The Mirror (20 page)

"Maybe it'll teach the town a lesson and they'll build a water system."

"They can't. Emptied the town coffers to pay the judge in Boulder for that court case." May Bell grinned and turned to the cookstove. "Want some coffee?"

"Please." Shay sat on a chair with an elaborate needlepoint cushion and wondered if Cara Williams was turning over in her grave.

When May Bell handed her a cup and sat down with her own, Shay launched into her problem and finished up with, "You see I don't want to get pregnant and Dr. Seaton would only say to trust in the Lord."

May Bell's mouth hung open, her cup suspended halfway between it and her lap.

"Nuts, May Bell. You gals must do something with all your ... I mean . . . uh . . . you know . . . exposure. You haven't had any babies, have you?"

"I had two once. Year apart." She lowered her cup, her coffee still untasted.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Did they . . . die?"

"Far as I know they're still in Iowa. I was just a kid and my father made me marry this old man. I didn't like the life or my husband and I ran away." She was rather plain without makeup. "I don't know why I'm telling you. I guess it's your big dumb eyes. You look so innocent and then you come in here and talk like this."

"Can you please help me?"
Careful, Shay, you can shock even a whore.
"Remember I didn't tell on you about the fire."

May Bell gulped a slug of coffee. "When I started I used a penny. I don't seem to need anything now. Some of the girls used different douches but I think a copper penny is the best. You have to get ahold of one of the old ones. They're bigger."

"A copper penny . . . how . . . you mean like a diaphragm?"

"Huh?"

Shay explained the insertion principle of a diaphragm and May Bell
nodded. It was a little hard to believe, but some of the pennies were larger
now than they'd be in the future. In fact Shay had one in her purse
minted in the 1850's. It was slightly bigger than a quarter.

"Can I ask you
one more thing?"

"I just wish you'd go."

"May Bell, do prostitutes feel anything? I mean ... is it all right if

they enjoy sex? You know, have an orgasm?"

"What's an organism?"

"You see, Corbin thinks only women like you are supposed to climax."

"You sure talk funny."

"Look, what's the big secret? We're two women alone, no one to hear

us. I've never had the chance to talk to a ... to someone like you. And...."

Shay watched the coffee cup slide off Brandy's lap to the floor. She had a horrid weak feeling as she slithered off the chair to join it. . .

. . . the picture that flashed across the darkness of her mind swayed and warped as if distorted in an amusement-park mirror ... a cat arched, its tail swollen with alarm . . . Shay Garrett's head flopped about on a pillow streaked with pale Maddon hair, her face almost convex-looking, the nose and gaping mouth enlarged as it would be in a camera's eye when brought up too close or at the wrong angle. The head rose from the pillow, the muscles of the neck and jaw rigid with a silent scream and a bloodied hand reared up in front of it. . .

Short chopping slaps across Brandy's cheeks.

"Brandy Strock, don't you get sick here. How would I explain it?"

"Stop hitting me." Shay saw the woman through tears stung loose by the slapping.

"You sure it ain't too late? For the penny I mean?"

"It's not that." Brandy must have looked in the mirror or something.
But just what was going on with my body?
It had looked as if someone was trying to murder it.

Shay was still shaky when May Bell helped her back up the road.

"This is as far as I'd better go. Someone might see us."

"Thanks for everything."

"Uh . . . about what you were asking. Unless it's somebody ... in particular ... we just pretend." May Bell poked a pointed toe into the snow and stared at it. "Otherwise it'd take too long."

"But why aren't other women supposed to have fun?"

"I think it has something to do with religion. I expect a lot of them do and keep it secret. As for the rest"--May Bell looked up with a shy grin-- "if you ask me, that's why there's so many megrims and hysterics around."

Corbin still wasn't home when Shay reached the cabin. The table was set for four so Tim must have been invited to supper.

Thora K. stood at the stove, her back eloquently stiff. The warm cabin smelled of fried hogspudding, cornbread and coffee.

Two wooden rocking chairs stood in the corner where the wedding mirror had been. "Where's the mirror?"

"No room fer it now. Mr. Binder did come with yer chairs whilst 'ee be out."

"Did you put it in the loft?"

"Corbin and Tim did carry it off." Thora K. turned, a long-handled fork in her hand, wispy hair escaping the knot on top of her head. "It be gone, you. Don't 'ee bother to look for it."

"Gone? What do you mean?"

Thora K. brought the cornbread to the table and cut it while she explained that Sophie had written to Corbin. She was worried because Brandy hadn't answered her letters and warned him to get rid of the mirror if his wife's behavior appeared strange. For some reason the mirror seemed to upset Brandy and perhaps she'd improve if it were gone. "And I say 'ee be acting strange. Maddon indeed."

"It's mine. You don't have the right . . ." Shay felt betrayed and panicky.

At times she was oddly at peace here. Little news of the outside world reached her, and what did seemed remote. But how long could she survive in this tiny, restricted life? How soon would her old nemesis, boredom, make it unbearable? She remembered the vision of her own screaming body threatened by a bloodstained hand. The body of Shay Garrett could be dead.

Shay lowered Brandy's body to a bench and looked around the cabin with new eyes.
What if I really have to stay here?

The snows of spring were enormous. The sky just kept dumping it.

Shay made cushions for the rocking chairs, read aloud to Thora K., craved fresh fruit and vegetables, and retreated to a numb, unthinking state. No one would tell her where the mirror was and she had no idea where to look.

May Bell moved back over the new saloon.

Washing hung interminably on a slatted frame behind the cookstove.

The copper penny kept falling out.

Corbin brought home news that the Maddon twins were fixing up the ranch house on the old Tandy place.

Shay thought of Hutch Maddon and pushed the thought away.

Sometime in May the snow turned to rain and the melting drifts rushed down the slopes. The creek roared from its bed in the valley and kept Shay awake at night. Main Street turned to mud and passing wagons and hooves flung it against storefronts and windows in ugly blotches.

But the dazzle of sun and sky and new grass, the scent of pine and wildflowers beckoned Shay from her lethargy.

Tim Pemberthy was bursting with hope because he'd heard the "knackers" in the Brandy Wine and knew a big strike was near. These knackers were some kind of little people who went around knocking to show favored miners where the best ore was located. Thora K. sent food with Corbin to leave for them. She warned Tim to be careful, reminding him that "tammy knackers" also knocked to warn of impending danger.

One afternoon a thunderstorm caught them with clothes on the line. They raced to gather them in as lightning snapped to the earth on the hill above. When it was over Shay hung out Corbin's overalls to dry longer.

Thora K. lifted the empty washtub off the sawhorses. "It do seem to me, tez been way back along since I seen any rags a-soaking round 'ere."

"Rags? Oh, you mean my period." Shay tried to remember when Brandy last flowed. "I can't remember just when--"

"Hush, 'ere comes Corbin," Thora K. whispered and said aloud, " 'Ee be 'ome early, you. Edden close to suppertime."

Shay turned to see him coming along the path, a strange expression on his face, sunlight dancing on raindrops still coating pine needles over his head. She slipped a clothespin on an overall strap and then jumped as the washtub hit the ground and narrowly missed her foot.

The Cornish woman bent over and held her middle.

"Thora K., are you sick? Corbin, your mother--"

But Corbin wasn't there.

"Edden me. Tez him. 'E disappeared." She straightened and clutched at Shay. " 'Twere 'is phantom."

"I saw him too, so he wasn't any phantom. Probably turned off at the cave or the outhouse."

"No, I were looking straight at 'im and 'ee did vanish." Her little eye bulged.

Shay checked the outhouse, the cave, and walked clear to the spring. No Corbin. Thora K. met her on the way back.

"What did you mean by phantom?" A tiny chill probed Brandy's neck.

"Where are you going? Thora K.?" Shay yanked her around by the arm. "Speak to me!"

"Just like it 'appened to me granny. Oh, my dear sawl--"

"You superstitious old woman, now stop this. He probably forgot something and turned back."

" 'Ee be dead. Me poor beautiful lamb . . ." She finished with an eerie wail. Her eyes glazed over now, she broke away to run along the trail to the Brandy Wine.

This is ridiculous.
But Shay picked up Brandy's skirts and followed. That chill was creeping down her spine.

They were stopped at the top of the first rise by Tim Pemberthy. He was reeling up the path, red streaks splashed across his clothing.

19

Shay cringed as she heard the sound, but looked out the window to see the cloud of smoke and dust rise across the valley. They were blasting out a grave in Nederland's rocky cemetery for Corbin Strock.

Shay'd wanted to bury him in Caribou with the rest of the family but Nederland officials objected. It was too far away and wasn't used any longer. His mother didn't seem to care.

Thora K. just rocked. That's all she'd done since Corbin's death.

" 'Ee knew. 'Ee knew 'twould 'appen." Her voice came with a hiss and startled Shay. Thora K. hadn't spoken for so long.

"I didn't know when." She leaned against the icebox. "I . . . didn't . . . know how. That it'd be that awful . . ."

They'd had to scrape him off the walls of the Brandy Wine. He'd been setting a charge, planning to explode it later, but the dynamite had gone off in his hand.

Tim hadn't been badly hurt. The blood they'd seen on his clothes was Corbin's.

Shay sensed she would soon convince herself they'd imagined seeing Corbin walk toward them on the path. But now it was comforting to remember him whole, the sun sparkling on pine needles and raindrops over his head.

"Yer a witch, Brandy McCabe," Thora K. said hollowly. '"Ee and that mirror."

"Where did you hide it?"

"Them took it to the mine."

"The mine? I told you it was dangerous. You don't think it caused--"

"Dynamite don't need no mirror ter blow a man to bits, you."

"Was it damaged?"

"'Twere at the mouth, far from the blast, Tim said. They bury yer 'usband tomorrow and 'ee can 'ave thought fer that uld mirror?"

Shay'd never been close to anyone who had died before. John McCabe's death hadn't touched her.

It wasn't that she'd been
in
love with Corbin. But even with the strange nature of their relationship, she'd loved him and knew that in time she might well have come to be in love with him. She'd always thought of him as Brandy's husband but she realized now, that she-Shay Garrett--would miss him terribly.

A whispered sob escaped her and Elton put an arm through hers. Sophie pressed her hand. People around her looked sympathetic, all except Thora K., who stood alone at the foot of the grave, her face stony. When the service was over she ignored the people moving toward her and, without a word to Shay, walked down the hill. Thin shoulder bones made sharp patterns through her dress.

"Come home with us, Brandy," Sophie whispered. "There's no reason for you to stay now."

Shay stared after Corbin's mother. "I can't leave her."

She turned to see Sophie McCabe's stricken face that so resembled Rachael's.
I've been selfish.
"Not yet anyway. She's lost everyone. Sophie ... I mean, Ma ... if you don't mind my funny handwriting I'll write to you . . . and come to visit. She's all alone." Shay did something she wouldn't have dreamed possible even moments before. She embraced Brandy's mother and kissed her cheek.

Turning to follow Thora K., she bumped into Hutch Maddon's chest.

"Just wanted to say how sorry I was." He held his hat in his hand, his platinum head tilted back.

She stared up at him, an edge of panic stabbing through the numbness of sorrow.

"Oh, oh, no . . ." Shay pushed past him and stumbled down the hill to catch up with the old Cornish woman.