Carla Kelly (6 page)

“ ‘Our teacher?’ Looks like the miners are already taking care of you,” Israel said with a grin.

“I'm grateful.”
Our teacher
. She had come to teach their children. She felt the magnificence of her profession settle around her.
I've learned a lot today
, Della thought as she walked with Israel and tried not to puff as the road steepened.

He must have noticed that her face was red, because he slowed down. “I forget about the altitude,” he said. “Remind me or just wheeze and clutch your throat.”

Della gestured to the school. “Where's my room?”

“The one on the right. I'm across the hall from you and Miss Clayson is further back,” he said. “I'll take you inside tomorrow to meet her.”

“Where does she live?” Della asked, trying not to wheeze as they walked steadily.

“In the basement. There's a gymnasium too and a small kitchen for home economics, a new course for the upper-grade girls.”

She wanted to comment, but she was finding it harder and harder to breathe.

Israel gave her a thoughtful look. “Della, am I pushing you too hard?”

She stopped and caught her breath, embarrassed as more miners passed them, carrying boxes of what looked like blasting powder, picks, shovels, and lunch pails and talking too. And here she was, barely breathing.

“No,” she gasped. “Well, yes.”

Israel stopped. “We'll wait here.” He scratched his head. “Come to think of it, I doubt you'd want to take the trestle up the incline. It's a true mantrip, with miners sitting knee to knee.”

“Let's not,” she said. Her colleague sat her on a tree stump.

He started to say something, but a sudden roar filled the canyon. Della looked up, startled, then relaxed. She pointed up the canyon again. “The tipple?” she shouted.

Israel nodded.

She wanted to be closer, wanted to see the coal drop into the railroad cars that she could see were backed up much farther into the canyon.

“It's still slow because it's summer,” Israel said, crouching down and practically talking into her ear. “In the winter, engines pulling fifty cars or more are typical.”

Della nodded, her eyes on the coal dust that rose in the distance.

“Miners only work two or three days a week in summer,” Israel told her. “Winter's coming. It'll be six days soon.”

What on earth do they live on in the summer?
Della wondered. She remembered tight times at the Molly Bee, when Papa used to cook Lumpy Dick for breakfast and supper. Early in her stay in Salt Lake City, she had tried to explain Lumpy Dick—flour, boiling milk, and raisins—to her cousins, and they only stared at her with a look of faint disgust. They would never have believed her if she had told them that sometimes it was water instead of milk, when times were really hard.

Black with coal but their teeth shining white, the miners on the early shift were making their way down the incline. Her ears hummed when the tipple's roar stopped, as though the sound had sucked all the air from the canyon. The train started inching toward them as the engine pulled forward to position another car under the tipple.

“Should we just wait for the bishop in his office?” Della asked.

The teacher's eyes were on a round little man coming toward them, carrying a black clipboard. “No need. Here he is.”

Della stood up. Bishop Parmley looked cleaner than the men sauntering along on either side of him, with a watch fob stretched tight across his vest. He looked at her, a smile on his face. In another moment his hand was outstretched, enveloping hers, before he realized how dark it was with coal dust.

“I forget,” he said, by way of greeting. “You're probably the tidiest thing near the trestle. Certainly the prettiest. Sister Parmley will have my hide! Sister Anders, is it?”

Della nodded, suddenly shy but wanting him to speak again, because his English accent was as delightful as his smile. “Yes, sir. I'm teaching the lower grades this year.”

The bishop looked at the man next to him, who was balancing a hand-hewn stake on his shoulder taller than he was. He had obviously been in the mine, but his face was clean. “Owen, your daughter will be in her class, eh?”

“Aye, bishop. Angharad is six,” he said, his voice rising on the end of the sentence, in the way that would set him off forever as a son of Wales. “She can read already, miss.”

“Then she'll be ahead, Mr….”

“Owen Davis,” he said, extending his hand too, after looking at it in such a wry way that Della had to smile.

“I don't mind,” she said as they shook hands. His handshake was as firm as his features.

“You're busy, and I'm interrupting,” she said to Bishop Parmley. “Mr. Bowman wanted me to meet you.”

The bishop looked at her colleague with an expression similar to Mrs. Perkins's expression in the mine office. “Mr. Bowman, the men coming on shift told me you brought this sweet person up here on the flatbed! We should have warned her about you.”

Della decided that nothing perturbed Israel, not even the bishop. “Guilty as charged,” he said, the picture of good cheer. He leaned closer. “Personally, I thought I'd give Miss Anders the trial by fire first, rather than wait until she got here, looked around, and turned us down. She's still here.”

Israel seemed to know how to work over Bishop Parmley, because the mine superintendent started to laugh.

“And you're still a rascal,” the bishop said.

“I know.” Israel said it with such complaisance that Della had to look away too, amused. Maybe everyone loved a rascal.

“
Are
you staying, Miss Anders?”

Della regarded Owen Davis. She had never been one to look men of no acquaintance right in the eye, but she did because he was about her height. She saw the intense expression of the miners on the flatbed mirrored in his brown eyes. He wanted her to succeed for his daughter's sake, and she didn't even know him.

“I'm staying, Mr. Davis, provided someone can find me a place to live.”
I would stay anyway
, she thought,
but you and the bishop don't need to know that
.

“Owen and I have been talking about that very subject,” Bishop Parmley said. “He's my elders quorum president.”

“Oh?”

“Aye, miss. I suggested to the bishop that we put the question to the Sunday School and see what turns up,” Owen Davis said. “That is, if you're not too particular.”

There it was again.
Has everyone heard I am related to Utah's sharpest attorney and actually think it matters?
she asked herself, surprised. “I'm not particular.”

“Then we'll manage, miss—aye, we will.”

magine
that
, Della thought, diverted.

“You'll be auctioned off on Sunday,” Israel teased.

“Mr. Bowman, that's enough,” Owen Davis said.

Della looked at him in surprise. She had a champion ready to defend her, and she didn't even know anything beyond his name and that he had a daughter who could read. She knew that Israel hadn't been fazed by Mrs. Perkins or even Bishop Parmley. There was something in the way Owen Davis bit off the words that brought him up sharp.

“Yes, sir,” the teacher said, serious now, the teasing gone.

What just happened?
Della wanted to ask. There wasn't any tension in the air, just the firm assertion of a man of middling height in dusty coveralls and cap with a miner's lamp. Maybe Owen Davis wasn't as fond of rascals as everyone else, or maybe he was just a man who didn't joke about women.

The storm, if there was one, blew over as quickly as it came. If Bishop Parmley was startled, he recovered quickly. Of course, maybe he knew his miners better than he knew the teachers.

“Mr. Bowman, how about you round up a carter at the store to take Sister Anders's luggage to my house.” The bishop turned to her with a little bow she found as incongruous there in the middle of a dirt road as it was endearing. “My dear, you'll stay with us Parmleys tonight, for sure.” He smiled at her. “We're a bit crowded, but you don't take up much space, I vow.”

“Bishop, I could just as easily stay at a hotel in Scofield,” she began.

Maybe he could tease too. “And risk the danger of you getting on the short line back to Colton?”

Israel tipped his hat to them all and started down the incline, hands in his pockets, strolling along, apparently unruffled by Owen Davis.

“I should apologize, Sister Anders,” Owen said, when Israel was out of earshot. “I didn't mean to be sharp with him, but I don't talk about ladies that way.”

She wanted him to say it all again, because Owen's lilting, rollicking pattern of speech delighted her. “Surely he meant no harm. I think he's just a bit casual.”

“I'm not.”

It was simply said and touched Della more than an ocean of explanation. “Owen, show her to my house, please,” Parmley said. He looked at his clipboard. “Time is money. Sister Anders, we'll make it all right on Sunday.”

“I hope Sister Parmley doesn't mind,” she said, making one last attempt.

“After all these years, she's used to me,” the bishop said simply. “Besides, we discussed the matter at breakfast.” He chuckled. “We discussed the matter the day your wee house burned down!”

With a wave, he left them. Owen Davis picked up the pole as casually as if it weighed nothing and shouldered it again.

“It wasn't much of a house,” he said. “I'm sure you're used to better.”

“I didn't plan to become attached to it. I only signed a one-year contract.”

“I was only going to work here a year and then try the mine lower down in Castle Gate. Plans change.”

As they walked, she found herself laboring to keep up because she was having trouble breathing again. Owen must have noticed, because he slowed down. It embarrassed her to make him walk slower, since he carried such a heavy pole, but she already knew he wasn't a man who would leave her to find her way alone.

After a few more minutes, he stopped outside a three-sided building with other poles in it. He stashed the one he carried and took off the tool belt he wore, putting it in a lock box and securing it with a key he pulled from a chain around his neck.

When he finished, he indicated a bench. “Let's sit a minute.”

She could tease too. “Did that pole wear you out? I'm glad, because I'm exhausted!”

He just smiled and leaned back against the logs. “You'll get used to the altitude. We're at about eight thousand feet here. It'll give you a headache, and you'll want to go to bed with the chickens. Give yourself a week.”

She nodded. She sat in silence, then gathered that the polite man beside her was waiting for her to talk first. All she had were questions.

“Are you a miner?”

“Aye, miss.”

“Then why …”

“… do I carry around heavy poles? Summer is a slack time in the mines. Bishop Parmley asked me to check the timbers on all raises and levels.”

“Why you?”

“I like wood almost as much as I like coal,” he replied with some relish. “I replace timbers if need be, if the mine is starting to talk.” Maybe he thought it was his turn for a question. “Did your da's mine talk? I'm not a hard rock miner; I wouldn't know.”