The Mirror

by Millhiser, Marlys

  “I have to throw up.”

  “Here’s the bucket, dear.” Sophie held it for her and pulled Brandy’s hair out of the way.

  “This violent retching could cause some delirium, Mrs. McCabe,” the doctor whispered.

  Outside the window it was still raining in Brandy’s world.

  May Bell ironed the last ruffle and then hung the dress in the wardrobe next to her other lovelies. When she’d worked at Miss Hattie’s she hadn’t had to iron. But it was better to have her own rooms, be her own boss.

  She looked around with satisfaction. All the doilies and lamp shades, the comfortable chairs and bed. May Bell had found the poor Brady woman to do her wash but couldn’t trust her with the ironing. And she had to get dressed to go out for her meals now, where at Miss Hattie’s there’d been a dining room … but still, Nederland was a better place.

  May Bell liked being independent and business was so good she could afford coal all year long.

  When the iron had cooled she put it and the board away, pulled her most comfortable chair closer to the potbelly stove – even if she wasn’t a bit cold yet – and took a chocolate from the box Hutch had given her when he and Lon came to get their money from her hiding place. She was proud of the way she played banker to a select few of her preferred customers. Although she didn’t pay interest, May Bell never cheated or borrowed, either.

  All in all, life was pretty good since she’d gone into business for herself. Of course she’d worry about the twins, but nothing like she’d worried and scraped in Iowa.

  She knew she should be getting dressed to go down for supper but ate another chocolate instead – bless that Hutch and good luck to him – and then found her ledger book. It was fun to add up her own accounts. She reached for the packet of papers and the tobacco pouch. Tonight should be a slow one and she wasn’t cold or starving. She’d have a smoke and do her ledger and then go down. The thought of the Iowa farm made her feel pampered and cozy here.

  May Bell’d no more than opened the tobacco pouch when she heard the board steps outside her door creak under the weight of boots.

  The pampered feeling changed to one of anger. She was good-natured but business before supper wasn’t allowed and everyone knew that. Some damn summer visitor from the hotels probably. She put the paper, tobacco and ledger book in the drawer of the side table and was half out of her chair when the door was kicked open.

  May Bell knew him. Because she’d been thinking about him since the twins left. Even if she’d never seen him before.

  Collapsing back into her chair she grabbed another chocolate, wishing it was a stiff whiskey.

  It was the crazy look in his eyes that made him so recognizable, reminded her of Jeremiah.

  “My name’s Horn,” he said and just stood there, a rifle dangling across one arm. “Looking for a man name of Maddon. Been told you might be able to help me.”

  His face and body were lean, his nose long, his eyes wide open with that self-righteous look Jeremiah wore when he told her how bad she was. That her father’d had when he told her the same thing. She’d been “bad” ever since the age of twelve when her mother died and left her the female head of a family with seven children. When she was fourteen her father’d married her off to Jeremiah because God decided such things and because her father needed money and there was a sister grown old enough to take over. But after all these years it was still hard to meet the eye of a self-righteous male.

  Now this man was “good” because he killed bad men. Waited behind a tree and shot them in the back.

  “Hutch Maddon ain’t no outlaw,” she said bravely. And he surely was small potatoes for a man like Tom Horn. Was he just picking up pin money as he rode through the area?

  Horn didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t take his eyes from her face. One thin hank of dark hair curled across a high forehead.

  “You got no right to hunt him down.” She wore a negligee and her breasts hung loose beneath it. Sweat and fear made the skin slimy where they lay against her.

  His nose wrinkled as if he didn’t like the perfumed air of her apartment, and his mustache twitched. What if somebody’d paid him to rid the world of bad women?

  No matter how hard May Bell breathed she felt dizzy for the lack of air. “He went to the Little Hole and you can’t get him there.”

  Rumor had it Tom Horn would wait weeks to pick off his prey. Would he wait for Hutch to ride out of the Hole? May Bell felt sick with guilt, but what could a lone woman do?

  He blinked finally, relaxed a little against the doorjamb. “Thought he wasn’t an outlaw. Why would he go to an outlaw hideout?”

  “To get away from you.”

  “Then somebody warned him.” The rifle rose slowly to aim at her head. “Who?”

  “Some man from Denver. I don’t know him.”

  “Who?” he repeated. His voice was thin like the rest of him.

  May Bell stared at the small black hole at her end of the rifle. “His name was Murphy. That’s all I know.”

  Tom Horn turned suddenly and the doorway was empty. She heard his boots clatter down the stairs.

  Her breath made humming sounds as she reeled to the door, locked it and wedged a straight chair under the knob. “Oh, Hutch, I’m sorry.”

  May Bell poured a whiskey and chipped a tooth when she brought the glass too hurriedly to her mouth.

  Tobacco spilled on her pretty red rug as she rolled a cigarette with shaking hands. “So sorry, Hutch …”

  Shay and Brandy were very ill. Sophie, Nora and Elton took turns at the bedside. The doctor visited daily. Everyone seemed relieved when Brandy developed a sore throat and a fever.

  The second transposition of minds must have lowered Brandy’s resistance to the point that she was ripe for this new illness. And then there’d been the strain of those long nights in front of the mirror. Shay remembered how sick her own body had been in that ditch east of Boulder. This switching of bodies and time was dangerous. She’d have to wait and gather strength before she tried again.

  At first Shay was too weak to care where she was. But as she recovered she worked out what she thought had happened and was still happening.…

  Her body’d been in that ditch because, for some reason, Brandy had taken it there. And while Shay’d traveled to her own time Brandy had returned to this one, acting “queerly,” talking as if she’d been to a “faraway place,” as Sophie had said. The mirror’d performed a switch. While Shay was trapped in this time and body, Brandy was trapped in Shay’s.

  If this was a strange experience for Shay, what must it be like for her grandmother? Had she married Marek Weir?

  During her convalescence, Shay developed a plan.…

  “I heard what you told the doctor about my diary,” she said to Sophie one day.

  “I haven’t read it, dear, and I won’t. I just happened to glance at the handwriting.”

  “Ma, I was in a hurry and just scribbled. That’s why it didn’t look like my handwriting.”

  “I know, Brandy. Don’t distress yourself.” Sophie sounded as if she wanted to believe it but couldn’t quite. “This illness has probably been coming on for longer than we realized.” She took the breakfast tray and started for the door. “Except for that night when you were first ill, I haven’t heard you call me Ma for so long.” Her lips quivered. “Brandy, please don’t call me Sophie anymore.”

  “I won’t, Ma.” I’m going to be a model daughter.

  “It’s as though you haven’t forgiven me for your marriage to Mr. Strock. And you know it was your father who forced that.”

  Sophie reminded Shay of Rachael again. Strange, tracing similar features and expressions between your own mother and her grandmother before that mother’s even born. Rachael would not resemble Hutch Maddon as her twin brothers would. She’d be a throwback to Sophie.

  And another day when Elton came to sit with her …

  “Bran, now that Pa’s gone, maybe we can do something about Strock. I k
now divorce isn’t an easy thing to live with but if we let him keep the Brandy Wine he might –”

  “No, Elton. I want to go back to Corbin as soon as I’m well enough.” Your mother’s too alert. I can’t carry on this masquerade here for long.

  “You want to live with him?” His hair was cut short as was the fashion now. It made his ears stick out like stunted wings. “Have you come to love him, Bran?”

  “Yes,” Shay lied and looked Elton straight in the eye. Except for his sexual insensibilities she really did care for Corbin.

  “Think of a mountain winter in that shack, Bran.”

  I am. Ugh. But if I can take the mirror with me I might get out before winter. The only Brandy they know in Nederland is me.

  “You’ve changed so since your marriage, I hardly know you. I’d have said you and Strock were the worst mismatch ever, but if you’re happy with him …” He rolled his eyes and sighed. “You don’t know how relieved I am.”

  “Well, I am. So don’t worry about it.”

  “Here I’ve been imagining you miserable, maybe even being beaten, and you’re happy. Wait till I tell Ma.” Elton touched her cheek and left.

  Shay stared with hatred at the wedding mirror crouching on its hands in the corner of the room.

  Thora K. had finished the beds assigned her and was carrying soiled linen down the back stairs when the proprietress asked her to help out in the dining room. This often happened on Sundays when the Antlers served the best chicken dinner in Colorado.

  Enjoying the change from doing rooms, Thora K. greeted friends as she bustled about with platters of chicken and bowls of steaming mashed potatoes.

  Mr. Hollingsworth McLeod, one of the special guests at the Antlers, signaled her with his water glass. She nodded and went off to get the jug. Now, there was a name for you, Thora K. thought. Mr. McLeod was always off in a corner talking business with someone.

  “Power is the thing now, Harry,” he was saying to the man across from him as she returned with the water. “And with the natural fall of the canyon, Nederland’s the place to build a reservoir – madam, you are pouring water all over the table.”

  “Oh, I do be sorry, sir.” Thora K. righted the jug and dabbed at the mess she’d made. “Did … did ’ee say reservoir, Mr. McLeod? ’Ere in Nederland?”

  “Well, yes. It’s still in the planning stage. I’m trying to raise the capital right –”

  “Reservoir, ’ere … her ain’t barmy then.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Her do ’ave the sight. Oh, thank ’ee, Mr. McLeod. Thank ’ee!”

  Shay turned to look at the wedding mirror, lying facedown in the back of the buckboard and wrapped securely in a quilt. She’d insisted it be covered before its removal from Brandy’s room in the Gingerbread House. The mirror might be capable of harming others and she was determined to be careful with it. The trunk beside it was filled with clothes for winter, all black because Brandy was in mourning for John McCabe.

  Sophie hadn’t been eager to let her have the mirror but finally had to admit it did indeed belong to Brandy. Like Elton, Sophie seemed relieved that her daughter wished to return to her husband.

  Shay’d asked Sophie for money and there was a good deal of it in her purse. She would fix up the cabin a bit for Thora K. and for the real Brandy before trying to switch bodies again.

  A stronger, more confident Shay rode up the canyon to Nederland this time. She’d survived the disappointment of returning to Brandy’s world after her short tantalizing sojourn in modern times. She’d survived the ordeal of illness without modern medicine. She was even relaxed with the slow pace of the trip.

  It was Corbin Strock sitting beside her who seemed ill-at-ease now. She asked him about the mine, about Thora K. and Samuel and Tim Pemberthy, anything to make conversation, but got only curt replies.

  Finally, by midafternoon she could stand it no longer. “Corbin, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Now stop this and tell me.” She pushed his hat back and peered around into his face. “Please?”

  “I admit it was my fault but … but good women don’t act that way.” His ears reddened. Confusion mixed with anguish in his eyes.

  Shay knew he referred to their one night in bed together. Corbin was falling hard for Brandy and Shay’d shocked the pants off him.

  “Are you sure you know all that much about good women?” You old Victorian, you. “I mean, have you ever discussed … intimate things with one?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then how can you know? I was a virgin, wasn’t I?”

  “Strong passions must be curbed.” He clamped his teeth together so tightly his ears wiggled.

  “By women. But not by men. Good women just lie around and be done unto?”

  “Brandy –”

  “If they move a muscle or enjoy anything, they’re bad women? But the man can enjoy himself with uncurbed passion?”

  “He must or there’d be no children conceived.”

  “This has got to be the most ridiculous conversation I’ve ever had. Who’s talking about children?”

  “Brandy, you cannot separate the two. One naturally follows the other.”

  “Then why don’t prostitutes get pregnant?”

  “I refuse to discuss this any further.” He slapped the reins against the horses’ rumps with a fury. “Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, dear.” Shay sighed but said not a word until they’d reached Nederland.

  On Main Street their way was blocked by a strangely quiet crowd. Sitting high on the buckboard, Shay could see a mule at its center. And with a little shock she recognized the blanket-draped thing slung over the mule’s back. It was a human body. Only the boots showed beneath … heel up.

  “What’s happening?” Corbin asked a man at the edge of the crowd.

  “Old Willis found a dead man in the creek, downstream from here. Shot in the back.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Only to speak to. Met him in the saloon one night. He was from Denver. Last name was Murphy.” The man shuffled uneasily and looked away. “Someone said Horn was asking after him.”

  “Probably an outlaw then, and good riddance.” Corbin backed the team to take a side street to the bridge.

  “Who’s Horn?” Shay asked.

  “Tom Horn. You’ve heard of him. A one-man vigilante committee who’s not content to leave criminals to the ways of the courts.”

  “That isn’t legal. He’ll be tried for murder, won’t he?”

  “He never leaves witnesses and he’s long gone by now.”

  The smell of frying chicken met them at the door of the cabin and Thora K. greeted her with teary eyes. “So ’ee do be ’ome. I’ve been some lonesome for ’ee, child.”

  Corbin carried her new trunk to the loft because her room couldn’t hold another item.

  Tim Pemberthy arrived to help unload the mirror. Shay held the door as the men lifted it down and then held onto the door for support as the quilt slipped off in their hands.…

  This vision was short-lived and Shay didn’t pass out as she had on Brandy’s wedding night while eating a pasty at the table.

  She saw her own body dressed in a long skirt and some kind of kerchief that covered her hair. Her arm reached over a fence toward a goat. Behind the goat a tall white tree stood bleached of bark and leaves.

  “Brandy, are you sick?” Corbin replaced the quilt and rushed toward her.

  “No. I’m … fine. Just felt a little weak for a moment.” Why had Brandy stayed at that farmhouse?

  “Us’ll ’ave to be careful she don’t tire for a bit.” Thora K. led her to a bench. “Her been terrible sick.”

  The only space for the mirror was a corner of the main room.

  Corbin left to return the team and buckboard. Thora K. turned spattering chicken in the frypan. And Tim pulled the quilt off the wedding mirror …

  “Tim, don’t!”

  “Wot a
hugly thing it do be.” Thora K. stared in amazement.

  “That’s … why I think we should leave it covered.”

  “Why ’ave it at all if ’ee can’t see yourself in it?”

  Tim Pemberthy’s skin had gone white to the roots of his hair. “I do believe it’s the same as stood in me brother’s ’ouse in Central City.”

  Shay covered the wedding mirror quickly.

  “It did upset the family so, they left it in the ’ouse and moved out. They was that afraid to touch it.”

  “Why did it upset the family?” Shay tried to sound casual, her fingers nervously smoothing the quilt.

  “Their youngest did see strange things in it. Edden been right since.”

  “What things?”

  “No one’d tell me. But I don’t like you ’aving it in the house.”

  “’Twas a gift from Brandy’s father, Tim. ’Er knows what’s best to do with it, I’m sure,” Thora K. said mysteriously. “Tim, ’ave ’ee heard of the new reservoir Mr. Hollingsworth McLeod plans to build ’ere in Nederland?” She forked chicken onto a platter and winked at Shay.

  17

  Shay’d forgotten the Antlers Hotel was open only in the summer, and she’d been in Nederland less than a week when Thora K.’s job ended for the season. It would be difficult to work on the mirror with the Cornish woman home all day.

  Without asking permission to leave the cabin, Shay walked to the general store and bought red-and-white calico. She persuaded Thora K. to help her make curtains. Shay was no seamstress and her stitches looked juvenile.

  They rolled the scraps and combined them with others to braid a big rug for the main room. Shay hemmed up some material Sophie’d sent for a tablecloth. The cabin took on a new look.

  She helped to “put up” the garden produce and to make sausages to hang in the cave. Thora K. patiently instructed Shay at every step.

  The mirror sat uncommunicative in the corner. Even covered, its presence lent a subtle change to the very air of the room. Whenever left alone, Shay removed the quilt and stood before it.

  Corbin was home only for meals and to sleep. He did his best to ignore her.