The Mirror

by Marlys Millhiser

  They all stared into the box … a satin-lined coffin. Inside it lay Grandma Bran, composed and peaceful …

  “Be it a fit, do ’ee think?”

  “I don’t know.” Corbin’s voice. “Brandy?”

  “Her were sittin’ eatin’ a pasty one minute and the next – plop on the floor, she was.”

  Shay felt herself being lifted, and opened her eyes to Corbin’s chin. “What happened to me?”

  “Hush now. We’ll get you to bed.”

  “’Ee get ’er to bed, I’m runnin’ fer they doctor.”

  “I saw his buggy at the Williamses’. Cara’s baby must be due.”

  “There’s a pasty fer ’ee in the cupboard,” Thora K called from the porch and was gone.

  “Corbin, I’m afraid.”

  “It could be the journey in the sun was too much for you.” He found a nightgown in Brandy’s trunk and helped her to undress. It seemed to embarrass him more than it did her. “You rest now till Doc Seaton comes. I’ll be getting something to eat.” He patted her head, his fingers lingering on her hair, then left her to the dark, taking the lamp with him.

  Shay felt weak and light-headed but scratched luxuriously wherever the corset had clutched her. The vision of herself and her parents peering into Grandma Bran’s coffin repeated itself in her head. It must have been a dream but … the whole world seemed a dream now … and the hair style … Shay’d never worn it that way … the Shay in the vision seemed to be a different person … the freighter in the canyon, her grandfather, had a gap between his two front teeth … the family likeness was unmistakable … how could Brandy throw over Corbin for someone like that … Shay wouldn’t have … so that must prove that Brandy returned to her own body sometime … what would happen when Corbin came in to bed tonight … he wasn’t hers … the thought of sex with a stranger was tantalizing in books … but in reality …

  Shay’d almost fallen asleep in Brandy’s body for the second night when Dr. Seaton arrived.

  “’Ere, do ’ee take the lamp. I’ve a candle for we,” Thora K. told him, and closed the door on them.

  “Well, now, I hear you fainted at the table. I’m Dr. Seaton, known as the Doc and worse things too,” the little man said and sat on the bed beside her, putting his hand to her forehead.

  “Hi, I’m … Brandy.” Shay was too tired to explain to another soul who she really was.

  “Known your pa for years. Set his leg once and unhinged a tooth for him while I was at it.” His smile was kind and exhausted. He looked neither young nor old. Just tired.

  The examination was surprisingly thorough. When he’d finished between her legs, he came back to listen to her chest again.

  “The Lord works in strange ways, Mrs. Strock, and I’m not about to outguess him.” He stood, wiped his fingers on a handkerchief and put his instruments in his bag. “But the McCabes are a hearty breed and you appear to be one of them. Your lungs sound clear. It’s possible you’ve just spent too long a day in too tight a corset.”

  “I hate them.”

  “Throw yours away then. Your figure don’t need one and I doubt Thora K. or Corbin’ll care. You’re not in Boulder now.” He turned to go and stumbled, catching himself on the bedpost. He sat suddenly on the edge of the bed and covered his face with his hands.

  Shay sat up. “Doctor?”

  “I apologize, Mrs. Strock. I’m very tired. Give me a moment.” His voice trembled and a shudder passed through his body to the bed and to Shay.

  Dr. Seaton took a deep breath and stared into the air. “I just lost Cara Williams and her baby too,” he whispered, as if to himself. “And I don’t know how. I must get back to Samuel.”

  He blinked and refocused on her. “Forgive me, I shouldn’t be troubling you now. Lie down.” He struggled to his feet and pulled the blanket over her.

  9

  Shay awakened to darkness and Corbin’s voice in the main room. “I told you about the rumors after my first talk with McCabe.”

  “But they do say her’s barmy fer sure. Wot do ’ee say now ye’ve wed she? Be it rumor?”

  A long sigh from Corbin. “The stories she told me on the way up the canyon and the way she changed from one minute to the next … she can’t be sane.”

  “Wot sort of stories?”

  “Oh, about a reservoir and dam to be built on Barker Meadows, a town called Tungsten in the canyon, men flying in metal monsters and going to the moon, herself being her own granddaughter because she looked in a mirror –”

  “Sound like grand stories. Might be ’er read ’em in a book.”

  “But she believes them, Thora K. Truly believes in every one of them. We’ll have to watch her.”

  “And ’ow is us to do that, ye bloomin’ numbskull, when ’ee go off to that ’ole in the ground and me to the ’otel? Never thought of that, did ’ee?”

  “We’ll have to think of something.”

  “Well, daft er no, she’d best be able to work.”

  “That could be the answer. Keep her busy while we’re away.”

  “Give she somethin’ to do to keep ’er mind off not havin’ one, huh? And wot if, Corbin Strock,” Thora K. said slowly and in a tone that chilled Shay, “… she wanders off and ’urts herself or some ’un else?”

  “Then we’ll just … have to have her put away,” he answered sadly.

  Shay came fully awake at that. He’d seemed so sympathetic. She knew he hadn’t believed her, but for some reason she’d come to trust him.

  “’Ee can’t be meaning to ’ave yer way with she. The children may be daft too.”

  “I’ll sleep on the pallet in the loft.”

  “Ahhh, tez a wisht uld job of it.” Thora K. made an eerie wailing sound. “Am I never to ’old a grandchild on me knee, boy?” And then after a long silence, “’Edden with babe already, is ’er? Faintin’ off the bench?”

  “Doc Seaton says she’s never been touched.”

  Shay lay wide-eyed and worrying long after the sounds of Corbin settling himself in the loft overhead had stopped and after Thora K.’s candle no longer sent slivers of flickering light through the cracks between the boards of the wall next to her.

  The mattress was hard and lumpy, without springs beneath it. When she rolled over, sharp points poked through the ticking and her nightgown. Dull moonlight found its way into the room, shadowed by the porch overhang. The smell of pine and charred wood …

  She’d pretend to be Brandy and go along with the Strocks until the mirror arrived. If she were “put away” in some institution before she could get to the mirror, it might be years before she returned to herself.

  She slipped into dream-filled sleep where Rachael’s image in the wedding mirror became Lon Maddon with a cruel smile, hands of cold bronze. Shay awoke sweating, to the shivery wail of coyotes and the stomp of some hooved creature outside.

  In the morning, the cabin was icy and she pawed through the trunk for a sweater to put over what Sophie’d called the “day dress,” but found only a shawl. Shay had ignored the corset and longed for a bra to support Brandy’s heavy breasts. The frilled corset cover alone was little help. No one was in the main room as she dashed for the outhouse, avoiding the gruesome pot sitting at the foot of the stairs.

  Rushing back from that dank cobwebby place, she belatedly buttoned up Brandy’s black shoes and worked snarls out of thick hair with comb and brush. No dresser in her room, no mirror and no closet, just pegs on the wall for clothes. In an attempt to appear normal, and standing before a beveled mirror of the buffet, she braided Brandy’s hair. Even Marie on Water Street hadn’t worn hers loose. The shawl slipped from her shoulders and the hair from the braid as she used every hairpin Brandy owned to fasten it into a coronet on top.

  The unfamiliar face beneath it responded to all her emotions as the body did to her commands. The voice didn’t sound strange to her ears. But then they weren’t her ears.

  “Good morning. Feeling better?” Corbin shouldered through the screen do
or carrying a gunnysack.

  She smiled and batted Brandy’s eyelashes. “Is your mother up, too?”

  “Yes, she’s been gone a time. She helps at the Antlers four or five days a week in the summer. Remember?” A searching glance.

  “The Antlers, yes.” She tried to unstiffen the smile on Brandy’s lips. “You told me last Sunday … in the parlor.”

  “We let you sleep late because of your illness last night.” He removed a hunk of dirty ice with pieces of straw sticking to it from the bag and put it on the top shelf of the icebox. “The ice will be delivered from now on,” he said proudly. “I put in a permanent order when I bought this. Come now, and I’ll show you around.”

  Around what? But she followed him obediently along the path past the outhouse to a wooden door built into the hillside.

  “We’ll still keep some things here.” They entered a cave lit only by the opening and he handed her a bowl filled with eggs and a metal pitcher of milk. “But many things we can keep in the icebox now. There are potatoes, onions, carrots, turnips and apples here.”

  Dim piles of things sat on a platform.

  He filled his arms with shapes hanging from a beam and others from a table and led her to a wooden box a short distance from the cave. “This is the spring where we get our water. We share it with several of the houses along this way.”

  “But it’s just a box.”

  “You lift the lid and dip the pail into it. Let it refill and you can dip another. It’s a good spring in most seasons … but you’re used to pipes and such.” His dark hair tumbled across his forehead. “Nederland doesn’t have piped water yet. Now, here you see a path. Follow it along the cliff and over a ridge and you’re at the Brandy Wine. It’s not the way you’re used to getting there. But if you ever need me …”

  “Yes?” Brandy’s body answered his gaze and surprised Shay. Easy, girl.

  “I’m never far from the house. You’re not to wander, Brandy.”

  When they’d loaded the icebox, he showed her a vegetable garden by the front porch and implements stored in a makeshift cupboard built onto the side of the cabin, explaining that one of her duties for the day was to weed and water the garden.

  “You mean carry water clear from that spring?”

  “Yes. Now you’re to bake the bread Thora K. left rising on the shelf.” He led her inside again. “Clean the lamp and fill it. The coal oil is kept here. Sweep out the floor. Empty the chamberpot and the ash from the stove. Prepare the supper –”

  “Prepare what for supper?” Shay eyed the black cookstove with panic.

  “Whatever you’d like. I’ll be back at midday to see how you’re faring. Have some breakfast first.” About ten paces from the cabin he began to whistle.

  I don’t know how to use that stove or clean a lamp. I’ll probably burn the place down. The Strocks would think it’d happened because she was crazy and put her away.

  Shay fed Brandy some cheese, a piece of dry bread and a glass of milk. She felt better and decided to take one thing at a time and not worry about the rest until she had to. She could at least haul water, sweep and hoe.

  She poured lukewarm water left in the tea “kiddley” into the dishpan and washed. Having dumped the dirty water on the ground by the back step, she swore at herself for not thinking to pour it on the garden.

  Shay began there immediately. But the hoe wouldn’t cut through the crusty ground to get at the roots of the weeds. Perhaps she should water first and then hoe.

  Wondering what mental institutions must be like in this day and age, she raced along the path to the spring. It took the pool inside the box forever to refill so she could dip the second pail, and she struggled slowly back with the load, soaking each side of Brandy’s dress with sloshover. I didn’t know water could be so heavy.

  It took five such trips and most of the strength from her borrowed body to wet the soil enough to work it. She groaned as she stooped for the hoe once more.

  Birdsong. The drone of insects. The rhythmic scritching of the hoe. The sound of an ax splitting wood somewhere below. Barking dogs. Children’s voices and laughter from cabins down the road. How could this world appear so normal? Didn’t it realize it had been dead for years?

  Shay thought of poor Cara Williams and her baby. How old had Cara been?

  The sun grew hotter and Shay thirstier, but she’d used all the water on the garden. Brandy’s fair skin prickled, so she returned to the cabin for the bonnet. The moment she opened the door she realized she’d forgotten to empty the chamberpot. She rushed it to the outhouse and then set it in the sun to air. After gulping a glass of cold milk, she was back at her hoeing.

  Shay stopped often now, to rest Brandy’s back. Middle Boulder Creek foamed and sparkled. Wildflowers decorated the slopes right up to the cabins and around the tree stumps. She had to admit it was a pretty sight by daylight and she could see more substantial homes now, built across the valley and among the cabins.

  But one thing was curious. Her view of Main Street was excellent, yet she couldn’t identify a single building. Surely some would have survived. The Gingerbread House had, and for far longer.

  As she bent back to her task, her eyes slipped by the sweep of mountain peaks that hemmed the valley to the west. Gone were the swaths of treeless ski runs. How many times had Shay passed through a different Nederland on her way to the Eldora ski slopes? Again that intense longing to be home gripped her.

  Brandy’s hands had begun to blister when a thought brought her up short. She scanned the western ridges, turned to the town below, to the meadow where horses and cows grazed instead of a reservoir, and then took another look at the cabin. This must be almost the spot where Shay’s parents owned a cabin. Jerry Garrett came up often to get away from the Gingerbread House.

  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 chamberpot 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 stov
e 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.