Carla Kelly (7 page)

“I don't think so,” she said, uncertain, realizing how little she knew about the Molly Bee. “Talk?”

“I listen to wood pillars. They started to creak and groan when the ceiling shifts—the mine is talking. Back home in the colliery, we called them
bwca
, those evil spirits that tease miners, or sometimes warn miners before a collapse.” He shrugged. “Most of us leave a bit of lunch behind for the
bwca
, so they'll keep talking.”

“Booca?” she asked.

“Sprites or brownies or evil genies, whatever you will.”

He must have noticed her skepticism. “You don't believe me, Sister Anders? Wise of you! Up you get. We'll go slow, and I want to stop for Angharad at the Evanses’ house.”

They walked slowly. The coal from the tipple was filling another railcar, so conversation was out of the question. She looked at the tiny shacks, almost random in their location, that clung to steep canyon sides.

Worn out even with slow walking, Della could have dropped down in relief when they stopped before a slightly larger shack, dark gray with coal dust like all the others. Stunted by a combination of altitude, poor soil, and short growing seasons, the zinnias by the door looked as exhausted as she felt.

Timbered steps were cut in the slope, which Owen went up quickly. He held out his hand to her. Della shook her head. “Go on and save yourself,” she joked. He continued up the slope without apparently drawing a difficult breath. He wasn't a big man, but he was a strong one.

He came out a few minutes later with his daughter, who wore a simple dress and checked pinafore, her hair in neat braids.
Sister Davis is not one for frills
, Della thought as she watched Owen, his hand on the child's shoulder.
I wonder which one of them taught her to read
.

The steps were steep, so he picked his daughter up and carried her down. Della smiled to see the way her arms seemed to go around his neck so naturally.

“Angharad, this is your teacher, Miss Anders,” he said as he set his daughter on her feet. “Give a wee curtsy?”

To Della's delight, Angharad did, dimpling up and then putting both hands in Della's one hand. She spoke to her father in Welsh, and the wrinkles around his eyes crinkled in good humor.

“In English, my dearest,” he advised, nothing in his voice of criticism. “Remember now. In school it's English.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Angharad said, her accent as pleasant as her father's. She looked back at him. “Is that right, Da?”

He nodded.

“I'm pleased to meet you,” Della said in turn. “Your father tells me you can read.”

Shy then, Angharad nodded and leaned against her father's leg.

Charmed, Della could almost see the gears turning in the girl's head and knew she wanted to speak Welsh. Manners warred with curiosity, and curiosity appeared to win because she gestured her father to lean down and she whispered to him.

“I don't know, dearest,” he said in English. “Shall I ask?”

Angharad nodded.

It was Owen's turn to hesitate.

“It can't be anything I couldn't answer,” Della prompted. “I
do
know six-year-olds.”

He took a deep breath, and she was reminded again of what a gentleman stood before her, even if he was in coveralls and that miner's cap. “She's never seen someone who looks quite like you. She wants to know, are you a
tywysoges
, a princess?”

Della laughed and clapped her hands, which sent Angharad retreating halfway behind her father. “Oh, my dear, you have more than made up for the fact that my house burned down and I can barely breathe!” she said, then slowly held out her hand for the child, who came forward again, cautious but interested. “I'm no princess, but my mother was Greek, and ladies from Greece have black, curly hair and lots of it, and noses that I choose to call elegant. I'm nobody special, Angharad. Just your teacher.”

And at this moment, I wouldn't be anything else
, she thought, moved in a way she hadn't imagined, when she set out that morning to teach school in Winter Quarters.

“Is it hard to brush?”

You are so practical
, Della thought, charmed. “Yes! My father said I used to cry when he tried to brush it. I'll tell you a secret. I put a little olive oil on it after I wash my hair and that helps with tangles. Only a little, though.” She laughed. “Too much, and I might slide right off my pillow onto the floor!”

Angharad's eyes got wide, and she laughed. “That's silly.”

“Only a little silly. Be grateful for straight hair, Angharad.”

“I know I am,” Owen said to his daughter. “We'd be hours working over your hair, and I'd be late to the pit.”

Angharad nodded, apparently satisfied. She took her father's hand and walked between them.

“Which of you taught her to read English?” Della asked Owen.

“Which of us?”

“You or your wife?”

“I did. Gwyna died when Angharad was born. She was our only child.” He said it in a matter-of-fact way that asked for no pity. “As I said, plans change.”

“I'm sorry,” she said quietly. “Does Angharad stay with the Evans family while you work?”

He nodded. “Richard and Martha Evans. It works out well enough.” He gestured toward his daughter. “I'm talented enough for braids. If Angharad had curls like yours, I'd probably be committed to an asylum.”

Della laughed out loud, then found herself stopping for a breath. “Don't be so funny,” she said, when she could speak. “I can't breathe!”

“I'm surprising myself,” he said in turn.

They walked along slowly. The train moved farther toward the valley below as more coal rumbled into the cars.

“What's for supper, Da?” Angharad asked.

“Probably oats in some form or other,” he replied, coloring a little. “Sister Anders, we're at the end of a summer, and miners don't have much work in the summer. So it's oats.”

“Believe it or not, I remember lean days in the mines,” Della said, thinking of endless Lumpy Dick.

She could tell by his expression that he didn't believe her. She began to wonder how quickly news of that telegram from Jesse Knight had traveled up and down the canyon.
Wait
, she wanted to tell him.
You're getting the wrong idea
.

“At least you can work with the timber for the mine.”

“I don't get paid for timber work.”

“Really? I would think … well, I don't know what I would think,” Della confessed.

“We don't
work
for Pleasant Valley Coal Company,” Owen explained. “We're independent contractors. We supply so many tons of coal a day and that's all we're paid for. I don't mind timber work. When the mine talks, I listen, and the men I work with are happy about that.”

“I would be too,” she said. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. She was asking too many questions.

He was watching her, though, which she found surprisingly flattering. In all her years at the Anders house, no one had paid her much attention.

“Are you wondering how we stay alive during the summer?” he asked, the humor evident in his voice, as though he could turn it into a pleasant topic.

“A little.”

“The company store keeps a tab on miner expenses, and mostly we pay it off in the winter.” He stopped and faced her. “Understand one thing: We don't feel sorry for ourselves and require no pity.”

He said it in that same tone of voice he had used on Israel Bowman, firm and matter-of-fact but in no way aggressive. That kind of honesty required the same in return.

“Brother Davis, I could never feel sorry for someone lucky enough to have Angharad for a daughter.”

His eyes softened at her words, and he started walking again. “Gwyna named her before she died.
Angharad
means ‘much beloved one.’ And so she is.”

He had changed the subject so adroitly that Della didn't have a moment to feel embarrassed. She wanted to tell him she felt no pity because it was becoming obvious to her, the longer she walked beside the Davis family, that they were far luckier in each other than she had ever been in her relatives.

“I do work with wood in a more refined manner than just propping up a mine ceiling,” Owen said. “And now you're supposed to ask, ‘What is it you do, Brother Davis?’ ”

Della laughed out loud. “Very well, sir! What
do
you do, when summer is lean?”

Owen looked at his daughter and gave her hand a tug so she stopped. “Angharad, should we show your teacher what else I do to put jam on our oatcakes?” He whispered something in her ear. “Show her. I'll wait.”

Della looked at him, a question in her eyes, but the child was tugging Della toward another of the many small shacks around them. “Where are we … ?”

There weren't any zinnias, weary or otherwise, in front of this house, but there was an elaborately carved name over the ordinary door. “ ‘D-a-v-y-s,’ ” she said. “Lovely.”

Angharad opened the door. Della looked back, uncertain, but Owen gestured her inside from where he stood on the road. She was struck again with what a gentleman he was, not coming into his own home because she was a single woman.

She found herself in the front room with a simple settee, table, and two chairs, surely made by the man who stood in the road. On the table were two hinged boxes, one elaborately carved with fantastic creatures and the other partly done, the carving knife close by.

“My goodness,” Della said. “Your father is a master.”

The child nodded. “Come in my room.”

Della followed her, then backed away. The other room was obviously Owen Davis's, with a bed, gorgeous carved chest, and a Book of Mormon lying open on the pillow. “I shouldn't,” she said, but Angharad had her hand and tugged her beyond the small room to another even smaller room that might have been a storeroom at one time.

Owen Davis had made it into his daughter's bedroom, with a carved bed, smaller chest, and the most beautiful dollhouse Della had ever seen. She couldn't help herself. She knelt and gazed in admiration at the wonder before her. This was a dollhouse for a … she couldn't remember the Welsh word for princess, much less pronounce it, but it belonged to a princess.

“Angharad, I have never seen anything so lovely in my life,” she said. “Do all the little girls in Winter Quarters want to play here?”

She nodded. “Da tells me I am worth one hundred of these.”

It was said quietly and with love. Della got up, surprising herself with her reluctance to leave the room.
I am twenty-four, and I want to play
.

Della let Angharad lead her out of the house and back to the road, where Owen still waited. “My goodness,” was all she could say.

“I have a market for the carved boxes,” he said. “We don't always eat oatcakes. We have a miner in Number Four here from Tennessee, and he told me about sorghum molasses. I traded a box for five gallons of molasses.”

“That dollhouse!” she exclaimed. “I wanted to play.”

“Well, I probably can't invite you over,” he said, which made her smile. “I will say—when you go to your classroom, you'll see a lot of carved letters. I made those last year because I knew Angharad would be in school this year. You can make all kinds of words. If you need more, just let me know.” He gestured down the road. “Time's passing. Angharad, take us to the bishop's house.”

The child darted ahead. “I hope I can run like that again,” Della said. “You say it takes about a week to get adjusted to the altitude?”

“About.”

They passed the school. Della looked at the building. “Mr. Bowman said my classroom is the one on the right,” she said. She looked at the classroom on the left, where a woman stood. “Is that Miss Clayson?”

“Aye,” he said. “Want to go in?” The building looked new, with a stone foundation and wood siding. She turned the handle, but the door was locked. She knocked on the double door. She waited for someone to open the door, but no one did. She knocked again, then looked back at Owen Davis, a question in her eyes.

“I think she is a complicated woman,” he said, after some thought.

“But she's my principal.” She looked up again. No one was there. “Maybe I'll see her at church.”

He shook his head. “I've never seen her there, and no one calls her Sister Clayson.” He pointed to the two-story house behind the church. “The Parmleys.”

And you have changed the subject again
, she thought, as she followed his lead.

“You are slow,” Angharad told her father. “I have been waiting
so
long to ring the doorbell.”

“It's the only doorbell in town,” Owen whispered to Della. “By all means. Ring that doorbell.”

Della smiled to hear a thunder of feet coming toward the door. “Sounds like a houseful.”