by Carla Kelly
Angharad frowned, concentrating, thinking, her mind on the note now, to Della’s relief. “No. This.” She gave a note, the right one, just as her father would have.
“Very good,” Della said, impressed. “I’ll sing if I can. Might just have to say the words.” She closed her eyes. “ ‘Lead kindly light, amid the encircling gloom; lead thou me on,’ ” she sang.
“ ‘The night is dark, and I am far from home; lead thou me on,’ ” Angharad added, joining in.
“ ‘Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see,’ ” they sang together, “ ‘the distant scene—one step enough for me.’ ”
Della glanced at Saul, hoping she hadn’t embarrassed herself in front of this much more sophisticated man, even if he did live in a mining town. She saw his struggle and touched his hand.
“That’s all the hymn we need,” Angharad said. She pillowed her head on her hands and closed her eyes. “I think I want to pray in my heart now.”
Della leaned against the cot and bowed her head. No more. No more.
L
The night wore on as men took turns going down the shaft, working, and then trading off with other miners. The squeak of the hoist made Della want to find an oil can and grease the darned thing, and so she told Saul, who chuckled.
She started talking to Saul, who had wrapped himself in another blanket and leaned against the cot too, where Angharad slept. She told him about the Molly Bee, and that her father had died there when she was twelve. “I’ve wanted to go back to Hastings and leave something on my father’s grave,” she said. “I have just the thing too.” She hesitated, wondering if she could even say Owen’s name out loud.
“Owen … Owen carved me a plaque with ‘Anders’ on it,” she said, her eyes blurring with tears again. For the last two hours tears had slid down her face with no effort at all. Her eyes were beginning to burn. “I would like to leave it on Papa’s grave. His birthday is March 10. That would be a good time to go to Hastings.”
“I think you should,” Saul said.
She rested her face in her hands, weary beyond belief. In another moment, she was asleep.
It was poor sleep, or maybe it wasn’t sleep at all. She was sitting in a classroom, her braids too loose because Papa wasn’t any great shakes with hair. She knew she was supposed to be paying attention because they were parsing sentences, something she liked to do, except all she wanted now was to see Papa. But why?
She opened her eyes, puzzled, vexed, irritated with herself, wondering why she couldn’t remember. Half awake, half asleep, she sat up with a gasp, wondering at a woman who would worry about something years ago when her husband was fighting for his life right now, or maybe dead like her father. What was the matter with her?
Silent, she looked around. Saul had wrapped himself into a tight ball and slept beside the cot. Angharad was insulated well against the cold. Her even breathing was peaceful.
One step enough. Della stood up quietly, unwilling to disturb anyone. She stared up the slope toward the headframe. Someone had rigged a row of battery-powered lights now. Men came and went, and the hoist squealed.
She wrapped the blanket around her like a shawl, wondering for the first time that evening why the sound of this steam whistle had not set her screaming. She wondered if she was getting good at pushing away thoughts that frightened her, and shook her head over what Saul’s friend Sigi would think of her. Maybe Sigi could explain why she was dreaming of that classroom. To her surprise, she suddenly remembered the sentence they were parsing when the Molly Bee whistle blew.
“ ‘The angry man whistled to his dog, who came to his side obediently,’ ” she whispered and started walking toward the headframe. The night is dark, and I am far from home, reverberated inside her skull as if it wanted out. To her fright, it wasn’t music this time but an insistent voice getting louder and louder as she walked steadily toward the lights, one step at a time.
The miners had gathered around the hoist, looking down. Mindful of nothing except the urge to stand with them, she came closer, not even slowing down when a rescuer yelled at her to stop.
Della ignored him. As she shouldered her way through the crowd, the hand in her mind opened up finally, and released a tangle of thoughts and images.
She was twelve again.
Chapter 33
L
School had just started in Hastings. There hadn’t been enough money for new shoes, so Della wore her old ones, and her feet hurt. Papa had promised shoes from the next pay envelope and she believed him, although not as quickly as usual. She wanted to tell him she was tired of everlasting flour and tinned milk pudding twice a day, and the embarrassment of crackers and one carrot in her lunch tin. She had taken to adding a few pebbles wrapped in cloth to the tin, so Miss March would think there was something more in the pail, if she happened to lift it or look inside.
It hadn’t been a good morning. She had stormed up the slope and away from Papa after angry words about her shoes hurting and the fact that one of the girls in her class had a pendant locket and she wanted one. Papa had smiled, ducked his head, and said maybe they could manage something as extravagant as a locket closer to Christmas.
But this was September, and she wanted one now. Her feet hurt and she was hungry. She shouldn’t have said what she did, but it came out anyway.
“Papa, I never want to see you again,” she had shouted as they came to the path, school one way and Molly Bee the other.
“Oly, you’ll change your mind by noon,” he had called back. “I know you pretty well.” He blew her a kiss and continued up the slope to the mine, where he was going to die in a few hours, even though neither of them knew it at the time.
“I’ll never change my mind, Papa,” she had shouted back. Head high, she continued to school, and sentences to diagram, and hunger until lunch.
But he was right. By noon, she could hardly wait until school was out to apologize to her father, a hard rock miner who in recent years had turned into more of a hard luck miner, as the Molly Bee began to play out. She knew he did his best, and she wanted to say she was sorry for angry words.
At 1:15 p.m., according to the Regulator on the schoolroom wall, the steam whistle at the Molly Bee began to shriek across the narrow valley. Everyone knew what it meant. Della screamed, leaped up from a spelling test, and ran out the door, calling for her father.
Halfway up the punishing slope to the Molly Bee, she tossed away her too-tight shoes and ran faster, stopping once for deep, heaving breaths.
She arrived at the Molly Bee headframe before some of the rescuers who were summoned from nearby mines. She backed away when any of the miners, and later the wives, tried to pull her away from the hoist. All afternoon, standing there in silence, with no one to comfort her, Della Olympia Anders kept her agonizing vigil by the hoist, waiting for Papa to reappear so she could throw herself into his arms and apologize for hot words spoken in anger that morning.
Her stomach was growling in earnest as the sky darkened and the high plateau air turned cool. Drooping but no less determined, her mind went into high alert when she heard murmured voices and then saw glances in her direction. As the hoist started to creak its way to the surface, she moved forward, hopeful.
She was thrust back and then led away screaming, but not before she caught a glimpse of blood-covered canvas spread over a body. She screamed all the way down the mountain, slung over a rescuer’s back. She mercifully fainted, and then she woke up in her teacher’s house, where she was told that Papa wasn’t coming home any more. A week later, after the funeral, she was on her way to unknown relatives in Salt Lake City, her name and the Salt Lake address pinned to her coat, wearing another child’s shoes.
That was it, but it was enough. The images went away and she was again standing at the Banner Mine. I didn’t need that, Della thought. Please God, no more. Not tonight.
Doing her best to stay out of the way and quiet, Della remained by the silent hoist. I will never do this again, spooled in an
d out of her brain as the hours passed. She had brief moments of hope when the hoist moved down the shaft carrying new miners to shovel out the rock fall, and resurfaced with tired men who shook their heads and walked away for water first of all, then bread and jam.
Hope died away as the stars wheeled about in the sky and planets, those solitary travelers of Greek mythology, bowed out. Dawn was making a tentative effort when Della heard a shout from down in the shaft and the hoist creaked into life. She moved closer to the shaft.
“You shouldn’t be here, Mrs. Davis,” sounded surprisingly like, “Go away little girl.” She shook her head, determined that no one would throw her over his shoulder this time and drag her away, no matter how frightful the sight. She grabbed onto one of the metal bars when one of the men attempted to move her.
“Don’t touch me,” she hissed. “My father will be here soon.” Her words startled her.
Who am I? she asked herself. “I’m sorry. Please, what do you know?”
No one answered her, and it felt like the Molly Bee all over again. Her tired mind finally rebelled. She edged closer, desperate to see what was coming up in the hoist.
“Move that woman!”
“Don’t you touch me!” she yelled back.
She knelt as the hoist rose until she could look inside the cage. How could she be twelve and twenty-five at the same time? She was anxious for her husband. She was also filled with guilt over angry words hurled at her father that she could not take back now.
“Steady,” she heard as the hoist slowed. She held her breath; the voice sounded familiar.
She leaned closer to look inside and recoiled in horror at the sight of another bloody canvas. She pressed her hands to her face and screamed, moved forward on her knees, and was only stopped from falling into the shaft by a firm hand on her waistband that jerked her back and away. She lay there on the dusty ground, sobbing.
“M cara? My God, Della.”
Devastated, she looked up as the bloody man climbed out of the hoist and two other men went in to crouch beside the figure under the canvas and then pick him up carefully.
Through tears and a glaze of weird memory, she now saw her father in the man who knelt beside her and took her so carefully in his arms. “Papa? I didn’t mean what I said. Please believe me.” She grabbed the front of his shirt and shook him. “Forgive me.”
“Nothing to forgive, m cara,” Owen said to her, “but Della, it’s me.”
She frowned, well aware of the enormity of her guilt. At least this time she wasn’t alone on the slope, even if she knew she had earned a great scold from her father. But who was this man holding her close? He didn’t seem like Frederick Anders, risen from the grave, when she knew he was truly dead and buried in Colorado.
Slowly, that hand in her mind, the one that had unloosed so many unwanted images, disappeared like smoke. The air was bitter cold, dawn was coming, and she was lying by the hoist at the Banner Mine, cradled in her husband’s arms, the little girl gone.
Owen spoke over his shoulder to a man carrying a black bag. “It’s not my blood,” she heard. “I’m fine, Doctor. A bruise here and there. Take care of Aaron. His leg is badly broken. Send the hoist down again for the others. We cleared a passage through to Level Two.”
She breathed deep into his shirt and realized finally that no matter how many times she had washed that particular old shirt, it was always going to smell a little like coal.
She looked into her husband’s eyes, saw all the exhaustion, smelled the sweat and man odor, and felt the rock dust and grit against her skin. Without a murmur, she let him fold her into his arms. “Owen, I wanted to apologize to you this morning,” she whispered. “I said hard things.”
“So did I. Let’s forget them.”
With new strength, she clutched his bloody shirt, which she knew was going in the burn barrel at first opportunity. “You need to know the awful thing I did.”
“Tell me. Tell me right now.”
Too many people crowded around them. Della felt her breath coming in gasps as men blocked the breathable air. In misery, she listened as her husband quietly told everyone to back away and leave them alone. She heard what sounded like an argument, which he won handily. After the hoist came up the second time, she heard him speaking to the rest of his crew, telling them to go home and get some sleep.
“I’ll see you three after Thanksgiving,” he said. “You tell Aaron that I expect him there too, or we’ll meet at his house. We have some planning to do.”
She touched his cheek to get his attention. “Angharad and Mr. Weisman are sleeping by the bonfire.”
“When you see the assayer on the way down, tell him all is well, and we will join him later. I’m busy now.”
The last man left the slope, and the hoist was silent. Della started to shiver. Someone had kindly left several blankets. In a moment, Owen had cocooned them in the blankets.
She couldn’t let her courage desert her, not now. “Owen, please listen to me. I did a terrible thing.”
“How bad could it be?”
She put her hand on his chest, curling her fingers around the fabric of his shirt, hoping to keep him there, even though she knew he would be disgusted with her.
“I know what happened now. On the last day of his life, I quarreled with my father over a locket,” she whispered, still too horrified to speak loud. “He said we couldn’t afford it. I told him I never wanted to see him again.”
When she started to weep, he said something low in his throat that maybe wasn’t even words. He pulled her closer. Maybe he wasn’t going to be upset with her beyond redemption. It gave her the courage to finish.
She didn’t flinch when he wiped her eyes with his dirty hands, then pinched the mucus from her nose. “I felt wretched. I was going to be at the mine to apologize when he came off his shift.”
She wailed out loud then. Owen rested his hand against her head and pulled her even closer to his heart. “I couldn’t apologize! Will you forgive me?”
She didn’t know who she was asking to forgive her. The chance with Papa was gone. She felt a burning need to make sure her husband knew how spiteful she had been. Maybe he would forgive her. Maybe he would not. She had kept this awful thing bottled up inside her for years and it had to come out, whether he liked it or not.
“Have you ever told anyone else this?” he asked quietly.
“No. I was so ashamed.”
“Ashamed of what, my love?”
Why was this smart man so dense? Didn’t he grasp what a fearful thing it was to wish her father dead and never be able to take it back?
“My cruelty, my hard words that I could not take back. Owen, you need to know what I did! It was shameful and spiteful.”
She sat up quickly and felt immediately lightheaded when she tried to stand. She staggered and Owen pulled her down, his expression showing no disgust, only deep concern. How could he be so kind in the face of her petty spite aimed at someone who didn’t deserve it?
“I wanted to tell someone,” she said, knowing she might as well finish this mess.
“Why didn’t you? I think I know. Think carefully. Breathe along with me.”
She did as he said, until the ground she lay on quit spinning. She summoned back that mental hand and forced it open, remembering the sad-beyond-words child who arrived in Salt Lake City, thrown to the mercy of merciless people.
“Aunt Caroline wouldn’t let me cry about my father,” Della said at last, regretting the hardness of her tone but knowing that her husband deserved the truth. “She said he was a wicked man and good riddance. He wasn’t wicked, Owen!”
“Certainly he wasn’t. He was just trying to navigate life like all of us. She wouldn’t let you cry?”
“No. I never could confess what I had said to him, that morning before he … Owen, please forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive, Della Davis. Della Davis. I do like the sound of that,” he said. “There’s nothing to forgive. There n
ever was.”
She sat up, wondering how a man could be so dense. “Owen, I did a terrible thing! You’re not taking this seriously.”
“You did a childish thing. You were ready to apologize, weren’t you?”
“So ready.”
He kissed her cheek, must have liked it, and kissed it again. “Della, let me share something that every parent knows. I am confident you will know it someday too, with our own little ones. Shh, shh, we’ll have them. Right now, I have seven years of prior experience, so pay attention.”
Owen sat up then. He straddled her, put his hands on her shoulders as she lay on the ground and put his forehead against hers. She couldn’t have moved if she wanted to. “Della Davis, you were twelve years old and you were upset with your father.”
“I was wicked and mean!”
“You were twelve,” he repeated firmly. “There have been times when Angharad would have happily roasted me over an open flame for some infraction or another.” He gave her head a gentle shake. “It passed.” He repeated it more softly. “It passed. End of story. Done. Forgiven. Not remembered by either of us.”
“Yes, but …”
“The only problem with your story was timing. I am certain your father had forgotten the whole matter hours before the rock fall. I am certain because I have been there with my daughter. Ask any parent.”
She lay there in silence, absorbing his words. She wanted to believe him. She looked into his face, looked deep into the man she loved. She nodded.
“I don’t really like myself right now,” she admitted.
“I like you. I like you a lot. You’ll like yourself again.” He sat back on her. “I have my own challenges right now, and they put us at cross purposes. I’ll admit it.”
He turned toward the hoist. “I know precisely how to fix the Banner Mine. Level Three held quite well when that blast went off. We’ll see how much timber Uncle Jesse will let me use on the other levels before he squawks.”