need a ticket?”

“Mercy, no. See that little engine and flatbed?”

She nodded and took a tighter grip on her hat. “I have a feeling …”

“There's always a miner's coach in the winter, but sometimes it's casual in the summer.” He waited while the Finns hefted her trunk onto the flatbed, then came toward her, full of good cheer. “Hang onto your hat and keep smiling.”

Della couldn't help her shriek as Juho picked her up and held her up to Heikki, already on the flatbed. He caught her as though she weighed nothing and escorted her to the center of the flatbed.

“Sit, professor,” he said, with a courtly bow.

Della did as he said. She thought about the Rules for Teachers and the rule not to ride in a carriage or automobile with any man unless he was a relative. There wasn't anything about a flatbed car, so she felt inclined to overlook the matter. Della glanced at her dress hem, which modestly brushed her shoe tops. Of course, when Juho tossed her up to the flatbed, her ankles were probably exposed, along with both those petticoats the list said she should wear.

If I had a canary—maybe there's one in the mine nearing retirement age—I would line his cage with the Rules for Teachers
, she thought. She smiled at the doctor, who seated himself beside her, and then at Israel, her fellow education-ist, already allies.

“You look surprisingly calm about this,” Israel commented. “You should have seen the teacher who came here in July for a look around.” He shook his head. “No spirit of adventure.”

The train chugged through Scofield, stopping twice to let on miners, who looked her over and talked among themselves. For the most part they were dressed in black overalls, fragrant with the odor of sulfur and coal. Each man carried a round tin lunch box.

“Afternoon shift starts in half an hour,” the doctor said. “I'd say not quite half of the mine crew lives in Scofield. They can buy their own homes there.”

“But not in Winter Quarters?” she asked, hanging onto her hat again as they started up the slight grade toward the canyon mouth.

“Nope. That's Pleasant Valley Coal Company property,” Israel chimed in. “You can build your own shack there, but it's on company land and not yours.”

Della smiled when one of the miners started to sing, and the others joined in. The tune was familiar, but the language was not. She looked back toward Scofield, impressed with the sweep of the valley that stretched toward the lower rim of softly rounded hills, first in a series of mountains that made her wonder if this was what the top of the world looked like. She remembered the sheltering valley of the Molly Bee, where her father died. The thought made her swallow, but that could have been the effects of altitude.

“Papa,” she murmured, her voice too low to be heard over the engine and the sweet singing, her lips barely moving. “I think I could be home.”

The train slowed and stopped at the canyon mouth, close to a frame building.

“My hospital and posh digs,” Dr. Isgreen announced. “Miss Anders, if you need anything, I am a mere house call away.” Two of the miners helped him down.

They continued the climb into the canyon, which narrowed almost immediately. Israel moved in front of her. “I'm not being forward,” he told her, “but the grade gets steep and we'd be sadly disappointed if you sailed off the back end. I'd probably never forgive myself. Hang onto me.”

Della gripped his shoulder as the truth of his words came home quickly. It touched her that at least half of the miners moved in front of her too, bracing themselves against the lip of the flatcar so there was no way she could slide off.

“I guess they want a teacher for their children,” she said.

“Miss Anders, you can't fathom how much they want us here,” Israel told her. “It's all about their children.”

Emil was right; Winter Quarters Canyon was tight and ugly, with two- and three-room shacks marching up the canyon's inclines with no rhyme or reason to roads. The rails ran parallel to a dirt road, which edged near a stream. Any trees had been cut down long ago.

She looked around at the disorder and the ugliness, her face thoughtful. She glanced at the miners bracing themselves in front of her and realized with a jolt that they were watching her expression, wary and careful.
They're hoping I like it here. They want me to like their canyon
, she thought. The enormity of what she was about to do this school year grabbed her heart and she felt tears welling in her eyes.

Horrified, she glanced at the miner seated closest to her, who surely could see her tears.
Please, please don't let him think for one second that I don't want to be here
, she prayed in her heart.

Without a word, he handed her a handkerchief. It was snowy white, and she thought of her father, who made sure he always carried a clean handkerchief into the mine. “No telling when I might need it,” he had told her. His handkerchiefs were always black with rock dust when he came out. She took the handkerchief, smiled her thanks, and dabbed at her eyes.

“Cinders, miss?” the man asked. His voice had a delightful lilt.

She nodded, hesitated, then handed back the slightly damp handkerchief. “I should probably launder it for you first,” she said.

The miner shook his head. “I'm now the envy of nations,” he told her, and the lilt in his voice made the statement a question. Della told herself this must be one of the Welshmen Uncle Jesse had mentioned.

The grade steepened and the little engine slowed. Della felt more at ease as the grade leveled out a little.

Israel Bowman appointed himself her tour guide, gesturing toward a building in a row of shacks pointed this way and that. “The saloon. You'll hear any number of sermons against it.”

“You said this was coal company land.”

“It is. The Pleasant Valley Coal Company can shut it down anytime it wants.” He chuckled. “Of course, all the Finns, the Poles, and most of the Austrian miners would leave. Maybe some of the Mormons.”

The train slowed even more as they passed two long, two-story buildings. With what looked like practiced ease, several miners standing by the track held out their hands and other miners on the flatbed pulled them aboard.

“That's the bunk house and one of the boarding houses,” her colleague said.

The newcomers gave her the same swift once over, then seated themselves close by, everyone apparently determined that she not slide off the flatbed.

Her colleague nudged her. “That's the LDS meetinghouse,” he said as they passed a frame, single story building. “Sunday School at 10:00 a.m. Sacrament meeting at 2:00.”

She nodded. “And that?” she asked, pointing to a stone building close to the tracks.

“Our destination. It's the Wasatch Store—company store and office for the coal company.” He tapped the man next to him, the one whose handkerchief she had used. “Would you pass the word to the engineer to come to a full stop here? I'd hate to lose a certified teacher.”

“Especially a pretty one,” the miner said, with a wink that made Della blush.

Sure-footed, he stood up and walked toward the engine. In another minute, the train came to a stop by the loading dock, which looked so far below.

Eyes wide, Della watched as one of the miners tossed her carpetbag to someone on the dock, and the Luoma brothers handed off her trunk. Israel stood up and held out his hand for her.

“Hmm,” he said, eyeing the distance from the flatbed to the loading dock. He looked at her. “Are you game?”

“I'm here,” she reminded him, calculating the distance.

“Hand me your hat,” Israel said. “It'll never survive this on your head.”

She did as he said. He sailed it across the space and into the hands of a young man in shirtsleeves who didn't look like a miner.

“Stand right here,” the teacher said. He pantomimed to a sturdy-looking miner on the dock, who took a stance and held out his hands.

“Oh, no!” Della exclaimed, as Juho Luoma picked her up and carried her to the edge of the flatbed. “This isn't a good—”

She could have saved her breath. Della closed her eyes as Juho tossed her down to the dock and the miner caught her. She grabbed him around the neck, and he made strangling noises, which made all the men on the flatbed laugh.

“Miss, I'd never drop you,” he told her, setting her down as carefully as if she were her aunt's Limoges china. “If I did, Bishop Parmley would make me draw my time. Welcome to Winter Quarters.”

Della took a deep breath as Israel nimbly scrambled down the flatbed to the dock. “Nothing to it,” he told her.

She nodded her thanks to the miner, who took her by the elbow and moved her farther away from the edge of the loading dock. Della pointed to a frame building close to the Wasatch Store. “That's the school?”

“It is.”

“Here's your hat, miss.”

Della turned around to accept her hat from a young man with curly hair, a southern accent, and a shy smile.

“Clarence Nix, ma'am. I clerk here.”

She held out her hand to him. “I think I teach here.” Now that everyone on the loading dock had seen more than two inches above her ankles and both of her petticoats, she mentally discarded the Rules for Teachers. After stuffing in a few hairpins jarred loose, Della set her hat on her head again. Israel indicated the wooden steps up to the store and then a set of covered steps up the back of the building.

“Mr. Parmley might be here, or he might be in a mine,” he said, leading the way.

Parmley's secretary, an older lady with a dignified air, smiled at her. “You're the first teacher that ever came on the flatbed,” she said. “It's too late to tell you never to listen to anything Mr. Bowman suggests.” She stared down Della's colleague over the top of her spectacles. “Israel Whitaker Bowman, your mother should horsewhip you.”

“I'm safe. She lives in Provo,” he said, not at all perturbed. “Is the bishop here?”

She gave him another look. “And where would he be at shift change? And you are
not
to take this nice young lady to the portal!”

“I've … I've been to portals before,” Della said. “My father was a miner in Colorado.”

She said it softly, as if testing the waters, remembering all the times her aunt had told her never to mention her father. “We will not talk about him,” Aunt Caroline had told her when she had arrived, twelve and sad.

“I had no idea. Want to walk to the portal? I'll be careful with her, Mrs. Perkins,” Israel said, as though she had suddenly turned into an even more precious commodity.

Mrs. Perkins ruffled through the paperwork on her desk and held up a telegram. “
The
Mr. Jesse Knight sent a telegram to Mr. Parmley about you,” she said to Della. “You have distinguished relatives.”

“Uncle Jesse is a shirttail relative, to be sure,” Della explained, feeling her heart sink. “He's more my aunt's relative than mine.”

“Shirttail or not, Mr. Parmley raised his eyes at that one!” the secretary exclaimed, and there was no mistaking the deference in her voice.

“Jesse Knight,” Bowman said as they walked down the outside stairs. “And Karl Anders the railroad lawyer is your uncle? Miss Anders, why on earth are you
here
?”

“I want to be here,” she said simply. “That's all.”

Her trunk with her shabby carpetbag perched on top had been moved next to the outside wall of the building and had a sign on it: “Hands off! This is our teacher's duffle” that was written in ink but smudged with black fingerprints.