One Step Enough

by Carla Kelly

  “He said your aunt simply isn’t getting better.”

  Is that all? she thought, irritated. Well, boohoo, Aunt Caroline. Immediately ashamed of herself, she tried to muster up a sentence of sympathy, but nothing came out, except, “Salt Lake has good physicians. I am certain they’ll find one.”

  “That’s the thing: they’ve been to several, to no particular relief for your aunt. Her throat hurts all the time. He said she’s eating mostly pureed foods now and losing weight.”

  Best to be honest. “I wish I could tell you how many times I wanted her to curl up into a little ball like a mealy bug and roll away.”

  “I don’t doubt that. Still, he looks so worried.” He lay down again. “I said I hoped things changed and left it at that. He sends you his best wishes. He sounded sincere.”

  “Sincere?” She curled up close like a mealy bug herself. The nights were getting colder. “I wish he could have worried about me a little during Aunt Caroline’s regime.”

  “I felt the distinct impression he wishes the same, m cara.”

  L

  Once or twice during the week, Della thought about writing to Uncle Karl. The thought passed quickly enough. She had a more pressing matter to brood about, when she should have been pleased that Angharad was enjoying her shabby little overcrowded school, and Owen had found good work that mattered to him, even if it terrified her and always would.

  Even here in remote Tintic Mining District, the calendar still mocked her. She swallowed down tears and marked another X, twenty-eight days after the X in the preceding month. Could a calendar be cruel? This one was. It had been hanging on the wall when they moved into the Henry’s quickly vacated house. Newly expectant, Maryetta Henry must have received it from Mellin’s Food for Infants and Invalids. October featured a baby improbably smiling and sucking at the same time. Della had looked ahead to November, relieved to see an old man in a wheeled chair smiling, too.

  She stared at the baby through a blur of tears and jumped a little when Owen put his hand on her shoulder. She leaned back against him.

  “We need a different calendar,” he said. “I have one in the carpenter shop that features tenpenny nails arranged around scantily clad women.”

  She smiled through her tears because she knew he expected that. He sat down next to her and took her face in his hands.

  “Della, I didn’t marry you because I wanted to get children. I married you because I love you, and the idea of being anywhere out of your orbit was unthinkable.”

  “But I want a baby,” she whispered into his chest now as he held her close.

  “I know. I’d like one too, but that was never my first thought,” he assured her. “You were my first thought. You still are.”

  “Just don’t tell me to be patient,” she said, finally. He was as comfortable as a man could be, but she was already going to make him run for the train. She took a handkerchief from her apron pocket and blew her nose.

  “I will not tell you any such thing.” He kissed her forehead. “Other than the obvious answer, how can I help you feel less dismal, once a month?”

  “I need more to do. I need a job.”

  He was on his feet now, reaching for his coat and lunch bucket. “Very well. Take the midmorning train to Silver City and come to the carpenter’s shop. Let’s see what happens.”

  He blew her a kiss and darted out the door. Della gave October Baby a menacing scowl and took off her apron. She was going job hunting.

  Della was the only occupant of the railcar that left from Knightville at ten o’clock. She thought long and hard about what dress and hat to wear and settled on her favorite brown skirt and shirtwaist with little green flowers, a relic of her teaching days. Her second-best hat would do, with its modest brim and simple grosgrain band.

  There were no terrors to this train trip, nothing compared to the winding, narrow canyons from Spanish Fork to Scofield that had frightened her so badly last year. This trip was almost leisurely, with the view to the west and away from eastern mountains wide open and welcoming.

  There it was at the foot of the mountain: Silver City, named for the wealth of silver within, plus the gold and lead to be found as well. The treeless plain did not dismay her. She knew better than to expect charm in a mining district.

  Three distinct rail lines wound their way from nearby Eureka and points east and north, an iron necklace of commerce circling the streets. She saw row on row of miners’ housing and was grateful for Uncle Jesse’s Knightville, even though other mine owners mocked the Mormon miners with their strict rules. All the buildings looked raw and weathered.

  She stared in fascination mixed with dread at the headframes silhouetted against the sky as the sun approached its zenith. It was easy to imagine road agents and other assorted bad men swinging from these hoists, and she had imagination in abundance. She knew one of the headframes belonged to the Banner Mine. Just the thought of Owen deep underground made her turn her head and look at the town instead.

  Everywhere she looked she saw slag heaps, mine tailings raised up and dumped out, to slide down slopes. The lighter off-color stood out in contrast to the drab gray and olive of the hillsides and valley floor.

  The train stopped, and the station agent came out of the depot and helped her down. “Mrs. Davis?” he asked.

  “Why, yes,” she said, puzzled he would know her name.

  “Your husband told me to expect a pretty lady with curly hair,” he told her. “I am to point you in the direction of the carpenter shop.” He started to point, then lowered his arm. “I’ll escort you there. The mail is already sorted, and no one else appears to need me.”

  She walked with the agent to another nondescript, blasted-looking building, this one larger and possessing a chimney that covered one end of the structure.

  “Does it get that cold here in the winter?” Della asked, pointing at the chimney.

  The agent laughed, and she felt foolish. “You can tell I don’t know much about mining.”

  “That chimney heats a boiler, which runs the saw using steam power,” he said. “Noisy around here.”

  He opened the door, ushered her inside, and tipped his hat. “G’day, Mrs. Davis. Train leaves at three.”

  Della breathed deep of pine and other wood she did not know. What looked disorderly at first glance turned into order, with uncut logs arranged by size and type on one side of the main room and planed boards on the other. And there was her husband, a pencil behind his ear, standing in the doorway of what looked like an office.

  Edging around the machinery, Della picked her way toward him, minding her skirt. Owen took her hand, pulled her inside, and closed the door, which cut down the noise immediately.

  “Someone should take a dust cloth to this office,” she said, after kissing his cheek and tasting sawdust on her lips. “And maybe to you.”

  “That would be a forlorn hope, m cara,” he said. “The big logs we ordered are coming in. The machinists are working on the hinges. Maybe next week we can start hinging the timbers and getting them ready for the mine.”

  “You’re sure they’re the right measurement?”

  “As close as can be,” he replied, “although I don’t mind admitting that if you hear me awake and tossing about some night soon, it’s because of nerves.”

  “Owen Davis, you can pretty much do anything,” she said, pleased with him for no other reason than he was aboveground and in charge of the carpenter shop. Maybe there was hope for her and Silver City, as long as she didn’t remind herself that the man installing the beams underground was going to be this same man.

  “Now the question of the ages is, what about you, oh fair Olympia, since you appear before me in your second-best hat, quite a trim skirt and shirtwaist, and determined to work?” He took the pen out from behind his ear. Turning to his drafting table, he rapidly drew a storefront with a sign reading, “Apprentice wanted. Must be able to read bad handwriting. Will train.” He handed it to her. “Cross the tracks where t
hey come together in a V. You’ll see this sign on a shack I will laughingly call an office. It’s next to Henry Nailor’s Pool Hall. Take the sign out of the window and tell Saul Weisman you’re the man for the job.”

  “My goodness, I doubt he is expecting a lady to apply, is he? Will he agree?” She pointed to the sign. “ ‘Read bad handwriting’? Is this a joke?”

  “That’s up to you, Mrs. Davis.” He kissed her cheek this time. “He’s hiring, and so is Andy Wilkinson at Wilkinson Mercantile. The madam always wants pretty women at the bordello, so I am informed by sources who should know, but I do not recommend that drastic step.”

  “Oh, you,” she murmured. “I’m quite happy with one husband.”

  “Music to this Welshman’s ears,” he said cheerfully. “I never reject a bargain. Ow! That’s my foot you’re stomping, in case you’re wondering. Now go and impress Saul Weisman.”

  “Bad handwriting. What does he do?” she asked, letting him head her toward a side door, where there weren’t any boards to step over.

  “He assays gold and silver using heat and chemicals.”

  “Owen, I don’t even know what that is,” she said, and she felt nervous knots gathering in her stomach.

  “He samples the ore that comes from Uncle Jesse’s mines and determines the percentage of gold and silver that can reasonably be expected from, say, one drift. They vary, depending on the seam. What the assayer finds often determines where the miners work.”

  “Owen, I don’t know anything,” she said, suddenly afraid.

  “I thought you wanted to work?” He put his hands on her shoulders and gave her a gentle shake. “You can do this. Saul needs someone smart, and that’s you.”

  “You know as well as I do that he wants—is expecting—to see a man apply.”

  Owen shrugged. “The sign has been in his window for a couple of weeks now. He hasn’t found the right person yet. Once he sees you …” He tugged her hat down over her eyes, and she protested again. “… he’ll know he needs you. Look, Della, I weighed the mercantile, the bordello, and Saul’s place, and Saul came in number one, far ahead of the pack.”

  “You are a rascal, Mr. Davis!”

  “And you, Mrs. Davis, are the man for the job.”

  Chapter 27

  L

  She crossed the tracks and came to the V, just as Owen had said. The sign for Henry Nailor’s Pool Hall had missing letters. She smiled to see “Poo Ha” proclaimed for all and sundry and figured the three l’s had blown over Denver by now.

  A first and a second look at the shack only made her frown. The building seemed to lean toward the east, supporting her suspicion that if the wind stopped, the structure would topple, and Mr. Weisman would need new accommodations.

  There was the sign with its odd requirement, nicely lettered. Nothing ventured is nothing gained, Della, she reminded herself, and she knocked.

  “Come in, please.”

  Her hesitation past, Della did as requested, going first to the window to take out the sign and then turning to face a small man seated at a table, his hands folded, surrounded by brown glass vials and a jumble of papers.

  “My husband told me I was the man for this job, Mr. Weisman,” she said, well aware how stupid that sounded.

  “Come closer.”

  She did, surprised this time to see a man with a surprisingly young voice. The most remarkable things about him were a hunched back and eyes as dark and deep as hers.

  “I’m Della Davis,” she said, finding her voice because only kindness seemed to come out of those eyes. “My husband Owen was newly hired by Uncle Jesse—Mr. Knight—to run his carpenter shop. I see to it that my stepdaughter Angharad is in school each morning, but I would like to work.”

  “No one else at home to care for?” he asked.

  Maybe prospective employers had to ask questions like that. “I wish there were, but no,” she replied. “I taught school last year in Winter Quarters Canyon, but school districts don’t hire married women to teach.”

  He nodded. “Seems a waste of a good brain,” he said. He had a lovely accent, not beautiful and Welsh like Owen’s, but German or Swiss. “Mrs. Davis, did you know that six hundred years ago, there was a female professor at the University of Padua?”

  He gestured to a chair close to his own, and she sat.

  “I believe she taught the wisdom of Aristotle. Pretty good for an era most historians today scorn as unenlightened and stultifying, no?”

  “Something happened in the past six hundred years then,” Della said, convinced there had never been a job interview like this one, if that’s what Mr. Weisman was doing. Whether he was or not, she found him fascinating.

  “Indeed something did happen,” he said, “and that’s also why some of my brethren of the Hebrew persuasion don’t teach at major universities even now.” He held out his hand to her. “Can you type, Mrs. Davis?”

  She shook his hand, marveling at the smoothness of his fingers. She doubted anyone in a mining camp had hands like his. She knew Owen didn’t. Della looked into his eyes because it was impossible not to.

  “I learned to type this summer,” she told him, her hands in her lap again. She took out a folded paper from her purse, straightened it, and held it out to him. “I worked all summer implementing the Dewey Decimal System in the Maeser School in Provo. I’m not speedy, but I’m accurate.”

  He took her resume, which suddenly looked no bigger than a postage stamp to Della, because she knew what little employment history it contained: one year in Winter Quarters, the year before at Westside School in Salt Lake City, and one summer as a kitchen flunkie in Cottonwood Canyon, working for a crew stringing telephone wire. She could have added six years shelving books at a library to buy her basic necessities, one item at a time, but he knew enough to make a decision.

  “I want to work, sir, and I can type. Would you like me to demonstrate?”

  He shook his head, handed back the paper, and her heart sank. She looked toward the door, wondering what kind of help the Wilkinson Mercantile wanted.

  But no. The little man with the big hunch, lovely eyes, and precise accent wasn’t finished with her. “I need help in keeping up with paperwork.”

  Maybe this was time for a joke. “You aren’t worried that I might ask you to write an essay on what you did during your summer vacation?” she asked.

  He laughed, and her heart eased. His face turned solemn then. “I could write you an essay someday on slipping away from a pogrom in Prussia, my chemicals on my back, clinking away and making noise. I had to leave them behind in the snow.”

  “My goodness. You’re a survivor,” she blurted out, wanting to know more.

  He nodded emphatically. “Luckily, the gold I had sewn into my overcoat was a lot quieter.” He spread his hands on the table. “Now I am here, not in the lap of luxury, but at least off the bony knees of poverty and terror. I need a secretary.”

  “There’s a lot that must have gone on between abandoning your chemicals and sitting here in Silver City,” she said, fascinated now, her fear gone.

  “A story for another day,” he replied. “Mrs. Davis, would you please work for me?”

  “You still don’t want me to demonstrate my typing proficiency?” she asked, looking toward the big typewriting machine on a table closer to the door. To her continued relief, it was an Olivetti-Underwood, just like the one Mr. Holyoke had lugged from his office to the library.

  “You would never lie on a resume, would you?” he asked in turn.

  “Heavens, no. Who would do such a thing?”

  “You would be amazed. I can’t pay you more than fifteen dollars a month, so let us pray that your husband is a steady man with no intemperate habits that might get him fired.”

  “Not Owen,” she said promptly. “He doesn’t smoke or drink. I was going to add gamble, but he’s working in a mining camp, so you can draw your own conclusions about that.”

  Mr. Weisman laughed and sat back as much as he cou
ld, considering the hump of flesh on his left shoulder that extended nearly to his waist. “Have you ever been accused of being witty, Mrs. Davis?”

  “No. Am I?”

  “You are. Now, to recapitulate: you need to be home in the morning long enough to see your daughter off to school. What about the afternoons?”

  “School lets out at three. I believe I can make arrangements for her to stay with friends until almost four, when the three o’clock train arrives in Knightville,” she said, hoping this was true, because she knew she wanted the job.

  Mr. Weisman eyed her, and she gazed back. “I think this will work quite well, Mrs. Davis. Here from ten in the morning to three in the afternoon, Monday through Friday? Twenty-five hours a week, toiling in an assayer’s office?”

  “I can. I will.”

  “I might have to ask you to deliver assay reports to the various mine offices here in Silver City, if the engineers are impatient and demanding.” He shifted and winced. “You understand.”

  “Perfectly.”

  “I can guarantee you a faithful body guard, if you are reluctant to traipse about this lively town by yourself.”

  “You have other employees?” she asked, curious.

  “I suppose you could call him that. You’ll meet him tomorrow.” He smiled at her. “If you have a soup bone with some meat on it, bring that along too. Saladin likes treats.”

  Saladin. Pogroms. University of Padua. My goodness, Della thought. She remembered the bad handwriting portion of the sign. “About your handwriting … Should I read something before you hire me unaware and discover I am a fraud?”

  “If you must. I only put that there to amuse myself.” He handed her a letter.

  She stared at it and laughed. “Mr. Weisman, it’s written in another language.”

  “You passed,” he said. “It’s Yiddish. One hopeful fellow tried to read it.”

  He stood up then, and she saw how short he was, and how crooked. She also saw how the effort made him frown. How did a man like this escape a pogrom? Maybe with something named Saladin.

  “I will wager you never expected to be taller than your employer, did you?”