The Mirror

by Millhiser, Marlys

  “I’m the last person in the world he’d call on to do that.” She straightened white gloves. A large-framed woman, very plump, a creamy dimpled face. “I’m just out for a walk. I like walking.”

  May Bell stopped in front of the Strock cabin. “Must be quite a comedown from McCabe’s house. Corbin thinks of nothing but his mine now.” Her expression hardened. “But he could have prettied it up some for a young bride. Even a crazy one.”

  On Sunday Shay stood at the graveside of Cara and Baby Williams, Corbin and his mother on either side of her.

  Samuel leaned on the arm of Lon Maddon as the circuit preacher said a final prayer over the gaping hole.

  Cara had been eighteen. Her husband, tall and much too thin, stood with shoulders stooped and eyes sunken. Shay guessed it wouldn’t be long before he joined his little family here on this rocky hillside.

  The faraway hoot of an old-fashioned train whistle wailed across clear mountain air … haunting, sad.

  Shay bit Brandy’s lip. The pine box holding both Cara and her baby had been mercifully nailed shut. All these people are dead and past to you anyway, Shay. Don’t get so involved.

  She looked up to see Lon Maddon grinning at her from across the grave. Brandy couldn’t possibly marry him. Shay was afraid of him.

  And others watched her too, if less openly. Corbin Strock’s crazy bride must have been big news in this tiny community. Thora K. had introduced her to some of the women outside the town hall before the funeral and to others at the church service held that morning, defiantly dragging Shay from one group to another, pretending ignorance of the discussions that went on in whispers after they’d passed. May Bell hadn’t come to either service.

  The musty smell of woolen clothing brought out of storage for rare occasions only, the pungency of dried pine needles crushed under shuffling boots, the dankness of raw earth torn from its rocky bed …

  Wind and pine trees breathed a final amen with the circuit preacher.

  Corbin slid a hand under her elbow and guided her between graves and over rocks to the road. Shay kept her eyes on the toes of Brandy’s shoes. She didn’t want to see the curious glances of the people around her, tried not to hear the shovels at work behind her. I want to go home.

  Thora K. had stopped to talk with the preacher and now she caught up with them, a man in a seedy gray suit on her arm. “I did ask Tim up fer supper. Tim, this be Brandy.”

  Tim Pemberthy was the man who helped Corbin at the mine. His speech was not quite as Cornish as Thora K.’s. The four of them walked on together, Tim and Corbin’s mother exchanging good-natured insults.

  Thora K. stopped on the bridge over the creek in the valley and turned to look back up the hill. “Ahhh … ’twere a lovely funeral.”

  Shay stared at her in disbelief. This woman was fast becoming the strangest person she’d ever known.

  Elton McCabe made a stop on Main Street to inquire the way to the Strock house.

  As he urged tired horses up the hill, Elton wondered if perhaps May Bell would be free for a time this evening. He remembered a night years ago when his father’d brought him to Nederland on business. Part of that business had been to introduce him to May Bell. Ever since, he’d longed to atone for that particular fiasco.

  When he reached the Strock house, he sat for a moment on the buggy seat, hoping he’d been misdirected. It was little more than a shack.

  But before he could get down, the door opened and his sister rushed onto the porch, her hair braided into a funny topknot, a wild look in her eyes.

  “Hello, Bran. How –”

  “Elton, you’ve brought the mirror!” She was off the porch with skirts flying and peering into the back of the buggy.

  “Ma has this notion the mirror upsets you, Bran, so she’s keeping it for you at home. But she had Mrs. Keeler make you a new dress, and look.” He opened the small trunk. “Your books.”

  “You didn’t bring the mirror?” Her eyes were huge, swimming with tears.

  “You know you enjoy reading. And here’s some cloth for sewing.” He looked from her shocked expression to the cabin, back to her little hands, red and roughened already. God, what have we done to her? “Maybe later I can bring up the mirror.”

  Elton had the strong urge to hold her against him and reassure them both but he saw Strock coming up the road. All he had time for was to slip her a small purse.

  “Hide this. It’s for you. Next time I’ll bring more,” he whispered and then said aloud as Strock approached, “Ma wondered if you had any letters for her, Bran.”

  “You didn’t bring the mirror,” his sister answered dully.

  12

  Shay stood her ground beside Thora K. in the squirming, raucous crowd on Main Street. The silly bonnet shaded her eyes. Wisps of hair made her neck itch.

  The flag of the United States, minus a few stars, fluttered and then hung limp on its pole at one end of a raised platform of raw boards.

  Beneath the flag, Corbin Strock knelt on one knee, his eyes boring down into Brandy’s as if to discover Shay lurking inside. She held her breath, almost unaware of the antique people perched on rooftops and porch overhangs, of the electric excitement charging the crowd and the air. He’s not going to find it easy to stay on that pallet in the loft.

  The timer raised his arm and stared at the watch in his other hand. Sunlight flashed off the gold chain.

  The milling stopped … and the noise.

  Corbin looked away from her and picked up the shortest of the steel drills that lay on the flat-topped rock in front of him.

  Both Corbin and Tim Pemberthy were stripped to the waist, powerful muscles tensed in readiness.

  Standing, Tim raised to his shoulder what Corbin had called a double jack, but what looked like a sledgehammer. She was told it weighed eight pounds.

  The timer’s arm started down.

  The double jack was in the air, the drill flipped upright on the rock, and the crowd had begun a long combined exhalation before the timer finished his “Go!”

  Iron clanged on iron … an echo off surrounding mountains. Pemberthy’s naked back rippled as the double jack rose into the air and came down again.

  Through Tim’s parted legs Shay watched Corbin’s knuckles whiten as he grasped the drill, holding it straight for the blow. And when it came the shock passed visibly up his arm to his shoulder. He twisted the drill just a little before each strike of the huge hammer.

  “Five dollars says it’s over forty inches and this team wins. I hear Strock’s got himself a new bride to show off for.”

  “Hush, man, she’s standing right in front of you.”

  Tim Pemberthy was lighter and older than Corbin, but most of him was torso and heavily muscled. And all behind eight pounds of iron.

  Against the flagpole sat a wooden keg clasped with copper bands. A rubber hose ran from it to the rock, and a man kept the hose dribbling water into the hole.

  The double jack fell faster. The drill bored deeper. Pemberthy’s back glistened.

  Dots of sludge flew from the hole and splayed on Corbin’s chest and arms.

  His free hand grabbed the next drill in the line, longer than the first. Then, so swiftly that Pemberthy didn’t have to slow the hammer, Corbin withdrew the old drill and inserted the new with his other hand. If either of them had misjudged that move …

  “This is dangerous.” Shay turned to Thora K.

  “Aye. Many a man ’as lost ’is hand to this, and more.”

  “One minute!” the timer yelled and the two men changed places almost in one motion. No more than a strike could have been missed in the rhythm of the double jack.

  Shay Garrett was just existing, careful to appear outwardly normal, to dress Brandy’s hair and body as best she knew how, to feed them both and to placate Corbin and his mother in case Sophie relented and sent the mirror to Nederland, in case the mirror would relent and send her home, in case the mirror had really done this to her to begin with.

  Thr
ee judges stood around the flagpole watching intently.

  Another man jumped to the platform and sponged the sweat from Tim Pemberthy’s chest and shoulders and then held a tin cup to his mouth. Tim nodded thanks, grimacing at each blow of Corbin’s hammer.

  “Tez a true ’ole, Strock. Let ’er have it!” A voice from the crowd.

  “Make old Harvey proud of his boy from the grave!”

  Shay watched Corbin’s back ripple now, and the clang rang louder, faster. Another drill thunked to the platform.

  Since Elton’s visit something inside her’d given up hope and a terrifying passivity had settled on Shay. But this strange Fourth of July celebration in a tiny mountain town, these sweating miners daring fate, the frightening clamor of the double jack, all these long-dead but incredibly alive people jostling her to watch Brandy’s husband perform more nervelessly than an Olympic champion …

  Who would have thought such a silly thing as two grown men hammering a hole in a rock could hold her breathless?

  Again the men changed places, and now it was Corbin’s turn to have the sweat sponged from him. His chest heaved and his lips drew back from his teeth. He knocked off his hat with his free wrist. Dark curls lay matted and soaked close to his head.

  The man with the sponge dumped a bucket of water over him and the crowd roared approval. Corbin grinned; the spots of sludge, speckled across his chest, ran into dirty streaks.

  Another drill thudded to the wooden platform, the crowd pressed forward. Shouts, taunts and encouragement lifted to mingle with the echoing ring of iron.

  Shay peered between two of the rough logs that formed the base for the platform, to discover the bottom of the huge rock sitting on the street. The platform had been built around it, a hole cut in the floor to expose its top. No wonder the drills were getting so long.

  The positions changed yet again. Both men were tiring now, and Shay realized this was a feat of endurance as well as skill.

  “Why do they do this thing?” she asked Thora K.

  “In the mines them do drill such ’oles fer they charges. And ’ere they be on a fine ’oliday doing it fer fun.” But there was pride in her eyes as she watched her son. “Power drills be used in they big mines now and the double jack’ll soon be a thing of the past.

  “Me fayther died of the rot in the lungs and a brother’s still buried in a cave-in in Black Hawk. So instead of marryin’ a Cornishman like was expected, I married a fine big Norwegian.”

  “Was he a miner too?”

  “By trade, not by blood. The Cornish who came to these mountains be mostly miners by blood, and I wanted to thin that out in me children. Few mines be working now and Corbin’s ’ad the chance to find something else. So wot does ’ee do but marry you to get a mine of ’is own. ’Ee looks like ’is fayther but ’ee be Cornish through.”

  Wooden stairs ran up the side of a store building to her left and at the top was a railed landing. May Bell stood there watching the contest, her ample figure amplified by a ruffled gown.

  The door behind her opened and Lon Maddon stepped out, placing his hat on his head. He was eating a large crust of bread.

  Extending his arms and stretching his shoulders, he came to lean on the railing next to May Bell. She looked down at Shay without recognition but then pointed toward her, saying something to Lon. His eyes searched the crowd until they fell on Shay. Chewing on the bread, he studied her with a curious lack of expression.

  Shay was pushed from behind and fell against Thora K. as people edged closer, and her attention was diverted to the contest.

  The crowd applauded and whistled praise now to each sweat-stained man as he came off the double jack.

  Tension grew. The hammer fell faster. The straining miners gulped for air.

  “Time!” the timer called, and Corbin stopped the double jack in midair.

  Tim fell back onto the platform and lay there with a half-smile, half-grimace. Corbin leaned on the long-handled hammer, one shoulder twitching.

  The judges gathered around the rock, probing the hole with a long measuring rod. Nederland’s Main Street was so quiet Shay could hear Lon Maddon crunch a bite out of his bread crust. She glanced up to find two Lon Maddons standing with May Bell. The twin had returned.

  “Strock and Pemberthy,” the timer announced in a voice worthy of the ringmaster at the Barnum and Bailey Circus. “Forty-one and three-fourths inches!”

  Tim and Corbin smiled at each other and the crowd’s roar was answered by an explosion that shook the dirt street.

  “That sounded like dynamite.”

  “That’s wot it were.” Thora K. pointed to a cloud of smoke and dust on a ridge close to town. “Lunatics these miners be. ’Twon’t be the last you’ll ’ear today, neither.”

  While Corbin and his partner left the platform to be congratulated by a circle of miners, a new team took their place at the rock. Another section of it was marked off in chalk.

  Soon the double jack rang out again.

  Shay watched the Maddon twin with the bread descend the stairs. He wore an open vest and no jacket. She had the feeling this one wasn’t Lon, because when he surveyed the crowd and found her staring at him, he didn’t grin.

  Four teams vied in the double-hand contest. Corbin and Tim lost by a fourth of an inch. Then followed the single-hand, where one miner held his own drill and swung a smaller four-pound hammer with his other hand. For any excuse a dynamite blast would go off on the ridge.

  When this contest was over, the town retired to Barker Meadows for races and picnics.

  Shay sat on a blanket and bit into a cooled pasty, her head aching yet from the clang of the miners’ hammers and the dust holding on still air from the racing.

  They’d raced everything from feet to wagons. The Maddon twins had tied for first place in the horse races.

  The twins seemed to be everywhere and seldom together, so they appeared disconcertingly often, strolling among various groups of picnickers, one examining a horse’s leg by an unpainted corral, the other trying to peer under a demure young lady’s bonnet near a root-beer stand. This was a small tent where some women sat on wooden folding chairs under the sign of the “Independent Champions of the Red Cross.”

  Shay tried to hide her morbid interest in the Maddon twins. Even the term “Maddon twins” was hard to disassociate from her uncles, Remy and Dan. One of these men was their father … and Rachael’s. The thought of her mother brought instant tears to her eyes.

  “Is something wrong, Brandy?” Corbin lounged on the grass beside her.

  Yes. Can you believe I’m twenty years old and I want my mommy?

  “No, I just swallowed too big a bite and it stuck.”

  A short distance away May Bell spread a blanket on the grass and three other women joined her with a basket. Shay’s mouth watered as they bit into crisp-looking pieces of fried chicken. She was getting very tired of pasties.

  When the family group near them picked up their picnic and moved to another part of the meadow, May Bell and her friends didn’t seem to notice. Their chatter and laughter carried defiantly to Corbin and Shay. But it was soon drowned out by a general cheering as a bald-headed man backed a team of horses and a wagon up next to the root-beer tent. He crawled over boxes to set a keg upright at the back of the wagon.

  He was soon dispensing foamy beer in glasses taken from the boxes. The ladies in front of the tent were all but trampled by the crowd that pressed around him.

  One woman raised a fist and shouted something at the bald man with the keg. She was so angry she made little jumping steps sideways like a startled cat.

  Corbin chuckled. “Mrs. Tyler does get riled.”

  “Why? Because he’s cutting into her root-beer business?”

  “More than that. The Independent Champions of the Red Cross is a temperance organization. Don’t they have one in Boulder?”

  “Uh … I think they call it something else.”

  “Well, I’m going to get some beer. Let me h
ave your glass and I’ll get you some more root beer.”

  “Whoopee-twang.”

  “What?”

  “Uh … thank you, Corbin.” The drink was half-warm and decidedly flat. “I’d love some more.”

  He held onto her hand instead of taking the glass from it. “Brandy, you’ve not been yourself since your brother left. We’ll talk your mother into letting us have the mirror, somehow, if it means that much to you. Stop fretting and enjoy yourself. Holidays are few and far between.”

  She watched him walk away and then saw May Bell watching him too. May Bell turned to look at her, again without recognition. But Shay was too busy considering what he’d said to mind. Don’t get so down. There’s always hope, and if he’s willing to help …

  A group of women crossing the meadow made an unnecessarily wide circle around May Bell and her friends. There was something different about the women on the blanket. Their way of dress was fussier, their faces less washed-out looking … makeup. Shay detected now the color added lightly to lips and cheeks and around the eyes.

  The population had swelled with ranchers, farmers and miners from the countryside and summer visitors who’d come for vacation or health reasons. Shay studied the other women on the meadow.

  A great many straight dark skirts and white blouses, summer-thin dresses with high collars like the one Shay wore, the subdued colors of tiny flowers or plaids. The summer visitors tended to congregate and their younger women wore all white and carried parasols, their hair more cleverly and smoothly coiled. They made Shay feel like a dowdy hick. She sat straighter, her hand automatically moving to Brandy’s hair.

  Even with the sense of displacement, the feeling she was outside of time – a mere observer of a parody of life – Shay was affected subtly by these people, drawn in by the age-old forces of vanity and fashion-consciousness. Would she become so submerged as to forget who she really was? Thora K. and Corbin were already moving from the unreal to the real.

  Shay removed a piece of pasty from the hole in Brandy’s mouth.

  Her dress, the new one Sophie’d sent instead of a mirror, fit too tightly without a corset.