The Mirror (28 page)

Or. . .

"Rachael, will you stop that racket! Pencils are for writing, not clicking against the paper." And the skin around her lips would turn white.

"This house is driving me bananas," Brandy yelled at the ceiling and Rachael curled up in her chair and tried to make herself small and quiet.

Mrs. Sweeny called on the telephone from the post office and read the mail to them.

"God, if they can get phone lines out here, why not electricity? This damned antique world. Hutch, can't you at least pipe water in from the spring? I'm going crazy without plumbing."

"Got water into the sink. Hell, woman, what do you want? Man can go broke trying to buy the latest doodad."

"An indoor bathroom for one thing. We live like animals here."

"Calm down, Bran. You're scaring Rachael."

"Well, what about me? The same routine day in and day out. It's deadly."

There was no clue to Brandy's behavior in the stories Rachael read or heard in school or Sunday school. Did other mothers, even such respected ladies of the community as Mrs. Kinshelow, get in these moods in the privacy of their homes, and did their families keep it a secret like the Mad-dons did? Everything she'd been taught about true ladies and proper mothers indicated they would never badger a good man like her dad, but suffer in silence far worse indignities than her mother ever dreamed of.

One day Mrs. Sweeny called to read a letter from Dan. His job didn't pay much but he'd saved enough for Remy's train ticket to California if he wanted to come.

Remy promised to wait till the meadow had been dug and they'd got the water on to irrigate the hay in the spring.

As soon as the roads cleared enough, Brandy drove down to the Gingerbread House for a visit and to "get away." There she could use the plumbing and listen to the radio.

The visit was to have lasted a week but three days later Brandy Mad-don returned, tearful and apologetic. "I don't know why I get that way. I love you all so much."

Remy left at the end of June. The house seemed empty without the twins. Brandy's cough finally began to lessen but Catherine Garrett went into the hospital in Boulder. Jerry came to stay with the Maddons. Rachael enjoyed trying to teach him to ride but didn't enjoy the fuss her mother made over him.

On the Fourth of July, Brandy dropped the children and Thora K. off in Nederland and drove on down the canyon the see how Mrs. Garrett was feeling after her operation.

They stopped to watch some of the double-hand contests and then wandered on to the vacant lot by the old meat market where Chief Geronimo once again held forth on the wonders of his elixir.

He paced along the side of his truck, the tails of his bright headdress sweeping down his back, long iron-gray hair parted in the middle and gathered to the sides under each ear.

Rachael could never quite follow his long sentences to their conclusions. But there was no mistaking his ability to convince. He could frighten people or make them laugh, and more by the way he spoke than by what he said.

"Little girl!" Chief Geronimo turned on Rachael with an accusatory finger. She and Jerry had slipped between adults to join the children sitting on the ground in front. "Tell these people here the truth. Have you ever, I mean
ever
seen a bald Indian? The truth now."

"No sir, I haven't but--"

"No sir, she hasn't. Did you hear that? Do you know why? Because there aren't any and do you know why there aren't?" he shouted. The chief always shouted and stared directly into eyes. "Because, my good friends, the Indian has always known the secret formula of the elixir. When I was a young boy, my father . . ." And he went into a long story about his childhood with many funny little stories in it that pleased the small crowd and its laughter attracted more people. The story had nothing to do with why there were no bald Indians but Rachael soon forgot this in her delight over the magic of his words.

Pictures of Indians and lettering all in yellow and red decorated his black truck. The weeds lay crumpled over where he paced beside it. He gestured flamboyantly and often, shaking the fringe on his sleeves. Wetness darkened a circle on his buckskin shirt under each arm and formed a triangular patch between his shoulder blades.

The air was still and hot for a mountain day and thunder growled behind Arapahoe Peak.

Mr. Binder stood on the sidewalk between two men. One of them wore the uniform of a county sheriff and the other was dressed like a banker, with his hair slicked down and his brown shoes polished to gleaming. He was the handsomest man Rachael'd ever seen.

Then she realized they were all three looking at her. Mr. Binder motioned her to join them. "Rachael, these gentlemen wondered if your uncle came into town with you for the celebrations this morning," he asked uncomfortably.

"No, but he and Dad are coming in for the rodeo pretty soon."

The warning in Mr. Binder's eyes was unmistakable but Rachael'd noticed it too late.

"That's all right, honey. We just want to talk to him," the handsome man said, and stepped backward, narrowly missing Miss Smith as she walked behind him. May Bell Smith crossed Main Street faster than Rachael would have believed possible for so heavy a woman.

"Now you're probably wondering what all this has to do with a bald head and this famous elixir," Chief Geronimo bellowed. "Well, I'll tell you."

Rachael turned back, anxious about Mr. Binder's warning look and why the deputy and his friend wanted to talk to her uncle. But she had to know how the chief was going to tie together all those details in his talk and relate them to elixir.

"Neuritis, neuralgia and rheumatism, my dear friends, sneak up on you like a snake in the grass on a warm afternoon." His s's hissed and his arm wriggled like a snake but his eyes moved nervously toward the sheriff's deputy on the sidewalk. ". . . like a robber in the darkness of night. They spare no one, neither the wealthy nor the poor. But you are too young to worry about them, you say? Well . . ."

Chief Geronimo launched an attack on something called dyspepsia and though Rachael listened closely she never discovered how the ancient Apache medicine men discovered the cure for all the ailments mentioned. Nor did this Indian ever say outright that the elixir would help someone who had them. But when the deputy wandered off, Chief Geronimo shuffled through a hurried dance accompanied by bells tied around his ankles and started selling tonic.

Lon Maddon leaned against the truck and brushed a speck from, the jacket of his summer suit. "We're gonna be late for the rodeo, dammit. Get a move on," he yelled at the screen door.

Hutch came out of the house on the run, his good shirt unbuttoned and hanging out of his pants. Lon heard the snap as the spring on the door broke again. "Well, you don't have to hurry that--"

"Lon, you got any hooch stored on the place?" "Some in the horse barn, why?

"Jesus H. God! Get in the truck." His brother had the motor running
and was backing to the barn before Lon could get off the running board into the seat. "May Bell just called from town. A sheriff's deputy was asking Rachael about you. And she told him we were coming in for the rodeo."

"Hutch, you know old Skinner and me got a deal."

"Wasn't Skinner. Some deputy she's never seen before and he had a man with him that looked like government to her."

"A fed?" Lon helped his brother load the nine or ten cases that were left of the last run and to fork hay over them. "Probably just some dude visitor up from Boulder, all dressed up."

"Well, this dude wanted to talk to you and if anybody knows which way the stripes run on a man it's May Bell Smith."

Thunderclouds rolled in fast overhead and Lon began to catch his twin's fear as the truck bounced up out of the valley. This wasn't the first time he'd wished there was another road out of here. "Hell, we're just going to meet them head-on. The way you're driving, those bottles will bust. They'll smell the evidence coming right to 'em."

"Can't let them find it on the ranch. May Bell said they were still hanging around town."

"Waiting to catch me?" A plop of rain the size of a half-dollar splashed the windshield. "Why not come out to the house?"

"Maybe waiting for us to get settled at the rodeo so they could sneak out and search the place when nobody's around. Maybe they don't have a warrant." Hutch stopped the truck "You hightail it up to the road and see if they're waiting for us."

Thunder threatened the treetops around him, sparse heavy raindrops spattered the dust at his feet as Lon Maddon approached the road that led to Nederland one way and Central City and Denver the other. As he was turning around he happened to raise his eyes up the mountainside across the way. Just the top boards covering the mouth of the Brandy Wine showed above the tailings.

Lightning accompanied his dash back to the truck, and a bit more rain. "Nobody in sight. Let's go."

"We can dump the stuff between here and Central City."

"Hell no, I got a customer for it. We'll stash it and me in the Brandy Wine for now. You go on to the rodeo."

"They're going to connect that mine with us eventually, Lon, and go looking there when--"

"It won't be there then. I'll deliver it to my customer tonight, by hand if I have to. He's local. Then I'll take a little trip. If they ask where I went, say you don't know. 'Cause you won't. I'll be back in a month or two."

They parked the truck in the trees across the road from the mine and carried the wooden cases up the mountainside in several trips, rain striking their faces like cold pellets. Entering the Brandy Wine was no problem. The boards across the entrance were new and firm but the wood of the framing where they were attached had rotted. Pulling some of the boards loose on one end, they let them dangle with the nails still in them and stacked the crates inside.

"How am I going to get the haying done with you as well as the boys gone?" Hutch flexed his arms and shoulders, rubbed his neck. He looked fit for fifty-seven, lean and hard from ranch work. But Lon knew the day was coming when his twin would have all he could do to get his arthritis out of bed in the mornings. He stuffed a wad of bills in Hutch's hand.

"Here, hire a haying crew this year. Maybe this is all May Bell's imagination and I won't have to go nowhere. I'll scout around after dark and find out." Lon noticed a tall shape hovering behind Hutch on the other side of the entrance. "What the hell's that?"

Whatever it was, it was wrapped in a dirty blanket tied on with rope and stood almost as tall as they did.

"Probably something of Thora K.'s. You better keep this money for your trip."

"Naw. I'll get paid for the hooch tonight. You get yourself and the truck into town. Don't worry if you don't hear from me for a while. Somebody might be watching the mail."

They shook hands and Hutch ducked out into the rain that fell hard now. It might delay the rodeo but it would also wash out any tracks they'd left in the dust. Lon settled down beside the whiskey. He selected a bottle from one of the crates to keep him company.

He took a nip and blinked as lightning flashed through the opening. Something resembling a metal claw gleamed at the base of the blanket-wrapped shape across from him. The covering rippled as if wind had gotten under it and couldn't get out.

Lon put down the bottle and rose to untie the rope, letting the blanket fall to the floor of the mine.

"OOeee, now if you ain't the ugliest thing I ever did see." It was a full-length mirror surrounded with hands and claws made of what looked to be brass. But that was impossible unless someone came in regularly to polish it. There was no sign of tarnish.

Lon had gone back to his whiskey before he realized there was more wrong with this mirror than its appearance. He sat facing it but it was not reflecting his image. And it was making a humming sound.

"Queer," he muttered to no one, and raised his bottle high. The surface of the mirror ignored the movement completely. "Goddamn queer's what it is."

Perhaps this batch of hooch was bad and affecting his mind. But he'd drunk so little of it.

Again lightning flashed, briefly flinging the mirror's contorted shadow across the rusting tracks along which ore cars had once traveled. But it made no impression on the cloudy darkness within the bronze like frame.

Wind stirred the blanket at its feet and the heavy scent of wet pine needles drifted in as rain splashed against the glass. Instead of beading and sliding down the slippery surface, the raindrops seemed to disappear on contact. Thunder rattled bottles in the crates behind him.

Bewildered and forgetting his distrust of the whiskey, Lon brought the bottle to his lips and drank. When he lowered his head the haze had vanished. Prickles crawled among the roots of his hair.

There was a picture in the looking glass now, but it was not Lon Maddon's reflection, nor the reflection of anything inside the mouth of the Brandy Wine.

6

Lon stood, backed against the crates of illegal whiskey, the opened bottle overturned at his feet, its amber contents spreading out across the rocky floor of the mine.

He watched a silent movie playing for him alone and with dizzying speed on the mirror's surface. Random scenes flashed across the glass.