by Carla Kelly
“Oh, but …”
“I couldn’t have done anything about it, because I was powerless. I would have at least known that my mother loved me and would have stayed in my life, had her own father not dragged her away. Can you imagine what a difference that would have made in my life? No, I see you cannot.”
How odd: a lawyer with nothing to say. Owen almost pitied him.
“Too many years have passed, and I will never find my mother, thanks to what my aunt did,” Della said, her head high and her voice firm. She stepped back and took Owen’s arm; he felt her tremble. “I would like to have known my mother. Good day.”
She turned on her heel and left the lobby, hanging onto Owen now, her dark Greek eyes stormy.
Years ago—who knew where—Owen had come across a copy of Antigone, Sophocles’s great tragedy about a young woman with the courage to bury her brother in defiance of her tyrant uncle. He never forgot Antigone’s determination to do the right thing, no matter the consequences.
Here was his own Greek woman, braver than armies. I had better measure up, he thought, as they walked in silence to the depot. I would dread a confrontation with a thoroughly convinced woman.
He looked at her with admiration, shocked to see a frightened child staring back.
“Della?” he asked. “Are you all right?”
The look vanished, leaving confusion on her face. “I don’t know what I am.”
Chapter 18
L
I don’t know what got into me,” Della told Owen that night, long after Angharad was asleep in her own bed. She burrowed close to him.
“A bitter serving of righteous indignation?”
“You Welsh and words,” she said. He massaged her shoulders and she relaxed. Her hand went to his chest. “I know the Molly Bee closed about eight years ago.”
“If you know that much, can you find out more?”
“I doubt it. It was two paragraphs on a back page of the Tribune. I was working in the library after school and read it there. I imagine all the miners moved away.”
“She’s somewhere,” Owen said.
“You’ll think this is silly, but …”
“I doubt it. I have a seven-year-old daughter, remember.”
They laughed together. “After I got that letter last spring from my uncle, I dreamed about writing to my mother, and addressing it to ‘Anywhere, USA.’ ”
Owen heard all the wistfulness in her voice. “Did she get the letter in your dream?”
“Every time,” Della said, her voice soft and low. She snuggled closer and closed her eyes.
Owen held Della close as she slept. He breathed deep of her rose-scented hair and turned his thoughts from letters of the heart to the mines, which, if he were honest, formed another kind of love in his heart.
Almost four weeks had elapsed since the double mine catastrophe. It was too early for anyone so close to it to view the matter dispassionately, but he tried. Lying there comfortable and breathing cool air that smelled nothing of sulfur, he knew how familiar he was with chance. So did every man who ever entered a mine. The odds were in a careful man’s favor, but for how long?
He had sat out his fair share of mine collapses, never alone, always with companion miners because most men worked in twos. Sometimes there was no spare air, so they sat in silence to conserve it, candles blown out to save on oxygen. Other times, especially in the high caverns of Utah mines, a group of singers could get up a respectable chorus, especially if there was a high tenor like Richard Evans.
Then when rescuers poked through the rubble, and the trapped men saw tiny points of light from the small open flames—amazing how bright they seemed after total darkness—everyone could laugh and shake it off, dig out, and return to work.
“Papa.”
Della said it again, but louder. “Papa.” Owen kissed her head, which made her sigh and return to deeper sleep.
Some men never came out, Della’s father among them. Owen knew little of hard rock mines, but he tried to imagine the Molly Bee of Della’s childhood. He knew the boom and bust of mining coal. Summers were always harder because no one needed to heat their homes. The price of silver fluctuated too, depending on politics.
Della had told him something of her hard times. In that brief span of mere hours when he left the Number Four and the explosion, he knew he wanted more information from her—not because he was interested in another’s misery, but because it pained him to see the distant look on her face now and then, when he knew she was miles away.
He didn’t care for that distant look in a woman’s eyes, especially his woman’s eyes. Here in Provo, there should be time to change that odd stare into the soft glance she more often gave Angharad and him.
Another thought plucked at him and demanded attention like a toddler. A realist down to the soles of his feet, Owen knew there was not one thing he or anyone else could have done to prevent the deaths of two hundred men, once the chain reaction of coal dust exploding and killing in the Number Four began its split-second work. The rapid spread of invisible afterdamp that raced through the levels connecting the Four with the One was just as inexorable.
He knew he could not bring back his friends, but he wondered if there were some way to make a mine safer. There he lay, satisfied, relaxing as sleep claimed him. Deep breaths of clean air and rose talcum powder gently pushed him into the mattress. He could think tomorrow.
L
Or not think. Owen knew it was easier to let himself be borne along on the pleasant tide of springtime in Provo. People being what they were, maybe it was a kindness to begin a new routine somewhere not far removed from sorrow by distance because he saw the mountains every day, but mentally, miles away in a town where no one dug coal.
A methodical man, Owen settled into a pattern of lying in bed after Della woke up, stretching, and heading to the lavatory. After a week or so, he knew her routine of cleaning up, dressing, kissing his cheek, and going to the kitchen.
He heard the coal tumbling into the cook stove and soon sniffed the fragrance of porridge, or perhaps flapjacks, as Americans called those delectable cakes. There was also the novelty of milk to drink, because their nearest neighbor had a cow and Della knew how to bargain. His morning routine included knocking on Angharad’s door and then entering to admire his daughter, who continued—through hard years and better ones—to wake up like a flower turning toward the sun.
He stayed in her room long enough to reply to her Welsh greeting and remind her that time waits for no girl. When Owen finally made it to the kitchen, Della had spread out the Daily Enquirer so he could read, as carefree as a lord. The paper was a luxury they had both agreed on, especially since the paperboy lived just down the street. Della had already worked out an arrangement to help the affable child with his reading, once the boy’s mother had confided before Sunday School that he needed some tutelage, and with new twins, she hadn’t time. Della did have time, which meant summer school for James the paperboy in exchange for the news.
Morning meant a kneeling prayer in the parlor before breakfast, when the three of them thanked the Lord for another day, prayed for friends hurting under an unimaginable load that Owen could very well imagine, and asked for whatever blessings the Lord thought they might need, since the entire matter was in His hands, anyway.
Lunch packed in his old miner’s bucket, with the water reservoir below and the food compartment on top, Owen walked his girls to Maeser School, kissed them both, touched forefingers with Angharad from habit, and then walked four blocks north to the Bullock home.
He quickly learned that the Bullocks were a prolific bunch. This particular Bullock, an accountant who knew what he wanted, carefully informed Owen of the project and his expected conclusion and turned him loose to work.
“You’re highly recommended by Uncle Jesse, and that’s enough for me,” Mr. Bullock said as he put on his hat and checked his timepiece. “My family is gone for a few weeks, so you can work uninterrupted. If you need anyt
hing, stop by my office.” He handed Owen a business card. “Any questions?”
A man of few words indeed. He was no Welshman. “I do have one, and it’s because I am curious,” Owen said. “Does everyone call Brother Knight ‘Uncle Jesse’?”
“Everyone I know,” Mr. Bullock replied. “As an accountant, I can tell you he’s given away a lot of money to people in need and many see him as a rich uncle.” He looked Owen over, maybe wondering if Owen was one of those. He must have decided he wasn’t, because his tone changed. “I would hate to be his money man and have to bite my tongue every time Uncle Jesse wanted a little something for a widow or orphan. Not that I’m against charity! Oh, no. Still, it must be hard to reconcile a generous man’s ledgers. Good day, Mr. Davis.”
Hard in this life, easy in the next, Owen thought as he took a pry bar to some less-gifted carpenter’s version of wainscoting.
It was easy work, probably good for two weeks. He worked steadily every day, with time out for lunch with his girls at Maeser School, where Della explained the Dewey Decimal System to him, and Angharad showed off the books she had dusted and stacked where Mam said.
Routine soothed his heart, and he watched it work on Della too. She smiled more, and she didn’t carry her shoulders so high, the way a person did who had too much tension stored up to ever relax.
As they moved deeper into their personal relationship, Owen could have gone to his knees in gratitude for a healthy, vital wife. Gwyna was his joy, but he had watched her sink and suffer from a heart weakening each year of her short life. Toward the end, he could only stand by, helpless, as something as simple as breathing at high altitude in a coal camp finally became impossible.
In the proper footgear, Della could probably have beaten him in a race. They were much the same height, but he knew her legs were longer than his. He enjoyed her economy of motion as she worked about the house, cooking, cleaning, ironing, tutoring the paperboy, and taking meals to old Brother Scott down the street.
“It’s like this, Owen,” she told him one night as he brushed her hair. “We take turns casually dropping in at suppertime with a dish of something or other. It’s been going on for months since Brother Scott’s wife died. Now that we moved in, all the days of the week are covered.”
“Surely he knows what you’re doing,” he said. “Sit still, Della. Your hair requires intense concentration.”
She laughed at that. “Amateur!” She leaned against him and looked up. “We tell him there was too much for supper and ask if he would mind. He maintains his dignity, and we get to do good. Everyone wins.”
Normally an articulate man, he had no idea how to tell his wife how he had won. She had never heard flowery sentiments in her hard life. After a sweet moment of love one night that practically made his heart stop, she had stared deep into his eyes. “I haven’t sufficient words,” was all she said.
He knew another way to touch her heart. Owen had noticed how often she took off her wedding ring, the one he had borrowed from her former suitor—oh, the irony—because he could afford nothing. He found the pretty thing on the windowsill in the kitchen after bread making, or another time on the sofa in the parlor.
He drew the inside of the ring on a scrap of paper and took it to Brother Thomas Taylor. Recommended by Mr. Bullock, Owen had moved on from wainscoting to lining closets with cedar in all the bedchambers at the Taylors’. Brother Taylor and Julius Jensen owned a jewelry store.
Della approved the closet project in particular because he came home every night smelling of cedar. When he told her Mr. Bullock had also asked him to help in the teardown of the old Bullock Hotel at Center Street and Fifth West, she had hugged him, pleased that word of mouth was getting around and jobs seemed to be falling his way. He could work on both projects at the same time.
What he didn’t tell her was that Brother Taylor had agreed to barter cedar closets for a wedding ring. The amiable jeweler had laughed over his story of Della’s ring given to him by a former rival and agreed that Owen could pick out a very nice ring when the closets were done.
He selected a wide band with a simple flower etched in the gold. Inside, Brother Taylor himself had etched OD to DA, 1900, and found a small box. “What will she do?” Brother Taylor asked as he handed it over.
“Cry, more like,” Owen said, “and I’ll mail the other one back to my rival.”
After supper, when Della was sitting on the porch with James the paperboy and Angharad, taking turns reading The Jungle Book, he had set the ring box on the ledge in the kitchen next to Emil Isgreen’s ring.
He joined them on the porch to read Mediation and the Atonement and casually glanced at Della, who sat on the top step of the porch, cuddling two readers.
“Did you forget your ring again?” he asked when Mowgli and Bagheera were preparing to fight Shere Khan.
Della glanced at her bare finger and sighed. “It won’t do to lose it,” she muttered, handed the book to James. “I’ll be back.”
Silence from the kitchen. Owen waited, then folded down a corner of the page and took his chances.
She stood in the middle of the kitchen, ring box in hand, staring down at the lovely thing inside. As he watched, enchanted, she poked at it, maybe wondering if it was her imagination.
“Brother Taylor and I did a barter for those cedar-lined closets,” he said. “I’m getting good money for the hotel teardown. No one’s going to starve in the Davis house if you have a wedding ring from me and not Dr. Isgreen.”
Without a word, she grabbed him around the neck and planted a kiss of startling proportions on his lips. Kissing her back was never a strain, even if his shoulders did ache a bit from prying out old wattle and daub all afternoon, once he finished the closets.
She pulled away first, but not far, and gave him her intense stare that made him wonder how other husbands managed without Della Davis in their lives.
“Put it on my finger,” she ordered and held out her hand.
“If you’ll stop shaking,” he teased. Then he laughed at himself because he was shaking too.
He slid it on. “Will it do?”
“Forever,” she whispered.
Chapter 19
L
In retrospect, when he had time to repent at leisure and think about the matter, Owen never should have listened to Uncle Jesse. And in retrospect (that devil in the details), he never would have done anything different. Owen knew himself too well to think he could ever ignore a plea from a mine owner who wanted a safer workplace. And who could say this wasn’t the reason he was still alive?
As it turned out, the cost was higher than he would have reckoned. At the time it seemed reasonable, but he was wrong.
The whole matter started simply enough, a mere conversation among men after dinner at the Knights’ house, where the women adjourned to the parlor to chat, and the men stayed in the dining room. Angharad had been content to help the cook in the kitchen and eat in there.
Although the Knights had invited them over to dinner several times this summer, he wondered if he should have been wary of this gathering. One mining magnate, a mining engineer, two investors, and him: a part-time handyman looking for permanent work. He didn’t blame Uncle Jesse later, not at all. The man was worried, and he should have been.
Owen smiled to himself when the two investors from back East looked around for a servant to bring in after-dinner coffee or brandy. To earn a little money in Wales, his mam had served meals in the owner’s house back in the Powell-Williams Colliery. She would come home late and sit on his bed and tell him about coffee in small cups and snifters of brandy and another drink, served only after really good news, that popped and fizzed.
Not in the Knight house. Fruit and nuts went around, chased down by cold water. Owen was partial to baked and salty walnuts. He had taken a handful of nuts when he noticed everyone was looking at him. He briefly wondered what kind of manners felony he had just committed. Or maybe he should have been listening to the conversation.
Everyone laughed. Owen could almost imagine them as well-dressed cartoon figures in the newspaper, with little thought bubbles: “What is really on Uncle Jesse’s mind?” or “No one will believe this back in Pittsburgh,” or maybe even, “Let’s get to it. Time is money.” Owen ate his handful of walnuts and waited.
“I have a problem, Owen,” Uncle Jesse said, not wasting a moment on preliminaries. “I’ve had two cave-ins in the Banner, my newest mine in Tintic, and I don’t know what to do.”
“I’m no hard rock miner,” Owen countered, uneasy already.
“You know wood. You’ve been in cave-ins.”
“Aye to both,” Owen agreed, “but I promised Della I would not go in a mine again.”
That earned him eye rolls and chuckles from the fat cats around the table. The mining engineer didn’t smile. Maybe he had a wife like Della, who worried every time he went underground and the mine trembled.
If he was anything, Uncle Jesse was persuasive. How else did a man get so rich? “Would you consider a short time underground to give me some advice?”
“Tell him yes, lad,” one of the Easterners said. “Who wears the pants in your family?”
“We’ve only been married since May,” Owen replied before he thought. “I don’t wear them much, either.”
The table exploded in laughter. I could have gone all week and not said that, Owen thought, ashamed of himself. His mortification increased when Amanda Knight stuck her head in the doorway and asked what was so funny. The men laughed louder when her husband said, “I will never tell you, not in a million years.”
“Forgive that,” Owen muttered, his face flaming hot.
