Small wooden houses, many unpainted and on large lots. Outhouses and orchards. An occasional cow, horses, chickens. A rangy dog at every lot to run into the street, bark at the horses, chase wagon wheels. The horses plodded on, paying no attention, their tails lashing flies. Corbin turned the buckboard onto Pearl Street, which was no longer blocked by an elegant downtown shopping mall.
Whenever a carriage or wagon passed too close, flies rose from piles of horse dung that dotted the dirt street.
“People are staring at us.” Women with small waists and big hips, long hot skirts. Men in loose clothing with smirks to match. Everyone wearing hats. Not a bare arm to be seen in the summer’s heat.
“Don’t stare back,” Corbin ordered and stopped the buckboard in front of a brick building where Shay’d clerked the summer before. Painted on the brick above the second story now were the words HARDWARE & STOVES.
Corbin tied the reins to a metal ring in a miniature stone obelisk and disappeared into the store.
Shay wanted to slouch in the heat but the corset wouldn’t permit it. Removing the short suit jacket, she wished she could take off the long-sleeved blouse under it, wondered if she dared remove the hat and decided against it.
If I had somewhere to go, now would be the time for a getaway.
Smells of horse and dust instead of exhaust, and tar that oozed in the sun between great slabs of flagstone sidewalk. A vicious dogfight in the middle of the street. Overhead, a forest of power and telephone wires hanging on coarse tree-trunk poles stripped of bark and branches. A little boy in knee britches staring with round, frightened eyes.
Shay made a face and he ran off. She found an ironed, folded handkerchief smelling of lavender in the beaded bag and wiped moisture from Brandy’s forehead.
A man with a broom swept dirt from metal rails in the street.
Boisterous laughter across the street and three men emerged from a doorway. The sign above read, WERELY’S SALOON. They stopped when they saw her. “Looks like Strock made it to the wedding after all, gentlemen. Pay up,” one of them said.
Shay turned away in embarrassment to find the little boy peering around the corner of the hardware store and the man with the broom grinning up at her.
What’s the matter, never seen a crazy woman before? What if she had to remain Brandy McCabe Strock?
A trolley car approached on the metal tracks as Corbin appeared carrying a wooden box. Two men came behind him with a larger one that resembled a coffin. The wagon creaked and jerked as they loaded it and then her “husband” was beside her, urging the horses around the corner.
JACOB FAUS, GENERAL BLACKSMITHING – where there should have been a bank.
Panic, curiosity, fear, despair, excitement … Shay ran the gamut. Brandy’s body tightened in response.
A series of railroad tracks instead of a boulevard. They turned toward the mountains. WATER ST. – a sign nailed to a telephone pole.
Where the public library had spanned Boulder Creek stood a square brick house surrounded by a picket fence.
Corbin pulled the wagon to a stop. Shay swallowed a lump.
A small sign in the window, MEN TAKEN IN AND DONE FOR.
“Is this where you live?”
Corbin’s face grayed. “I don’t find your jokes funny, Brandy.” He reached into the smaller of the two boxes, removed a package tied with thick twine and jumped to the ground.
A woman rose from a wicker chair in the shade of the porch and moved gracefully toward the gate to meet him. Here was someone who looked comfortable, her sleeves mere ruffles at the shoulder, her dress of thin flowered material. If she’s wearing a corset, I’ll eat it.
“Well, Corbin?” Her hair frizzed around her face, her voice low.
“Marie.” He handed her the package and they talked so quietly Shay couldn’t hear. But Marie’s eyes laughed at her over Corbin’s shoulder.
The flash of another bare arm in the shadows of the porch … a woman’s face in an open upstairs window.
A row of lopsided shanties along the creek to either side of the house. A more imposing building across the street – the sign here reading BOARDINGHOUSE FOR FANCY LADIES. Shay sat up, taking a new interest in similar houses and shanties lining the creek. This is the red-light district and that’s a whorehouse and Marie is a …
Shay laughed aloud and drew a look of surprise from Marie and one of consternation from Corbin. He rejoined her, touched his hat to Marie and slapped down the reins.
Shay turned to wave good-bye to the woman standing at the gate. Marie hesitated, then waved back.
Corbin hissed and forced the horses into a trot. “I don’t know if you are really silly or just acting, Mrs. Strock, but whichever, it looks as Thora K. has her work cut out for her.”
“Who’s Thora K.?” Something familiar about that name.
“Your mother-in-law, as I told you last Sunday. And I’m warning you now, don’t try none of your foolishness on Thora K.”
“You drive a bride of one hour up to a whorehouse to deliver a present to a prostitute and then have the nerve to look at me as if I were dirt.”
“And you wave at her, friendly-like.”
“Well, you obviously slept with her last night. You didn’t even introduce us … as if I didn’t exist. You’re blushing.” She’d never seen a full-grown man do that. He’s human, Shay, be careful. He’s not just a dummy in a museum.
“Ladies don’t talk of these things,” he said with a finality worthy of John McCabe.
They’d angled northwest and were back on Pearl Street heading toward the mouth of Boulder Canyon. Pulling to the side of the road, Corbin took a coil of rope from under the seat and began tying the boxes and her grandmother’s trunk to the wagon, his movements brisk and sure, powerful hands jerking knots so tightly the rope made snapping sounds. Shay winced. Somehow she had to get this man on her side until she could escape this body. And she’d better do something before tonight.
A whistle, the sounds of hoof and harness, and four horses came up from behind, pulling an open wagon. TALMAGE & LILLY STAGE written along its side, six men on three rows of seats within – holding onto their hats and the side bars that held up a canvas top. They disappeared into the canyon, leaving Shay and Corbin to choke on dust.
Corbin slapped his hat against his leg, removed his coat and handed it to her. They started after the stage.
“Do you live in the mountains?” With the present level of conveniences, that sounded bleak.
“I live in Nederland, as you well know.”
“Nederland …” She’d been there with Marek just last Sunday. They’d picnicked by the reservoir, talked of the wedding, planned their honeymoon in Aspen. Marek seemed a million years away.
A railroad across the creek that hadn’t been there last Sunday. Boulder Creek, twice as big and ferocious as she’d ever seen it. A narrow dusty trail that couldn’t possibly accommodate two horses and a wagon.
“Put your skirts down, Brandy!” His voice was husky with shock.
“It’s hot in here,” she pleaded, but slid the skirt back till it reached her shoes. It was like a tent, under the sun, trapping the hot air against her legs. How had women survived these little cruelties? If I stay here, I will be crazy.
Occasional spray from the creek was cool at least. The horses moved so slowly. How different from Marek’s sleek Porsche, which propelled them to Nederland on smooth wide pavement in less than an hour. “It must take all day to get there at this rate.”
“It’ll likely be dusk.”
Heaps of rock piled to forever. Giant boulders that the road merely skirted. Boulder Canyon simply did not resemble itself. And rough log bridges, the road crossing and recrossing the creek to avoid the least obstacle.
Shay held onto the seat with both hands, closed her eyes in tortuous places, grew stiff and hot and hungry. The openness of the wagon and the narrow insignificance of the road made looming canyon walls appear more gigantic than she’d known them.
The railroad veered off up another canyon and the road to Nederland worsened, whole stretches of it supported by rocks piled against the bank below, a series of logs laid across mud in damp places. No springs in the buckboard. The horses sweated and strained in their harnesses, carrying Shay farther from the Gingerbread House … and the wedding mirror.
The man beside her seemed unconcerned with the tedium and discomfort of the trip. I really rattled his cage by waving at old wise-eyed Marie, but he seems to have recovered. Perhaps he was more easygoing than she’d judged him. Shay knew she’d misjudged the others, probably because of their strangeness. In their ways, all three members of Brandy’s family loved her. She saw again the desolate trio in front of the Gingerbread House.
Any man the size and age of Corbin Strock who could blush had to have feelings, had to be reachable. The problem was how to go about it.
Shay took as deep a breath as the sticky corset would allow. “Corbin, I have something to tell you. I’ve got to tell someone, to straighten this thing out.”
His body went rigid, his hands drew in on the reins and his foot jammed the primitive brake on the side of the wagon. “God, woman, you’re not with child?”
“With chi … oh, you mean pregnant. No, it’s not … I mean, I don’t think so.”
His face turned white, then red.
“Now, don’t get all torqued up. For all I know, Brandy’s as virginal as they come. What I want to tell you is … and this will sound freaky, but … I’m not crazy, Corbin, and I’m not Brandy.” His interruption had flustered her. She had a drowning feeling but went on quickly before she lost her nerve. “I think I’m her granddaughter or rather she’s my … let me start again. And you must listen because this is true and I need help.”
“I will listen.” The wagon moved forward.
“Until last night, I was Shay Garrett …” She tried hard to be convincing, but the further into her story, the more she realized that if anyone’d tried to tell her such things, she’d have inched away from that person until she could run. Corbin Strock merely nodded, looked into her face often and kept his own expressionless.
“I don’t know how it could’ve been, but I think it was the mirror.”
“The mirror.”
“Yes, the one on the porch. That’s the one that’d been in my room, it … oh, look! A deer. I saw a deer. And there’s another, by the creek.”
“You saw a deer.” He didn’t bother to look at the deer. His expression didn’t change.
Frustrated tears all over her face. “It’s no use, is it? You don’t believe me and I don’t know how to prove it.” She fished the hanky out of the beaded bag. “Wait, I know. I can tell you of things that will happen in the future.”
“You foretell the future.”
“Listen, wise guy. Last Sunday when I came up with Marek, he’s the fiancé I told you about, this road …” When she’d finished with the improvements to the canyon she went on to dredge up what little she could remember of her history studies. History had bored her all through school and she’d memorized enough to pass tests, then cleaned out her mind for more interesting details. She skimmed over the depression (oh, how Rachael’d carried on about that) and the two world wars …
“All over the world?”
“No, just Europe and Asia mostly and there’ll be wars in Korea and Vietnam.”
Corbin had never heard of either.
“They used to be called something else, I can’t remember now.” Shay went on to cars and television sets … the wildness of the canyon really did have a beauty of its own. How did they ever clear away so much of the tumbled rock and fallen trees to make the canyon that she knew?
Corbin kept his deadpan in place through airplanes but when Shay reached the point of women wearing pants and skirts above the knee he broke into sudden laughter.
Shay drooped. Well, what’d you expect, dumb-dumb? At least he’d heard her out. But how did one explain the impossible? How explain the future to someone who hadn’t lived it or with its consequences?
Corbin’s laughter died as suddenly as it’d come, replaced by thoughtfulness and then suspicion. “You aren’t one of those lady authors, are you? In secret?” Disapproval in his tone.
“No.” She shrugged Brandy’s shoulders. “I’m just old crazy Brandy. And this is hopeless.” She reached again for the handkerchief.
The road rose precipitously away from the creek on a narrow bank supported by a rock wall and tree-trunk braces. From around the curve ahead came the sound of bells.
“Damn!” Corbin glanced at her. “Sorry.”
“What is it?”
“Freight wagon.” He put his hand to the side of his mouth. “Whoa up, ahead!”
“But nobody can pass here.”
“I’ll have to back to a turnoff. You get up the hill and out of the way.”
Shay ripped the hem of her grandmother’s skirt as she left the wagon, fought the troublesome garment as she scampered up away from the road. She collapsed into the shade of a boulder in time to see six horses, two abreast, pull a wagonload of massive machinery around the bend. The horses stopped and the driver put his foot out on the brake to wait as Corbin backed his team down the incline.
When the wagon hit the canyon wall and a front wheel almost went over the ledge opposite, Shay was thankful he’d let her out first. She drew in a noisy breath and the driver of the freight, who was calmly dumping tobacco from a pouch onto a thin paper, looked up with a lazy smile.
He lifted his hat and nodded. “Ma’am.”
Shay nodded back and let out her breath slowly, catching a glimpse of platinum blond hair before he replaced the hat.
He licked the paper, smoothed it and lit it with a wooden match he’d scraped under his boot. Taking a long puff, he looked up again.
The tanned face and sandy mustache didn’t match the hair, neither did the insolent gold-brown eyes. Instant dislike mingled with the shock of recognition as Shay straightened her back at the hard stare below her.
Here, at last, was the man in Grandma Bran’s wedding picture in the hall.
7
At a shout from Corbin, somewhere down the canyon, the freighter released the brake enough to let his horses move away.
Shay sat listening to the boiling creek over Brandy’s heartbeat, telling herself she’d imagined the similarities between the man in the old wedding picture and the one in the wagon. The picture hadn’t shown such light hair, but the picture had darkened. Corbin finally pulled up below her.
“Who was that driver on the freight wagon?” she asked when she sat beside him.
“Lon Maddon. You stay out of his sights. He’s a bad one.”
“Maddon.” Her mother’s maiden name. Her twin uncles’ last names – Remy and Dan had this Lon’s eyes too, as she’d had herself. Until last night.
And Shay Garrett’s hair (she seemed almost a different person now) was a similar color. It’d often been referred to as “the Maddon hair” in an otherwise dark-haired family. She’d just looked into the face of her grandfather.
Brandy must unload Corbin and marry this Lon. She certainly has odd taste.
Shay couldn’t get all caught up in a life not her own, knowing too much and too little at the same time. What if Corbin Strock dies? That would leave Brandy free to marry again. Only, I don’t want to be around when it happens.
John McCabe said he’d send the mirror. When he did, Shay determined to have a long hard talk with it. The thought should have seemed silly, but nothing could be more incredible than the turn her life had taken since the night before.
Corbin noticed the change in Brandy after he’d picked her up. She was silent, subdued. “Did Maddon say anything unkind to you back there?”
“No.” She eyed him with a sadness that made him uneasy.
She was a strange one, there was no doubting it. Unlike John McCabe, Corbin couldn’t believe she was feigning madness. The best of actresses couldn’t make such swift chan
ges in personality and expression, nor so convincingly. Real tears, then startling laughter, looks of an intelligence so intense they chilled him – not the sly look of insanity he’d have expected. But Corbin’d never approved of high intelligence in women. It made them troublesome. Brandy would interrupt herself in the middle of one of her wild fantasies to exclaim over a deer drinking at the creek, or a series of small rainbows in the sunflash of spray, common enough sights in a canyon she must have traveled often.
In fact, the first time he’d seen this fey creature was at the end of this canyon, on the occasion McCabe opened the Brandy Wine. She’d been dressed in white and carried a tiny parasol, pretty and spoiled, the daughter of a wealthy man, but quite normal, playing with other children whose parents attended the ceremony. Her father had lifted her to his shoulder, announcing he was naming the silver mine for “this precious piece of baggage here.”
Even before the price of it’d dropped, the silver in the Brandy Wine played out, as had, apparently, the mind of the child for whom it was named. McCabe’d abandoned the mine and was now abandoning the child. Corbin felt shame at being a party to it, but he and Thora K. would look after her. It would have been easier on them all if Brandy were not such a beauty.
Hard to believe she was the animated creature of a few hours ago. Or the girl with the brazen laughter and mischief in her eyes when they’d made that stop on Water Street, which he admitted now he’d had no business making. She’d stared about there as if she’d never seen it before. Boulder wasn’t so large a place that even a well-bred girl could have missed at least a peek at the houses of that forbidden way. And it was common knowledge that the madams paid cumshaw to McCabe and others like him to stay in business at all.
No, Brandy must suffer from memory losses as part of her affliction. That would explain why she’d looked at him as if he were a stranger this morning at their wedding, when he’d talked with her in that very parlor on the two previous Sundays. And why she did not appear the same person today. He’d believed McCabe’s story of her pretense then. She’d been cold, resentful, blushed often – but today …
The Mirror Page 4