The Mirror (11 page)

"Ma has this notion the mirror upsets you, Bran, so she's keeping it for you at home. But she had Mrs. Keeler make you a new dress, and look." He opened the small trunk. "Your books."

"You didn't bring the mirror?" Her eyes were huge, swimming with tears.

"You know you enjoy reading. And here's some cloth for sewing." He looked from her shocked expression to the cabin, back to her little hands, red and roughened already.
God, what have we done to her?
"Maybe later I can bring up the mirror."

Elton had the strong urge to hold her against him and reassure them both but he saw Strock coming up the road. All he had time for was to slip her a small purse.

"Hide this. It's for you. Next time I'll bring more," he whispered and then said aloud as Strock approached, "Ma wondered if you had any letters for her, Bran."

"You didn't bring the mirror," his sister answered dully.

12

Shay stood her ground beside Thora K. in the squirming, raucous crowd on Main Street. The silly bonnet shaded her eyes. Wisps of hair made her neck itch.

The flag of the United States, minus a few stars, fluttered and then hung limp on its pole at one end of a raised platform of raw boards.

Beneath the flag, Corbin Strock knelt on one knee, his eyes boring down into Brandy's as if to discover Shay lurking inside. She held her breath, almost unaware of the antique people perched on rooftops and porch overhangs, of the electric excitement charging the crowd and the air.
He's not going to find it easy to stay on that pallet in the loft.

The timer raised his arm and stared at the watch in his other hand. Sunlight flashed off the gold chain.

The milling stopped . . . and the noise.

Corbin looked away from her and picked up the shortest of the steel drills that lay on the flat-topped rock in front of him.

Both Corbin and Tim Pemberthy were stripped to the waist, powerful muscles tensed in readiness.

Standing, Tim raised to his shoulder what Corbin'd called a double jack, but what looked like a sledgehammer. She was told it weighed eight pounds.

The timer's arm started down.

The double jack was in the air, the drill flipped upright on the rock and the crowd had begun a long combined exhalation before the timer finished his "Go!"

Iron clanged on iron ... an echo off surrounding mountains. Pemberthy's naked back rippled as the double jack rose into the air and came down again.

Through Tim's parted legs Shay watched Corbin's knuckles whiten as
he grasped the drill, holding it straight for the blow. And when it came the shock passed visibly up his arm to his shoulder. He twisted the drill just a little before each strike of the huge hammer.

"Five dollars says it's over forty inches and this team wins. I hear Strock's got himself a new bride to show off for."

"Hush, man, she's standing right in front of you."

Tim Pemberthy was lighter and older than Corbin, but most of him was torso and heavily muscled. And all behind eight pounds of iron.

Against the flagpole sat a wooden keg clasped with copper bands. A rubber hose ran from it to the rock, and a man kept the hose dribbling water into the hole.

The double jack fell faster. The drill bored deeper. Pemberthy's back glistened.

Dots of sludge flew from the hole and splayed on Corbin's chest and arms.

His free hand grabbed the next drill in the line, longer than the first. Then, so swiftly that Pemberthy didn't have to slow the hammer; Corbin withdrew the old drill and inserted the new with his other hand. If either of them had misjudged that move . . .

"This is dangerous." Shay turned to Thora K.

"Aye. Many a man 'as lost 'is hand to this, and more."

"One minute!" the timer yelled and the two men changed places almost in one motion. No more than a strike could have been missed in the rhythm of the double jack.

Shay Garret was just existing, careful to appear outwardly normal, to dress Brandy's hair and body as best she knew how, to feed them both and to placate Corbin and his mother in case Sophie relented and sent the mirror to Nederland, in case the mirror would relent and send her home, in case the mirror had really done this to her to begin with.

Three judges stood around the flagpole watching intently.

Another man jumped to the platform and sponged the sweat from Tim Pemberthy's chest and shoulders and then held a tin cup to his mouth. Tim nodded thanks, grimacing at each blow of Corbin's hammer.

"Tez a true 'ole, Strock. Let 'er have it!" A voice from the crowd.

"Make old Harvey proud of his boy from the grave!"

Shay watched Corbin's back ripple now, and the clang rang louder, faster. Another drill thunked to the platform.

Since Elton's visit something inside her'd given up hope and a terrifying passivity had settled on Shay. But this strange Fourth of July celebration in a tiny mountain town, these sweating miners daring fate, the frightening clamor of the double jack, all these long-dead but incredibly alive people jostling her to watch Brandy's husband perform more nervelessly than an Olympic champion . . .

Who would have thought such a silly thing as two grown men hammering a hole in a rock could hold her breathless?

Again the men changed places, and now it was Corbin's turn to have the sweat sponged from him. His chest heaved and his lips drew back from his teeth. He knocked off his hat with his free wrist. Dark curls lay matted and soaked close to his head.

The man with the sponge dumped a bucket of water over him and the crowd roared approval. Corbin grinned; the spots of sludge, speckled across his chest, ran into dirty streaks.

Another drill thudded to the wooden platform, the crowd pressed forward. Shouts, taunts and encouragement lifted to mingle with the echoing ring of iron.

Shay peered between two of the rough logs that formed the base for the platform, to discover the bottom of the huge rock sitting on the street. The platform had been built around it, a hole cut in the floor to expose its top. No wonder the drills were getting so long.

The positions changed yet again. Both men were tiring now, and Shay realized this was a feat of endurance as well as skill.

"Why do they do this thing?" she asked Thora K.

"In the mines them do drill such 'oles fer they charges. And 'ere they be .on a fine 'oliday doing it fer fun." But there was pride in her eyes as she watched her son. "Power drills be used in they big mines now and the double jack'll soon be a thing of the past.

"Me fayther died of the rot in the lungs and a brother's still buried in a cave-in in Black Hawk. So instead of marryin' a Cornishman like was expected, I married a fine big Norwegian."

"Was he a miner too?"

"By trade, not by blood. The Cornish who came to these mountains be mostly miners by blood, and I wanted to thin that out in me children. Few mines be working now and Corbin's 'ad the chance to find something else.

So wot does 'ee do but marry you to get a mine of 'is own. 'Ee looks like 'is fayther but 'ee be Cornish through."

Wooden stairs ran up the side of a store building to her left and at the
top was a railed landing. May Bell stood there watching the contest, her ample figure amplified by a ruffled gown.

The door behind her opened and Lon Maddon stepped out, placing his hat on his head. He was eating a large crust of bread.

Extending his arms and stretching his shoulders, he came to lean on the
railing next to May Bell. She looked down at Shay without recognition
but then pointed toward her, saying something to Lon. His eyes searched
the crowd until they fell on Shay. Chewing on the bread, he studied her
with a curious lack of expression.

Shay was pushed from behind and fell against Thora K. as people edged closer, and her attention was diverted to the contest.

The crowd applauded and whistled praise now to each sweat-stained man as he came off the double jack.

Tension grew. The hammer fell faster. The straining miners gulped for air.

"Time!" the timer called, and Corbin stopped the double jack in midair.

Tim fell back onto the platform and lay there with a half-smile, half-grimace. Corbin leaned on the long-handled hammer, one shoulder twitching.

The judges gathered around the rock, probing the hole with a long measuring rod. Nederland's Main Street was so quiet Shay could hear Lon Maddon crunch a bite out of his bread crust. She glanced up to find two Lon Maddons standing with May Bell. The twin had returned.

"Strock and Pemberthy," the timer announced in a voice worthy of the ringmaster at the Barnum and Bailey Circus. "Forty-one and three-fourth inches!"

Tim and Corbin smiled at each other and the crowd's roar was answered by an explosion that shook the dirt street.

"That sounded like dynamite."

"That's wot it were." Thora K. pointed to a cloud of smoke and dust on a ridge close to town. "Lunatics these miners be. Twon't be the last you'll 'ear today, neither."

While Corbin and his partner left the platform to be congratulated by a circle of miners, a new team took their place at the rock. Another section of it was marked off in chalk.

Soon the double jack rang out again.

Shay watched the Maddon twin with the bread descend the stairs. He wore an open vest and no jacket. She had the feeling this one wasn't Lon, because when he surveyed the crowd and found her staring at him, he didn't grin.

Four teams vied in the double-hand contest. Corbin and Tim lost by a fourth of an inch. Then followed the single-hand, where one miner held his own drill and swung a smaller four-pound hammer with his other hand. For any excuse a dynamite blast would go off on the ridge.

When this contest was over, the town retired to Barker Meadows for races and picnics.

Shay sat on a blanket and bit into a cooled pastry, her head aching yet from the clang of the miners' hammers and the dust holding on still air from the racing.

They'd raced everything from feet to wagons. The Maddon twins had tied for first place in the horse races.

The twins seemed to be everywhere and seldom together, so they appeared disconcertingly often, strolling among various groups of picnickers, one examining a horse's leg by an unpainted corral, the other trying to peer under a demure young lady's bonnet near a root-beer stand. This was a small tent where some women sat on wooden folding chairs under the sign of the "Independent Champions of the Red Cross."

Shay tried to hide her morbid interest in the Maddon twins. Even the term "Maddon twins" was hard to disassociate from her uncles, Remy and Dan. One of these men was their father . . . and Rachael's. The thought of her mother brought instant tears to her eyes.

"Is something wrong, Brandy?" Corbin lounged on the grass beside her.

Yes. Can you believe I'm twenty years old and I want my mommy?

"No, I just swallowed too big a bite and it stuck."

A short distance away May Bell spread a blanket on the grass and three other women joined her with a basket. Shay's mouth watered as they bit into crisp-looking pieces of fried chicken. She was getting very tired of pasties.

When the family group near them picked up their picnic and moved to another part of the meadow, May Bell and her friends didn't seem to notice. Their chatter and laughter carried defiantly to Corbin and Shay. But it was soon drowned out by a general cheering as a bald-headed man backed a team of horses and a wagon up next to the root-beer tent. He crawled over boxes to set a keg up-right at the back of the wagon.

He was soon dispensing foamy beer in glasses taken from the boxes. The ladies in front of the tent were all but trampled by the crowd that pressed around him.

One woman raised a fist and shouted something at the bald man with the keg. She was so angry she made little jumping steps sideways like a startled cat.

Corbin chuckled. "Mrs. Tyler does get riled."

"Why? Because he's cutting into her root-beer business?"

"More than that. The Independent Champions of the Red Cross is a temperance organization. Don't they have one in Boulder?"

"Uh ... I think they call it something else."

"Well, I'm going to get some beer. Let me have your glass and I'll get you some more root beer."

"Whoopee-twang."

"What?"

"Uh . . . thank you, Corbin." The drink was half-warm and decidedly flat. "I'd love some more."

He held onto her hand instead of taking the glass from it. "Brandy, you've not been yourself since your brother left. We'll talk your mother into letting us have the mirror, somehow, if it means that much to you. Stop fretting and enjoy yourself. Holidays are few and far between."

She watched him walk away and then saw May Bell watching him too. May Bell turned to look at her, again without recognition. But Shay was too busy considering what he'd said to mind.
Don't get so down. There's always hope, and if he's willing to help . . .