Carla Kelly (51 page)

“Ready?” the caller yelled.

“As we'll ever be!” Levi Jones shouted back.

Della stared. Somehow, that brave man had coaxed Miss Clayson into a line. “The earth's axis just shifted,” she whispered to Israel Bowman.

With more people, the next reel was longer. Happy, Della looked around to see everyone dancing. She got a glimpse of Owen in the other line and wanted to go to her knees in gratitude. He was whirling Angharad with all the delight of a man who looked like he didn't want to be anywhere else. “What's the matter, Della?” Israel asked, out of breath.

“Nothing. Just happy.”

When they finished, some of the parents staggered to chairs and flopped down, laughing. Clutching his side, Richard nodded to Mr. Brock. “Let's give the man a rest from all that calling,” he said, recovering quickly. “Dafydd, how about a polka? Everyone knows a polka.”

Everyone did, from the nods all around. Some of the partners who had collapsed were getting to their feet again. Della laughed as Israel went to Miss Clayson, bowed, and took her hand. Pentti Hamalainen, a fourth grader, was bowing before Angharad.

“May I have this dance, Butterbean?”

Della turned around in surprise. “I'd be delighted.”

She was no stranger to the polka. The summer she had spent in the canyon with the telephone line crew had seen a few spur-of-the-moment dances with nothing more glamorous than a band of one harmonica. Most of her partners had been much taller than she was. How nice to dance with a man and almost look him in the eyes. She looked and liked what she saw.

“Are we still friends?” she asked, as Dafydd nodded his head for the downbeat.

“We always were,” Owen told her as they began to dip and glide. “Gwyna told me to do my best. I may have been interpreting that too narrowly.”

It was a fast polka, but she was with a good dancer and it was a big gymnasium.

“You American girls are as light on your feet as Welsh women,” he commented, expertly steering her away from a collision with two of her first graders.

“High time you learned that, Owen Davis,” she replied, admiring his brass buttons because she was suddenly too shy to look at him.

“I was at Dafydd Evans's home yesterday,” he said, leaning closer to speak in her ear. “Looks to me like Billy was saying his words to himself while his mam read to him. Any day now, Della.”

ella watched Billy Evans all week, sitting close to him as always, reading and listening for his voice. “You're getting close, Billy,” she whispered to him. “Do you want to measure yourself against the broom?”

He thought a moment, leaning against her, then shook his head.

“It's kind of hard, isn't it, to try new ventures?” she asked, thinking of Owen.

He nodded, and she turned her attention back to the students who were finishing their New Year's resolutions for the bulletin board, written on paper stars. She had them read their resolutions out loud. “I resolve to ______” had been the assignment. Answers ranged from “help Mam more,” to “sweep better under little Gwyllum's high chair,” to “think great thoughts,” and “read
Oliver Twist
,” from a precocious third grader.

“What about you, miss?” Maggie Forsyth asked.

Della thought a moment, then wrote her own resolution. “I resolve to …”

“… read more than one chapter after lunch?” Timmy Pugh asked, impudent as always.

“No, you scamp! You already get away with that now!” she declared, which made them all laugh. “I resolve to be brave.”

She could tell from their wry expressions that her students weren't impressed. “What, isn't that good enough for you perfectionists?” she asked them.

Hands shot up. She pointed to Sarah Powell, Tamris's middle daughter. “Miss, we think adults are just supposed to be brave.”

Not this one
, Della thought. She held up her hand, reached for another paper star, and wrote, “ ‘I resolve to be as brave as coal miners.’ Will that suit you?”

She could tell that it didn't, not in a canyon where children took their fathers’ occupation for granted. “That's my resolution,” she insisted and fixed it to the board with paste. “Remember, I'm from Salt Lake City where fathers work in offices and mercantiles. Oh, you are difficult to please today! Let's read a chapter.”

After class, she sat with her elbows on her desk and her chin in her hands, thinking about Billy, Owen, and her own new ventures. Her mind turned to the theology class last Sunday, where the children of Israel, after forty years, were finally ready for their own new venture into the promised land. She looked in her desk drawer for the Bible and turned to Joshua, reading that part again where the priests carrying the ark of the covenant had to actually step into the fast-flowing Jordan before the river would stop flowing.

Maybe Billy and Owen weren't the only people who hesitated, she decided, as she read the end of the book of Joshua again. Maybe she wasn't quite ready either for that bold step. As Martha Evans said, she had time. No, it was Owen. He had loved, lost, and loved Gwyna still.

Speaking of bold steps—Della groaned as she stood on the school steps. She should have left with the children. The snow that had been falling all day was swirling in the wind now. She hesitated, then took her own medicine and plunged into the snow at the bottom of the steps. It was nearly thigh deep, and she floundered, telling herself not to panic. She knew where the wagon road was, and she could still see the tipple in the distance. She glanced away then looked again. No, it was gone now.

She struggled to the wagon road, wishing someone would come along to at least break a trail in front of her. No such luck. She plunged through the snow, her teeth starting to chatter. She stopped and looked around. She should have passed the mechanical shed with its concrete bays, but she could not see it. She took a deep breath, forcing herself to be calm. She doubted anyone got lost in Winter Quarters Canyon, and she didn't intend to be the first.

But where was she? She looked back, thinking she could retrace her steps and just stay in the school; surely Miss Clayson wouldn't mind. The snow had already covered her trail. “Just go ahead,” she murmured. “Not like you have a choice.” She kept walking, turning her face to avoid the snow in her eyes and mouth, and realized she was traveling in an arc rather than a straight line.

“Can anybody hear me?” she called. No answer. The smart people in Winter Quarters Canyon were already in their homes, apparently. She faced into the storm this time, but she knew she was lost and getting cold. She looked up. The sun, never a long visitor in such a deep canyon, was nowhere to be seen. Soon it would be night and here she was.

Her only consolation was the knowledge that Mabli would miss her, since she usually helped with dinner in the boardinghouse kitchen. Still, she couldn't stand where she was and survive that long, not with the temperature dropping right along with the sun. She folded her arms, bowed her head, and prayed for someone to find her.

Keep walking
, she told herself. She took four hesitant steps and bumped into a wooden building. She could have cried with relief. It was the lumber shed where she had sat with Owen Davis, trying to breathe, in her early days in the canyon. She felt for the open side and walked in, barking her shins on the piled wood. At least she was out of the snow.

Della worked her way to the back of the shed, crouching down by the end of the stacked wood, where the snow had not penetrated. Straw was piled in the corner, and burlap bags. She hunkered down and pulled the bags over her as she started to shake, more from fear than cold. She could have cried with the knowledge that all around her there were homes, even though she doubted her ability to find them; nothing was in a straight line in that narrow canyon. Each house by now was an island in a sea of snow.

She burrowed deeper in the rank straw, wishing for more burlap. When her mind settled, she remembered what Owen had told her about the Number Four cave-in when he and the other miners started singing. “ ‘Lead, kindly light, amid th'encircling gloom, lead thou me on,’ ” she sang, then went through every song she could think of. She decided that alto parts were boring without soprano, tenor, and bass to buttress them. That would make a good topic for a Sunday talk: we all need each other. She sang the alto lines again, louder.

The cold was starting to drill a hole through the center of her forehead when she heard men's voices. She listened, groggy now, then closed her eyes in relief. They were calling her name. She sat up and tried to stand. She stomped her feet until they started to hurt, then felt along the boards to the front of the woodshed, where the snow was nearly chest high now.

“Della! Della! Della!” They said her name over and over. She couldn't think of a thing to do except scream and keep screaming until they found her. Trouble was, she couldn't stop screaming then, until someone grabbed her and pulled her close. It was Emil Isgreen, surrounded by snow-covered men.

“Della, can you walk?” the doctor asked.

“Barely.”

“I'm getting personal now.” He felt under her frozen dress and ran his hands down her legs. He pinched her ankle. “Can you feel that?”

“Yes! Stop it.”

“Good.”

All the men had crowded around the front of the shed now. She looked at their dear faces, seeing Finns and ward members and the men from her boardinghouse. God bless Mabli Reese, who had probably alerted everyone.

Someone picked her up. She looked close, then turned her face into his chest. It was Nicola Anselmo, her library bodyguard. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I was afraid no one would find me.”

“Remember,
signorina
, we are strong men.”

Held in Nicola's arms, the men all linked arms again around her and started together up the canyon. All the men stopped as each man dropped off at his own home, where pinpoints of light gleamed in the darkness now. Everyone waited, silent, until an answering shout told them that the man of the house was home and safe.

When Nicola tired, he transferred her to Owen. “You scared me, Butterbean,” he whispered in her ear.

“I didn't know where I was, and the snow was so deep,” she whispered back. “I'm so sorry to endanger everyone. I should have just stayed at school.”

“It won't happen again. When I think …” He stopped, unable to continue, and carried her in silence the rest of the way to Mabli's door.

Mabli tried to gather her close as Owen set Della on her feet. She hung on to his shoulder, wincing in pain. In a moment, her coat and muffler were off and Dr. Isgreen was leading her to the kitchen. Mabli yanked the tin tub off the wall and started pouring in hot water from the stove's reservoir, mixing it with cool water. Emil sat her down and pulled off her shoes and stockings.

Emil sat back, relief on his face. He felt her calf. “Wiggle your toes.”

Sucking in her breath, she did as he said, then looked down, relieved to see normal white legs. “Pour in a little more hot water,” Emil said to Mabli, after he tested it. Mabli did as he said, and he tested the water again. “A little more. That's good. Owen, help me pull the tub closer.”

The men set her legs down gently in the warm water. Della flinched, then sighed with relief.

“Mabli, you keep adding warmer water as it cools down. Owen, you and Richard go next door to the boardinghouse and find some hot water bottles. We'll have Mabli get her into a nightgown and more woolen socks and we'll pack the bottles around her in bed. Della, you're sleeping with Mabli tonight. You need a warm body.”