The Mirror

by Millhiser, Marlys

  Shay slumped to a bench and stared at the gay bouquet of wildflowers set in a broken bottle from the garbage heap. That small gesture brightened the room so. But Thora K. noticed only the onions.

  The stove overheated the cabin to stifling, but a spicy fragrance seeped from under the kettle’s lid. She’d added herbs from Thora K.’s jar.

  “I’m ’ungry,” Corbin’s mother announced when they sat to the table. Then she added pointedly, “’Ope there’s henough.”

  Thora K. cut her food into minute pieces and chewed it with her front teeth. “Tez a proper stew.” Surprise in sharp blue eyes surrounded by crinkles.

  Corbin agreed and Shay felt better. She’d have to find out what all was in that herb jar and take the knowledge back with her. On nights when Rachael was working under a deadline or was just too involved in her writing, Shay cooked the family’s dinner. And very soon she’d be cooking Marek’s.

  “They flowers be some pretty. Tez nice to come from working and have a good supper on me table. ’Ee worked hard but the ’oeing din’t ’ave to be done all in a day.” Thora K.’s thumb hooked in the direction of the garden. “Just a mite ever’ morning to keep ahead of they weeds. ’Ow about some bread with this ’andsome supper?”

  “Bread!” Shay’s fork dropped to clang against the plate. She registered now the cloth-covered humps on the shelf in the corner.

  “Do ’ee sit still. I’ll get it.”

  Corbin stared at her. “You didn’t forget the bread?”

  “Ahhh! Me whole week’s bread … edden even baked.” Thora K. slapped a pan on the table. “Did ’ee even poke it down, you?” Part of the sticky dough hung in tendrils over the edge, the rest a porous drying mass at the bottom. It resembled a sponge after an attack by a maddened shark.

  Shay’s experience with baking bread was to thaw a loaf from the freezer, let it rise and put it in the oven. Hurry that mirror, John McCabe.

  Thora K. was still muttering about the bread when she sat on the porch after the dishes were done and bathwater carried in and heated. Shay could hear her as she washed Brandy’s battered body in a round metal tub from the loft. When she finished she joined Thora K. on the porch so Corbin could bathe in privacy and in the same water. His mother explained with a sniff that she did not approve of exposing the “whole skin” at once (it was bad for the humors) and she would sponge from the dishpan later.

  Thora K. also disapproved when Corbin, washed and in clean clothes, announced he was off to town. “They kiddleywinks and King Alcohol” would be the death of him. Corbin replied that any miner worth his salt spent Saturday night in the saloon. His bored tone suggested this argument recurred weekly.

  Shay wondered what women did for fun on Saturday nights. But once in bed she fell into the deep sleep of the exhausted.

  “Edden’ fitty to work so ’ard on the Sabbath,” Thora K. grumbled when Corbin finished reading aloud from the Bible. “Acourse it can’t be ’elped. ’Ave to wash tomorrow and with the whole week’s bread ruined – that’s henough kneadin’, you. Put it in the pan.” She was teaching Shay to make bread.

  Corbin looked sleepy but content. Did Nederland have ladies like Marie from Boulder? He sure isn’t getting any at home.

  Do the freighters work on Sunday? Perhaps the McCabes would send the mirror up on Monday. Wash on Monday … how? Take the clothes down to the creek and beat them on a rock? Shay slammed her knuckles into a fresh glob of dough. Why don’t prostitutes ever get pregnant?

  “’Ow yer ma could a raised ’ee to such an age and not taught ’ee to make bread … and ’ee din’t clean the lamp.”

  And there he sits with the Bible on his lap, all innocence.

  “And last night there were water all over the floor. ’Ee ’ave to empty the pan under the hicebox.”

  Big callused hands, rumpled hair, curious glances at me when he thinks I don’t see. He was very aware of her, whatever he’d been up to the night before. It’s Brandy he sees, Shay. And her hair was falling down again.

  “Might as well show ’ee how to make pasties if us ’ave ter heat up the ’ouse anyway.”

  More flour, lard and salt. More trips to the cave. Corbin left to chop wood. Thora K. rolled out pastry dough on the table and cut it around an overturned plate to make circles. Shay sliced meat and vegetables.

  “And that’s another thing. The stew were tasty fer supper but food that takes a long fire be better left to winter days when us need ter heat the ’ouse. Then we’ll get up some coal to cook with. In ’ot weather short fires be more comfortable and us can use wood.”

  Corbin brought in wood and again dark eyes ran over her.

  He’s just watching for me to do something crazy so he can put me away. But she pushed the hair off her face and pinned it down.

  Meat, vegetables and herbs were placed on one side of the pastry circles and the dough folded over to make a semicircle, slashes for steam cut in the top. Thora K. crimped the edges and rolled out more pastry.

  When the first pasties had baked, they took them out to a grassy knoll overlooking the valley and ate them hot. They were wrapped in clean cloths so they could be held.

  “’Ee might not know much, you, but ’ee learn fast and work ’ard.” Thora K. chewed another tiny bite with her front teeth and turned to Corbin. “Her edden barmy, just needs teachin’.”

  Corbin looked uncomfortable and his eyes slid away.

  “Next Sunday the circuit preacher’s comin’ and we’ll ’ave a proper service. Acourse it won’t be chapel. And then we’ll bury Cara and ’er babe. Poor things be keepin’ at the hice barn all this time.”

  Shay’s pasty stuck in Brandy’s throat. “Where you get the ice for the icebox?”

  “There be only one hice barn.”

  Shay carried buckets of water from the spring, trying not to wet the skirt of Brandy’s traveling suit. The day dress was being washed. Short hairs had separated from her coiled braid and floated about her face, tickling.

  A squirrel darted across the sun-dappled path and the pines hummed to the cool breeze of morning.

  Shay, determined this would be her last day in this funny old-fashioned world, decided to enjoy it. Surely the mirror would arrive today, and she tried to think of some of the many questions she knew she’d ask herself when this strange experience was over. A nagging doubt about the mirror’s ability or willingness to work its magic lingered on the edge of her thoughts, but she worked to keep it at bay. She wasn’t strong enough to face that kind of defeat.

  “The birds sound so happy this morning.” She set the pails down by Thora K. and the tub she’d bathed in Saturday night. It now sat on a plank between two sawhorses.

  “Aye. Times like this do remind me of uld Cornwall.”

  “That’s in England, isn’t it?”

  “Never been to Hengland. Us come straight to Faulmouth from Redruth and round the Lizzard and Land’s End to the big sea.” Her knife shaved paperthin shards of soap from a yellow bar. “But I ’eard Hengland’s not such a bad place.” Condescension in the lilting voice and an expressive shrug of the shoulders.

  “What does the K. stand for in Thora K.?”

  “Tez for Killigrew, me family name. Me ’usband Harvey weren’t Cornish. And I be always spending time with they Cornish women in the town. Caribou it were. Harvey decided I’d ever be a Killigrew even after takin’ ’is name. So at first ’ee calls me Thora Killigrew instead of Thora. Over the time it became Thora K. and I be called that since. Even by Corbin.” She soaked Brandy’s nightgown and rubbed it against a washboard. “Do ’ee run along to Samuel Williams and tell him I’ll do ’is wash. Mrs. Tyler be feedin’ ’im. I’ll take ’is wash.”

  “The man whose wife died?” All laid out in the ice barn?

  “Aye. Tez the third ’ouse down along from ’ere. Edden far.”

  Shay walked “down along” the road counting cabins. Thora K. wasn’t such a bad old broad. It was just that these people didn’t seem real. Shay couldn�
��t get away from the feeling they were all dead and didn’t know it, that they were lost in time – mere playacting curiosities.

  The third cabin had lace curtains at the windows and a man stepping out onto the porch. It wasn’t Samuel Williams.

  It was the freighter, Lon Maddon.

  11

  Shay stopped in the dusty track and stared at the man who would become her grandfather. If she’d had a sense of something insubstantial about this world and its people, Lon Maddon was a disturbing jolt from reality.

  And if the broad brim of the hat in his hand had turned up at the edges, the black boots had higher heels and the trousers fit tighter, he would have looked like the legendary cowboy.

  He returned her stare, his head cocked to one side, sun highlighting the pale Maddon hair and the flecks in amber eyes. “I ain’t a ghost, Mrs. Strock.”

  Oh yes you are. A shiver made her grit Brandy’s teeth. She took a step backward as he approached and stood over her.

  Lon Maddon grinned, ran his fingers through his hair and put his hat on. “Brandy’s a pretty name and you’re a pretty woman.”

  The shadow of his hat brim lent a threat to insolent eyes.

  Bug off, Shay. You’re going home. He’ll be Brandy’s problem. Would Brandy come back to her body when Shay left it? Come back to find herself already married? Maybe I should leave a note for her.

  “I’ve come to get Samuel’s washing.” She tried to smile. “Do you know if a large mirror came up in a freight wagon today, from Boulder?”

  “No, ma’am. But I see one, I’ll bring it right up.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Maddon,” she answered primly and turned toward the cabin. Man, you’re really getting into this part, Shay.

  Someone was having a coughing fit inside and she waited for it to subside before knocking. Lon still watched her from the road.

  “Come in.”

  This cabin was larger than the Strocks’, with pretty braided rugs on the floor and dyed burlap on the walls. The man in the rocking chair spit into a bowl. “Thora K. sent me for your washing.”

  Samuel had dark rings around his eyes and looked at her without interest.

  “That is very kind of her.” Something faintly British in his cultured accent. He shuffled into a bedroom and brought her a cloth bag. “Tell her thank you.” His hands shook.

  “I will and I’m … sorry … about –”

  “Yes.” He turned and coughed into his handkerchief.

  Lon Maddon was gone when she left the cabin and Shay didn’t step so lightly on the way back. The racking sound of Samuel’s coughing followed her up the road.

  She delivered the bag of clothes to Thora K. and asked about the man’s health.

  “’Ee have the consumption, poor man. Came to ’ere from the East with his bride, ’oping to recover in the mountain air. And then her dies with ’er babe and all Samuel ’as left is the consumption.”

  Shay’d never heard of consumption. “Is the air here helping?”

  “Do seem to me, him be getting worse the longer ’ee do stay.” She strung rope between a hook on the cabin and a pine tree, moving leisurely but efficiently. No one seemed in a great hurry around here.

  Shay hung clothes on the rope with hand-carved clothespins. “I saw Lon Maddon at Samuel’s.”

  “Us don’t ’ave nothin’ to do with they.” Thora K. pressed her lips tightly and wrung Brandy’s twisted day dress. “They mother were a lady of the night.” China-blue eyes widened. “And the fayther was hunged by the neck fer he did kilt a man.”

  If Rachael’d ever told this side of the family’s background, Shay would’ve remembered it. But then her school studies on local history had never mentioned Water Street either. “They? Is there more than one?” With Thora K.’s habitual mix-up of pronouns, she couldn’t be sure.

  “There be just the two boys now. And one’s as bad as t’other. Wild with the drink and the fallen women. Can’t tell ’em apart to look at, neither.”

  Shay paused at the makeshift clothesline to stare at Brandy’s mother-in-law. “Twins?”

  “Aye. And nothin’ good ever came of that. Bad luck to theyselves and others too. Queer things ’appen around twins.” She nodded wisely.

  Perhaps Brandy would marry the other brother. He might be more lovable than Lon. She must come back to this body. How else could the family history go on? Unless it’s really me that … No!

  Samuel’s handkerchiefs were stained and had to be soaked in cold water before they could be washed. But rusty smudges still streaked them when she hung them up.

  Is consumption contagious? Those handkerchiefs had soaked in a pail that would carry drinking water.

  “Does the brother live around here too?”

  “Why are ’ee so interested in they Maddons, you?”

  “Just curious.” Because one of them’s my grandfather.

  “’Ee be one of they ranch ’ands and do come and go.”

  When the clothes were partially dried, Thora K. ironed them on the table. “Don’t s’pose ’ee know ’ow ter do this neither?”

  “Not very well.”

  “Watch then. Next week ’ee can ’elp. I’ll never understand that Sophie McCabe.” Thora K. ironed everything, even underwear, and while she did she told Shay stories of Cornwall. About “piskies” leading people astray at night with little lights that beckoned up the wrong paths.

  “’Appened to me granny onst. Way back along it were, when her were but a girl.”

  “Did they find her?”

  “’Course they did or ’er couldn’t ’ave grown to be me granny.”

  As my grandmother will reinhabit this body to become Grandma Bran.

  And stories of the great mines in Cornwall, especially the Pednandrea, where Thora K.’s father and brothers worked until it closed and the family emigrated.

  Shay had to laugh as the old woman gestured with her thumbs and shoulders and the iron. Some of the words were strange but Thora K. acted out her tales so Shay had little trouble following.

  “Where’s your family now?”

  “I be all that’s left of they. All buried in this land. But someday I’ll go back to uld Cornwall an’ that’s where they’ll bury me. Saved the money for me stone, I ’ave, and on it will be writ, ‘She be buried in Cornwall, where she were born.’” She stared into the air as if she were seeing her tombstone, and nodded. “That’s as it do belong to be.” Sighing, she traded the cooled iron for the hot one on the cookstove. “I ’ear you tell ’andsome stories yerself.”

  “Corbin just thinks I’m crazy.”

  “’Ee don’t appear to be ’ere though, do ’ee?” She poked Shay in the ribs with her elbow. “Could be ye have the sight. Corbin says yer stories are of wot will come to be. McCabe sounds like a Scottish name and them do say many of they have the sight.”

  Shay was having such a good time, she gave in and told Thora K. of the reservoir and dam. I’m going home anyway.

  Corbin came from the Brandy Wine tired and hungry, but the mirror didn’t come that day. He said it was probably waiting for other items to make a load and would surely arrive on Tuesday.

  On Tuesday Thora K. went back to cleaning rooms at the Antlers Hotel, Corbin to his mine and Shay was left with few chores to do. After she’d watered the garden, she sat on the front steps and watched a relaxed Nederland. A faint coughing came from Samuel’s cabin. Maybe she should go down and see if there was anything she could do for him. Now don’t get involved, Shay. You’re leaving, remember?

  Finally she put on Brandy’s bonnet and walked along a footpath that angled past the cabin and away from the road. She knew Corbin would consider this wandering, but if the mirror came today, he wouldn’t have time to put her away. And if it doesn’t I’ll go bananas!

  The path ended at another cabin, abandoned and sagging. She peered inside to find it insulated with newspapers glued to the walls between the joists and went in to read the insulation.

  A cricket made a lon
ely chirping sound in the corner.

  An ad for Captain Briar’s Tonic that would cure warts and carbuncles and almost everything else. And below that – “Abisha Weir proudly announces a new steamship cruise of the Weir Line to the magic isles of the Caribbean on …” Rain and weather had wasted away the rest, but Shay was caught up by the name Weir.

  Odd how little she’d thought of Marek, she who was soon to become Mrs. Marek Weir. Her homesickness was for her parents, not her fiancé. “You don’t love him,” Rachael’d said.

  Perhaps she’d think again about that marriage when she went home.

  Marek Weir had seemed so right and she’d been intrigued with him. He had money, looks, and was some years older than she. Perhaps all that had lent him an illusion of romantic mystery and sophistication.

  His work at the National Center for Atmospheric Research was due to last about two years more, long enough for Shay to finish at the university, and then he’d be off to a new location, possibly even another part of the world. To Shay, suffocated by the Gingerbread House and the town she’d lived in all her life, this had appeared ideal, but now …

  “Careful, there’s rats in there and the floor’s rotted.”

  Startled, Shay looked up into a face under an enormous bonnet at a side window. She stepped out of the cabin quickly. “Thanks, I don’t like rats.”

  The woman’s gown was covered with tiny flowers and leaves. She wore a curious half-smile.

  “I’m Shay Garre … I mean, I’m Brandy … Strock.”

  “My name’s May Bell.” The direct gaze seemed to expect a reaction. “You’re Corbin’s new wife.”

  Not really. “That’s right.”

  “He’s told me all about you.” Tiny pieces of sun pricked through the eyelet holes of her bonnet. She reminded Shay of the shepherdess figurine on the mantel at home.

  “Are you a friend of Corbin’s?”

  The smile widened to a full one, but May Bell didn’t answer. Instead she turned back to the path and Shay followed.

  “Did Corbin send you to keep an eye on me?” Shay persisted.