Carla Kelly (33 page)

“She's next door helping Mabli,” Della said, holding a shoe. “Look, Owen, I …”

He held up his hand to stop her. “You were right last night, but things aren't likely to change. Can you accept that?” He sighed. “You have to accept that in a mining camp.”

“I don't have to accept anything, Owen Davis,” she told him, not mincing her words, even though she hated to see the cloudy look that came into his expressive eyes. “Maybe I'm no better than Miss Clayson.”

“Maybe we'll just have to not discuss this subject.” He chuckled, with no mirth in the sound. “It can probably join a number of subjects not to be discussed in this canyon, because it's bad luck. Next door?”

“Aye,” she told him, which made his smile genuine.

She put on her other shoe and followed him to the dining room, where Angharad dished out scrambled eggs to the boarders. Della couldn't help but notice how quiet the dining room was this morning.

Mabli carried in a platter of sausage. “Eat with us, Owen?”

“I already ate,” he said, but Della watched his eyes linger on the sausage.

Della knotted three links of sausage into waxed paper and handed it to him. “Man does not live by oatcakes alone,” she declared.

“This man does, but he also knows better than to argue with determined women,” Owen told her. “I learned that early, because I was a diligent husband.
Diolch yn fawr iawn
.”

“I know
diolch
,” Della said, “but …”

“Thank you
very much
.”

He put the sausage in his lunch bucket, where she doubted there was anything more than everlasting oatcakes. He knelt by Angharad for a moment, speaking to her but not getting too close. When he finished, he held out his index finger and she did the same, touching one to the other. A word or two in Welsh and he was gone.

When she finished and took the bowl back to the kitchen, she whispered to Della, “They told me I was the best ever at serving eggs.” Her face fell. “I wish I had saved some for me.”

“We did.” Della held out a plate with eggs and sausage that Mabli had put in the warming oven.

Della sat with her, eating a boiled egg. Angharad ate in silence, savoring the eggs, probably a rare treat, and the sausage, even more rare. Her satisfied sigh when she finished went to Della's heart.

“Miss, the men in there said it was Pekka's da who died.”

Della nodded. “We'll have to think of something nice to do for Mrs. Aho. Remember the pretty posters she made for us?”

“He won't be in school today, will he?”

“Probably not.”

“We should visit.”

“I agree.”

They walked to school in relative silence, Angharad's face pensive. She slowed as they passed the Number One portal. She shook herself visibly, as if trying to dispel an unwanted sight.

“What did you tell your students at your Westside School?” she asked, turning her face resolutely away from the Number One.

Della gave her a puzzled look.

“I mean, when the miners died?’

Della knelt in the wagon road and put her hands on Angharad's shoulders. “There weren't any miners’ children in my Westside School, my dear. Nobody's father died in the two years I taught there.”

The disbelief in Angharad's eyes felt like a spike through Della's heart. She gently pulled Angharad closer. “Not everyone is a miner, my dear. Some fathers are constables or farmers or lawyers or teachers or greengrocers.”

“And they don't die?”

Della gathered her close. “Everyone dies eventually, my dear, but don't worry. Not everyone has dragons.” It sounded stupid when she said it, but nothing else came to mind.

Angharad clung to her, wordless. In another moment, she released her grip on Della and stood back, smoothing her pinafore, womanlike, even though she was only six years old. “Aye, we do have dragons.” She took Della by the hand again and led this time.

Her students already knew. All Della could do that morning was stand before them and say simply, “Pekka has lost his father. What can we do to help him?”

Everyone was silent for a long moment. From Mari Luoma, tears in her eyes, to the youngest-six-year old, they looked at her with the patient gaze of people who expected her to do more than she knew what to do. She was their teacher, and they expected her to know. She glanced at her arithmetic book lying open to today's lesson and closed it.

“I have an idea. Should we make cards for Pekka and Mrs. Aho? We can tell them how sorry we are and we can take them to their home this afternoon.”

“May we use the magic paper?” Mary Parmley asked.

“Most certainly. If we fold it in half or lengthwise, that would make a good card.” Della went to the closet and took out the thin cardboard. She folded one piece in half, and her students smiled their approval. “Well then. Let us get our Rainbow Colors too.”

She took their suggestions and wrote them on the board, crafting a sentiment both simple and profound in that way of children. “Dear Pekka and Mrs. Aho, we know you are sad, and we are sad with you,” was the result. Della could see no way to improve on their heartfelt message, but she added, “You may also write what else you wish.”

As she looked around her classroom, she understood with painful clarity the weight each of them carried when their fathers went into the mines. She made her own card, then drew a picture for Mr. Auerbach of her children working to make sympathy cards for one of their own. She decided to write him a letter that night and tell him what had happened in their canyon.

When everyone was finished, she collected their cards, admiring them. Tommy Pugh's card made her blink back tears. He had drawn Pekka, complete to his blond hair and blue eyes, and the knit cap he had started to wear. Pekka's eyes were red with weeping and tears fell down his crayon cheeks. She motioned Tommy to her desk.

“You did a fine job drawing Pekka,” she said. “He's so sad. How did you know to make his eyes so red?”

“When my uncle died last year in Number Four, my eyes were red and they hurt,” he whispered back. “Mama gave me a wet rag for them.”

“My eyes were red and hurt after my father died in a mine,” she told him.

They looked at each other with perfect understanding. She spent the rest of the morning reading
Black Beauty
. At first she wondered at her wisdom in reading, because they had reached that part of the story where Beauty is driven by Reuben, who is drunk and ignores the nail in Beauty's foot, as she limps in the rain.

She looked up when the children started to sniff and wipe their eyes. “Should I stop?” she asked, anxious.

“No, miss!” came the chorus. She kept reading, after sending around the bottom of her lunch bucket filled with cookies from Mabli.

“Will your mothers and fathers mind that I am giving you cookies before lunch?” she asked, not so anxious now.

“No, miss!” they said again, and some of them giggled, the crisis over.

The afternoon passed quietly, the children content to return to their studies, helping each other as she had taught them. When the closing bell rang, Della gathered up the cards. “I'll take these to Pekka,” she told them as they pulled on their coats. “You may come if you like. I'll walk slowly.”

She walked with Mari Luoma, as she had chosen to do, more and more. Juko Warela walked beside them. He had turned into the best kind of interpreter, quiet, speaking low and translating promptly.

“Juko, ask Mari if Mrs. Aho has a place to go,” Della asked.

He didn't need to translate the slow shake of Mari's head. “Maybe she will take in boarders now,” he said on his own. “Or laundry.” He shrugged. “If not, she will have to leave, because the company owns her house.”

Della nodded, her eyes on the little shack by the Finn Hall, the one with the coffin in the front yard. The coffin was empty and there was no lid that she could see. “Where is … where is Pekka's father?” she asked Juko.

“In sauna,” he told her. “It's a clean place, and the men have washed and dressed him.” He pointed to a small building behind the Finn Hall, where the men stood outside, hands in pockets, heads close together, talking and smoking.

Mrs. Koski, Tilda's mother, came out of the house with the coffin in front and walked to Della, holding out her hands in welcome.

“We're so sorry,” Della said, her voice low. “Pekka's friends wanted to make cards.” She held them out to Mrs. Koski.

The woman put her hand on Della's waist and led her inside the Aho house, which was crowded with women. Another woman directed her toward Mrs. Aho, who sat so still, a man's handkerchief in her grip. Pekka sat beside her, dressed in what must have been his native garb from Finland, a red and white striped vest and wool knee pants with bright red stockings. Della put her arm around his shoulders. She kissed the top of his head and put the cards in his lap.

“We want you to know we are thinking of you, my dear,” she whispered. “Everyone made you a card. Me too.”

He nodded and looked at Tilda Koski. “Tilda says you read
Black Beauty
today too.”

“We did.” Della hugged him. “When you feel like it, I will come to your house, or you can come to mine, and I will read you those parts you missed. Will that do?”

He nodded. Della looked over his head to his mother. “Mrs. Aho, we feel so sad for you.” She had a fleeting memory of a funeral in her Salt Lake ward, where Aunt Caroline brought food the cook had made and sniffed into a lace handkerchief. Before she left, she told the new widow to only ask if she needed something, all in a matter of two minutes. “Is there something I can do for you right now?”

Mrs. Aho shook her head, but Della looked beyond her to the kitchen, where cups and plates were mounded high. “I see something I can do. Tilda will help me.”

More people were coming to pay their respects, so Della went into the kitchen and rolled up her sleeves. She filled the sink with hot water from the stove, swishing around the iron soap saver until she had a few bubbles. By then, Tilda Koski and two other classmates had joined her, everyone with a dishtowel.

Della started washing dishes, chatting with her students, reducing the mound to order. By the time she finished, the Parmley girls were there to dry the dishes. Myfanwy Jones brought a loaf of bread from her mother. Through the window over the sink Della saw Angharad standing by her father, her hand on his shoulder. Della watched as he carved on the coffin lid.

“He's carving Mr. Aho's name,” Tilda told her.

“No one will see his beautiful work in the ground.”

“God will.”

Drying her hands, she walked outside. By now, the coffin was outside the door to the sauna. She turned away, unwilling to watch what she knew was coming. She looked at the Davises instead. Owen watched the sauna, as Angharad drew a freehand dragon, a small one, below the elaborately carved name.

Owen wiped the wood chips from his arms. “I asked Victor Aho what his name meant. He said ‘aho’ was a glade, or an opening in the forest.” He pointed with his carving tool. “I hope I caught the essence.”

“You did,” she told him, tracing the outline of trees and the open space.

“Can't get too fancy with pine,” he said, with all the apology of an artist. “I'd have preferred oak.” He chuckled at that. “Artists. Slap me silly if you think I need it.”

“No! Now who's the butterbean?”

He turned his attention to Angharad, who had opened a small pot of red paint. Her eyes fierce with concentration, she took a delicate brush and traced the dragon, then filled it in. She stepped back to observe the effect.

Della turned around to see the Finns carrying the shrouded corpse of Matti Aho to the coffin. Owen glanced too, then tightened his arms around his daughter. He kept her facing the coffin lid until the body was safely stowed in the cloth-lined box.

“Walk her around to the front and keep going,” he said to Della as he picked up the lid. “Nice work, my beloved,” he told his daughter. “Go with Miss Anders.”

Della did as he ordered, going against the stream of women who came out of the house, their tired faces etched with grief. She kept walking away from Finn Town, as the wails and shrieks began again. Soon she was carrying Angharad, whose face was turned into her neck. “You did a beautiful thing for Pekka's da,” she whispered.

Angharad helped her and Mabli in the boardinghouse kitchen, her face solemn. She arranged the rolls neatly on the serving table, striving for symmetry and order in an unhappy, disordered day, or so Della thought as she watched.

She was standing there, her mind on Finn Town, when her German came into the dining room. Della felt tears in her eyes, remembering the Frenchman. Mabli had said his coffin was in the front room that Mr. Edwards used as an office.

“Fraulein,” the German said, holding out a small box.

She took it from him, a question in her eyes.

“Open it.”

She did and sucked in her breath. A gold sheaf of wheat no larger than her thumb lay nestled on a piece of cotton. She picked it up. It was a brooch with a simple clasp. “Mr. Muller, it is lovely, but I …”