The Mirror (9 page)

Rachael'd inherited the Gingerbread House from her grandmother-that was Sophie. And this land must have come to the Garretts through Grandma Bran,
who is me right now.
Did Brandy inherit it as the widow of Corbin Strock? Perhaps she obtained it in a divorce settlement. Her mother and twin uncles had grown up on a ranch outside of Nederland.

Shay felt apprehensive at the thought of knowing things that would happen but not knowing why. What if the mirror wouldn't work?

The garbage heap not far from the garden was thick with flies, rusting cans and broken bottles. Sun elicited strange odors from that direction and Shay was relieved to put the hoe away and drag Brandy's aching back into the cabin.

It was long past midday when Corbin realized he'd not been back to check on Brandy and he hurried over the ridge to the path past the spring. Someone had forgotten to replace the lid. He stopped to scoop out a few drowned bugs, drink from his cupped hand and cover the spring.

Timbers to repair the shoring of the adit near the breast of the mine . . . more for cribbing new shafts . . . the pump must be on its way up the canyon by now . . . the old storage shed was falling to pieces, he'd build a new one . . . most of the timbering was sound . . . cables for a tramway in the depths . . . the rails were intact and three ore cars in the adit would need repairs . . . much to do . . . he'd have to get Tim Pemberthy in to help and they could train for the double hand in the Brandy Wine . . . kill two birds with one stone . . .

The old chamber pot sat smack in the middle of the clearing for all to see.

Smoke seeped through the wire mesh of the screen.

"Brandy!" Corbin shook loose thoughts of the Brandy Wine and raced to save the girl for which it was named. "Brandy?"

More smoke met him as he entered the house but he could see her through it, trying to whisk dark clouds out the front door with a dish towel.

Feather wisps of hair fell about her face, a smudge blackened one cheek, reddening streaks crossed her forehead. Her dress was dirty and her eyes round. "The stove," she said between seizures of coughing. "I didn't know how to work it." Brandy tried one of those false smiles on him as she had that morning. "Sophie, I mean Mother and Nora always did the stove thing." A tear wandered through the black smudge and Corbin had to turn away.

The smoke cleared rapidly and hadn't been as bad as he'd thought. In the stove, the fire was out but the mystery was how she'd lit one at all. The damper was shut tight. "Are you burned, Brandy?"

"Just from the sun." Her smile was real now, if trembly. "I forgot my bonnet at first."

Corbin showed her the handle to jiggle the ashes down, how to scrape them into the bucket with the scoop, how to adjust the vent, and then he built a fire for her. He wondered at the McCabes, working so hard to find their daughter a husband but not teaching her to use a cookstove.

He found some late lunch in the icebox, knowing pride at the fact he didn't have to walk to the cave for it and neither would the ladies. Corbin watched his wife sniff a tin can of grease and ladle some into a kettle. She put small hunks of meat to sizzle. Peeled potatoes, turnips, carrots and onions were set in rows on the table.

It appeared he'd have a fine supper at least. "Brandy, do you have an apron? Your dress is getting soiled."

"Apron. Oh . . ." She rushed to her trunk and returned tying one about her waist.

Corbin marveled at a woman forgetting her apron. This woman seemed to forget many things. The uneasiness stirred within him, and something else as well. Even when mussed and dirty, Brandy was a pretty little

thing.

He left her sweeping the floor to walk into town and order supplies for the Brandy Wine. But she called him back from the porch. "Corbin, you haven't forgotten about the mirror?"

"I'll telegraph the McCabes before I see to anything else." He had forgotten the mirror and the relief that lit her face now made him feel guilty. The fact that her every little expression could move him so was perplexing.

Corbin started down the slope and tried to shrug off his thoughts. There was always May Bell....

10

Thora K. bristled into the cabin, a tiny hat of black straw hiding her ball of hair. "Hoed up 'alf me onions, she did. Do 'ee come out and see it." She dragged Corbin to the garden without a glance for Shay or the table laid for dinner.

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 dish-pan 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 heat 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 paper-thin 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.