One Step Enough

by Carla Kelly

  As I did, Owen thought. “There is a school?”

  “A good one. I have a story about it. I built the school for Knightville and tried to get county funding for it. ‘Nothing doing,’ I was told. It seems we didn’t have enough students to qualify.” He snapped his fingers. “That was an easy problem to solve. I hired Brother Higginson, father of eight school-age children, to come to my mine. Huzzah! School funding.”

  Owen followed Jesse Knight from the depot to Hancock House Inn, where he secured two rooms and they left their luggage. Owen realized this was the first time he had seen Uncle Jesse as a man of business. Up to now, the dignified fellow had been a dinner host, a friend, and a refuge for Della. He had kindly bought them a house, even though he brushed it off and called the little place useful rental property. Twenty dollars a month gave them comfort and privacy and another sort of refuge. He thought of Della, probably eating lunch with Angharad at Maeser School right now, and wished he had not come to Eureka.

  Owen looked down at his shoes, the steel-toed boots he wore in the Number Four. He had changed into the familiar overalls and black sweater he had never thought to wear again. He smelled of coal in this busy town dedicated to silver, gold, copper, and lead.

  “Owen?”

  He looked up with a start, aware his mind was wandering far afield and deep into the Number Four again. “Just thinking of Della.” Might as well face facts. “And coal miners too.”

  “Think of the Banner now. I know I’m distressing your wife, but I need your advice.”

  “You shall have it.”

  They boarded the railcar to Silver City, some two miles farther into the western desert of Tintic Mining District. Owen leaned back, his eyes on the stark silhouettes of headframes. The desert floor was a mottled olive green, which contrasted with the gray of mine tailings and tan of stones and hillside. No one could call this country attractive. Still, the sky was deep blue, with a few scudding clouds dimming the sun momentarily and then blowing on.

  Silver City was a smaller replica of nearby Eureka, right down to the seedy cafes, cribs for sporting ladies, and saloons. He knew he never wanted Della or Angharad to see this ugly side of mining. True, there had been a saloon at the mouth of Winter Quarters Canyon, but in his role as bishop, Thomas Parmley railed against it regularly over the pulpit. On the other hand, the superintendent in Thomas Parmley knew he had to tolerate it, although not with any good grace.

  He must have sighed too loudly to suit Uncle Jesse. “I know it isn’t much. When we’re done here, we’ll take my spur line to Knightville.”

  Two horses pulling a surrey took them west past other mines, some with headframes and hoists, and other drift mines opening through portals. “The Bullock Mine. The Swansea over there,” Uncle Jesse said, pointing. “And up there for all the world to see, my aptly named Mammoth. Ajax, Sioux, Yankee, and so on, mines as far as you can see.” He nodded to the left. “The Banner.”

  They left the carriage and walked in silence to a headframe like all the others, except there was no indication of work underway. A half dozen men dressed much like Owen stood by the hoist. They straightened up when they saw who he walked with.

  “Men, this is Owen Davis, who used to mine in Winter Quarters,” Uncle Jesse said. “He and I are going down to walk around a bit. Is the debris cleared?”

  “Aye, sir,” said one of the miners. He held out his hand to Owen. “Perry Timothy. From Spring Lake, outside of Merthyr Tydfil.”

  “I know it well,” Owen said, shaking hands. “Did you know the Perkins family? I was married to Gwyna Perkins, God rest her soul. Mabli Reese is my sister-in-law.”

  A nod and a smile, and all connections were established and quietly acknowledged in that way of Welshmen. “Many of you here?” Owen asked.

  “Enough so that we have to number our Joneses,” Perry said with a grin. “A fertile lot, eh?”

  Both men laughed. It was an old Welsh joke.

  Uncle Jesse gestured toward the open cage on the hoist. “After you,” he said. “And you and you. We need some light.”

  Three of the men stepped forward, but the fourth hung back. Uncle Jesse merely nodded, which impressed Owen. Not every mine owner would accept the fact that one of the four was too superstitious to go below so soon after a death.

  Owen felt in his pocket and smiled. He never left home for a shift without a cracker or bit of potato to appease the restless Tommyknockers or bwca. As the cage descended with a groan and a creak, he took out the oyster cracker and tossed it below into the dark.

  He sniffed the air as the cage descended. “How far down?” he asked Jesse, speaking loud to be heard over the grind of the cables.

  “Three hundred feet so far,” Jesse said. “I didn’t know you were superstitious.”

  “You caught me in the act,” Owen replied, too long a master of his business to feel the need to explain himself or even care.

  They left the hoist, lit their candles, and started through the mine, eerily silent with no drills banging away at the rock face. Owen looked at the beams above and the wide space between them, put in place by miners or engineers eager to get to the ore and move on. He recalled with a pang Steve Henry’s comment to him at Uncle Jesse’s dinner a few weeks ago that something had to be done before another miner died. And now Steve’s unborn child would never know its father.

  “You’re still exploring here, aren’t you?” he asked Uncle Jesse. “Things aren’t well shored yet.”

  “True and more’s the pity,” the mine owner admitted.

  Uncle Jesse returned to the hoist, but Owen walked the mine silently, guided by the lights of the candle he carried and the one in his cap. His quiet words to the miners meant they paced with him, adding whatever light they could throw on the deadly Banner mine. He made note of the wood and the spaces free of any framework. He had a plan, and he knew it would work, provided Uncle Jesse and his backers were willing to spend more on timber, and give him a free hand to measure and calculate. The Banner was no place to dash in and prop up ill-fitting beams. This mine was a killer and needed to be tamed.

  He also knew Della would fear every second he spent below the surface of an already lethal mine. After the mind-numbing losses in Numbers Four and One, he had made her a promise, and he was about to go back on it, if Uncle Jesse made him an offer. If he didn’t, the matter would end right here.

  Just as silent, Owen walked back with the miners. They seemed to understand he didn’t want to talk. One of them sang “Lead, Kindly Light,” under his breath while the others hummed in harmony. Owen smiled inside, thinking through the lovely words. One step enough for me, he thought, touched, as he walked forward from one weak light to the next, minding his stride but confident because he knew mines.

  Soon enough they came to the better-lit hoist, where Uncle Jesse waited. Owen nodded to him and looked back down the dark corridor. “I’ll do it for you, Steve Henry,” he whispered in Welsh into the gloom. “And you, Richard and David Evans, and you, William Parmley.”

  Uncle Jesse stood beside him as they watched the three miners travel up the hoist. When all was silent before the hoist came down again for them, Jesse put a hand on Owen’s shoulder. “Talking to spirits?” he asked.

  “I suppose I was. My dead friends.”

  “At times I think mining is too cruel,” the mine owner said. “Then I remind myself that men have jobs and can support their families honorably because of what I do. Am I wrong?”

  “Only if the mine is too dangerous to work. Let me do some measuring tomorrow, and some calculating.”

  “I’ll be grateful for your opinion, Owen. One more day?”

  “That will suffice.”

  L

  Sitting at the desk in his room in the Hancock Inn, he was done by noon on the third day.

  The second day he had measured the height and the length of the drift on Level Three and showed his balsa wood model to a handful of miners. He spent some time in the carpenter’s shack in Silv
er City, mindful of changes to make there to accommodate the bigger timbers he envisioned, above and beyond the wood of a square set. One of the artisans in the machine shop next door said he could fashion a large enough hinge for a demonstration model.

  Without any words spoken, Uncle Jesse took Owen through one of the larger empty houses in Knightville, located close to the school that currently did double duty as LDS meetinghouse and a gathering place after hours, with a few books and magazines. For a sweet moment, Owen thought of Della in the library of the Wasatch Store in Winter Quarters Canyon, sharing her enthusiasm about Charles Dickens and Horatio Alger and Robert Louis Stevenson with readers young and old.

  He wondered what she would think of Knightville, a pleasant-enough little village, but one bare of trees and grass. He thought of their lovely street in Provo, with spreading elms and the flowers his wife had cultivated all summer, perky in their window boxes, even though coming autumn had begun to fade their vibrancy.

  With Uncle Jesse standing silent in the doorway, he walked through the empty house, noting the size of the bedrooms, which would be Angharad’s and which he would share with his wife. Maybe they would make a baby here in Knightville; Provo hadn’t proved particularly fertile. They would raise mining camp children.

  He turned to leave the empty house, stopping to pick up a pencil stub the former owner had left behind.

  “Who lived here?” he asked, knowing what Jesse Knight would say, because this house was a cut above.

  “Steve and Maryetta Henry,” Jesse said with no hesitation. “Are you superstitious?”

  “You asked me that before and I said I was.”

  Owen waited; he knew what was coming. How was it possible to want this, and dread it at the same time?

  “I’m paying you sixty dollars for your consultation and opinion.”

  “My opinion is in the folder back at Hancock Inn. I think you’ll find everything in order.”

  “Then let’s go home. I’m ready for a night in my own bed. I’ll read it on the way back.”

  He did, turning each page and nodding. Owen pulled out Della’s copy of Treasure Island and read as the private railcar attached behind the ore cars clacked and swayed to Spanish Fork and then Provo.

  “Let’s walk,” Jesse said as they left the depot.

  They walked one block and another, and then Jesse Knight stopped. “You’ll want better cutting and shaping tools for stronger timbers. I realize this plan means a lot more wood and more expense.”

  “Aye, if you want the Banner to be safer and not kill husbands.”

  Maybe he had gone too far. Uncle Jesse frowned at him. Did it matter? Owen knew the sixty dollars in his pocket was already safe.

  “You would run the carpenter shop to your satisfaction and go below only to measure and install the timber.”

  “Aye, sir, and Della will consider that a reach.”

  Jesse Knight held out his hand. “Well then, how about a furnished house and fuel, plus eighty dollars a month?”

  It was more than a generous offer, but still one he knew Della did not want. Owen thought of his friends, the dear ones he could not bring back. He thought of the lives he could save in the future.

  Still, he had promised Della. Did his word mean nothing? Slowly, haltingly, he tried to explain this to as good and kind a mine owner as he knew he would ever meet. Jesse stopped him.

  “I know I am asking a terrible sacrifice from Della,” Jesse said. “I would never ask it, except that I know you are the person who can solve the problem.”

  “How do you know that?” Owen asked, angry with himself, distressed to be torn in two, trying to honor his wife’s wish on the one hand and thinking of his dead friends on the other, and his plan to make this situation better.

  “You are a man with great skill,” Jesse said. He raised his hand as if to ward off a comment. “I don’t say this to flatter you, Owen; you’re far too realistic to be swayed by blandishments. In another time, another place, you would have gone to university and become a skilled engineer.” He leaned closer. “You still have those skills. I need them now. I am honestly desperate for them.”

  Owen closed his eyes, weary with words, tired of turmoil. All he wanted to do was lie down with Della and hold her close until they both stopped hurting.

  “If I do this for you, will you let me train a crew that can carry on in my place? I can’t keep hurting my wife. I know I will need to be underground, but not forever. I don’t want this job, but you need help.”

  “I do. Six months?”

  Sick at heart, knowing Della would never understand even six months, he shook Jesse Knight’s hand.

  Chapter 22

  L

  From the wary look in his eyes when he walked in the front door and set down his valise, Della knew what was coming. Uncle Jesse must have offered Owen a job, and he was trying to figure out when to spring it on them. She returned to the kitchen without a word.

  He must have realized there was no good time. He kissed the back of her neck while she stirred the pot of stew, unwilling to look him in the eyes, unhappy with him and with herself for even thinking he would keep a promise wrung out of him in a time of high distress.

  As they sat down to eat, Della felt even worse for Angharad. The moment the blessing on the food was over, she told her father that school was starting next week, and she already knew she would be in Miss Wilkins’s class.

  “I helped her with bulletin boards, Da, and she was pleased.” She took the bowl of stew he handed her, but set down her spoon, too excited to eat. “There will be a parents’ meeting on Friday. I’m glad you’re back in time for that. Mam is making cage bach for the meeting.”

  And what do you say to that, husband? Della thought as Owen took a deep breath and set down his own spoon. It was small and mean satisfaction, watching him squirm, and she disliked herself for feeling that way about the man who shared her bed.

  “Angharad. Della. Uncle Jesse has offered me a position as chief carpenter of his mining interests in the Tintic District. We’re moving on Friday.”

  Angharad gasped. Tears sprang into her eyes and she lowered her head to hide them. “No, Da,” she whispered. “Not a mine.”

  Della put her hand on Angharad’s arm, and she quietly pulled away, hugging herself, drawn in tight as Della had watched her during the awful afternoon in May when the two of them were certain Da was dead. For a fleeting moment, Della remembered another little girl standing by herself, head down, by a grave in a Colorado mining town. The awful moment passed, but not as quickly as Della wished it would. She felt icy chips traipsing down her spine.

  Someone had to speak. Might as well be her, since Della knew when Owen left her at the beginning of the week that this would be the logical outcome. Her man was smart and savvy, and he knew mines. “I am hopeful we will come to like … wherever this is,” she said.

  “You promised, Da,” Angharad said, and Owen flinched.

  Good, Della thought, shocked to her core by the bitterness that rose in her like bile. You did promise us. Explain a compromise to your daughter, if you can.

  “For the most part, I will be working above ground in the carpenter’s shop, preparing timbers for installation in the Banner Mine,” Owen said. “I already know what needs to be done there to make the mine safer for the men who do the work.”

  Silence. He looked at Angharad’s bowed head and sighed. He kept his gaze on Della and held it. “If I can help prevent even one death in another mine, I will consider my efforts worthwhile. I promised Uncle Jesse I would work for six months and train my replacements.”

  More silence. Della’s heart broke when Angharad got up from the table and left the kitchen. She winced to hear the door to her room close quietly.

  “Owen, is this worth it to you?” she asked, unable to help herself.

  “How can you ask such a question?” he snapped, then sat back in surprise, as if startled by his own vehemence.

  Della sat back too, unab
le to say what was in her heart.

  “I know what I am doing,” he said finally. “Trust me.”

  “I suppose I must.” Della looked down at the stew—one of her better stews—that might as well have been gall and wormwood.

  “That’s not precisely a ringing endorsement.”

  “No, it isn’t,” she said honestly. “I’m not a fool. I knew when you went to Eureka with Uncle Jesse that you were coming home with a job offer.”

  “You gave me your approval to go.” A muscle worked in his jaw.

  “I knew you would go, whether I approved or not.” She took a deep breath because she had to say it. “Only six months? Owen, I am not certain I believe you.”

  He stared hard at her and she leaned back in her chair, blistered by his expression.

  She had no intention of looking away. She maintained her calm gaze and watched his expression change and soften. “What can I say to that?” he asked finally. “You don’t trust me?”

  “I want to,” she said calmly, as her insides writhed. She leaned forward. “I have sat in sauna and listened to wives speak of the lure of the mine. I have listened to Martha Evans and Annie Jones talk about that obsession. I fear it. That is all.”

  “Try to trust me,” he said finally, quietly. “Six months.”

  She had lost; she knew it. Della managed a smile, because she knew that where he would go, she would go. Maybe if matters went well in the Banner Mine, the little girl in the Colorado mining camp would go back to wherever she generally stayed in Della’s mind, biddable and silent. “Let us begin again. Perhaps you should tell me where we will live.”

  She could nearly feel the relief that poured off her husband, never mind that she had to force herself to speak. He sat back and she saw pride replace the wary look, or at least mask it. How could she tell?

  “First, let me tell you I will be earning eighty dollars a month.”

  “My goodness,” she said, impressed even though she didn’t want to be.