The Mirror (24 page)

"I ain't 'eard of no new families. Where do him live?"

"I don't know. I think he might be an Indian."

"Ooooee, Rachael's got eyes for an Indian."

"I do not either, Uncle Lon." Rachael watched everyone enjoy her embarrassment. She wished she hadn't started this.

"Is that why you want to ask him out? Because he's an Indian?" Her mother gave her dad a questioning look but he just shrugged and smiled at Rachael.

"No . . ." She was thinking fast now. "It's because . . . because he's hungry."

"Young boys are always hungry." But Remy sounded uncomfortable.

Everyone had stopped eating to stare at her. The taste of the food in her mouth went flat. She drank some milk to avoid their eyes. Tell one little lie and look what happened. Mrs. Bonnet had warned her about this in Sunday school. Mrs. Bonnet was right.

The silence lasted forever. It was the kind of fear and attention everyone gave the subject of "hard times." Rachael didn't think the times were hard. Even though the twins couldn't find jobs and strike out on their own. Why would they want to leave home anyway? And her dad couldn't hire extra hands, but to Rachael the ranch seemed crowded with men.

Thora K. cleared her throat. "Might be they's from the city. Them do say people stand in line there just fer soup. But I never did 'ear of a body going 'ungry round 'ere."

"How do you know he's hungry?" Brandy asked.

Rachael didn't know and she certainly wasn't anxious to have him out for supper. She could hardly remember what he looked like. "He didn't bring any lunch to school. Teacher had to share hers with him. And he's all bony and ... he ate all my candy after school." It felt good to confess the truth after lying so much.

"Candy! I've warned you about--"

"Oh, leave her be, Bran. Kid's got to have some fun even in a depression," Hutch Maddon said. "Damn few have money these days to buy any."

Rachael could always count on her dad to help her out when she was cornered. When he looked at her she never felt he was trying to find something wrong. And his glance was rarely teasing like that of her brothers or Uncle Lon. Hutch Maddon's eyes told Rachael he just enjoyed looking at her and he was proud to have her for his daughter. . . .

Except during the scary times, of course, when he was too troubled to notice her because his wife was acting so strangely.

2

Jerry Garrett straddled the hitching post in front of the general store and watched Rachael hop from the sidewalk to the street on one foot.

"You keep that up and you'll break your face."

"Are you coming or aren't you?"

"Do I have to kiss you for it?"

Rachael turned suddenly and pushed him off his perch to the dirt below.

"You just try it and I'll have one of my brothers knock your teeth down your throat and out your elbow." She stood with one polished brown toe tapping the sidewalk and her hands on her waist. Her petticoat was whiter than anything he'd ever seen.

Jerry considered hitting her but that would probably mean he'd miss a real meal.

An old stock truck rumbled around the corner, its gears whining.

"That'll be Dan. Are you coming or aren't you?"

"I'm coming."

"Don't you have to tell your mom?"

"She won't care." And he'd have a chance to ask someone else about Christine, as his mother was so anxious that he do. He'd gotten up the courage to ask his teacher and Mr. Binder, but they couldn't help him.

Rachael crawled in beside her brother, and Jerry beside her. "How come he didn't bring his horse like last time?"

"That was my other brother. This is Dan. They're twins."

"And you must be the Indian." Dan grinned at him. He had a puffy black eye and was more like a full-grown man than somebody's brother.

Jerry was disappointed because he'd never been on a horse before but the ride in the truck didn't lack for excitement. This brother was as crazy behind the wheel as the other one had been on a horse.

The jolting ruts didn't smooth out till they'd swooped down into an enormous valley where horses and cattle grazed together on yellowing grass. The truck left the track and rattled across humps to stop with a sideways skid up against a corral. Dan threw open his door, raced around the edge of the corral and disappeared.

Rachael sighed and stared at the windshield.

Jerry pulled his teeth apart. "Does . . . does he always drive like that?"

"Yeah. Mr. Binder says he's wild. My mom says he's going to be a used-car dealer."

"Well, I sure wouldn't let him near a new one."

Rows of cut hay divided the valley floor into jigsaw patterns and thickened the air with a sweet, dry, country smell. As they walked up the slope to the porch of a tan-colored house the aroma of cooking mingled with the scent of hay.

Rachael stopped at the door. "Would you do me a favor and be nice to my mom? Some people aren't. I don't want you to hurt her feelings. She thinks you're my friend."

They entered a long room bright with blond walls and red curtains and delicious smells. Two women stood at the far end, one old and bent with a snow-white knot of hair on top of her head. The other woman had silver streaks lacing dark hair and she wore pants like a man. She was whipping a potato masher around in a bowl and as he approached, the masher slowed. Her big eyes got bigger.

"Mom? Here's my friend. His name's Jerry Garrett."

"Oh, my God," the woman in the pants said, as if someone had knocked the breath out of her.

The bowl slid down her front and broke on the floor. Fluffy plops of mashed potatoes splattered on Jerry's clothes.

Jerry added another bone to the pile on his plate and spread thick gravy over a biscuit, because Rachael's mother'd ruined the potatoes. Every time he looked up, Mrs. Maddon was staring at him.

"Save room for pie, Jerry," she said. But Remy handed him the chicken platter and what was left of the peas. He could tell the brothers apart only because of Dan's black eye.

Rachael's Uncle Lon wore a white suit with a vest under it, while the rest of the men wore work shirts. Jerry wondered if he lived here or was just visiting.

"Where'd you come from, boy?" Lon Maddon asked him.

"California." Jerry felt too sleepy to go into all the places he'd been.

"I've heard of people going there but never coming from. Is it a nice place?" Dan said.

"It's all right, I guess." Jerry's part of California had been dusty, dirty and hot.

Jerry hid a drumstick and a biscuit under his shirt when no one was looking. It should be enough. His mother didn't want much. He remembered to ask his question over the pie he was too full to eat. "My ma's looking for a woman that used to live here. Name's Christine Pintor. She wants me to ask people because she's too sick to go out and do it herself."

No one had heard of such a person. The same answer he always got.

"Is your father able to be home to care for your mother?" Mrs. Maddon asked.

"He left us a long time ago." Jerry had only vague memories of the man. "It's just me and Ma."

Mrs. Maddon stood so quickly she startled them all. "Remy, you and Rachael do the dishes. Thora K.'s tired. Dan, bring the car up to the door. I'll drive Jerry home."

"But, Mom, I-"

"No buts. After all he's eaten, the last thing he needs is to ride with you." She ducked out the door by the stove, returned with a basket, and began filling it with loaves of bread and other food. "Jerry, get that chicken out from under your shirt and put it in here."

Jerry soon found himself, the basket and Rachael's mother in a car that wasn't in much better shape than the truck.

She glanced sideways as they neared the top of the lane. The boy was already asleep. Easier to think of him as "the boy" than as Jerrold Garrett, who would grow up to become Shay's father.

For thirty-one years she'd been so busy living Brandy's life, she'd become Brandy, had almost forgotten the dreamlike young person named Shay Garrett. Except when Rachael would look at her a certain way and remind her of the woman she'd known as a mother rather than the girl she knew as a daughter.

And now this boy had walked into her life.

When she reached the road she woke him. "Jerry, which side of town do you live on?"

He directed her to the first turnoff and then to the Strock cabin.

"Who told you, you could live here?"

"A man a couple houses back. He let us in and said he'd tell the owners to rent it to us."

Tim Pemberthy. He lived in Samuel's old cabin now and often saw to letting the Strock place to summer visitors for Thora K. He probably hadn't had a chance to inform them of the new occupants.

She hadn't been back here for years. Memories of Corbin and little Penny pierced her and memories of a long-ago girl from a future time. ...

"Jerrold, is that you?" A woman stood in the doorway, the light behind her throwing her shadow across the porch. "Where have you been?"

"Jerry, take the basket in and tell her I want to talk to her." She braced herself to meet another of Shay's grandparents--this one would be younger than herself.

Later when she left the cabin it was on trembling legs. Driving down the hill and across the bridge, she turned onto Main Street, passing the few stores that had not closed or disappeared after the tungsten boom. Crystalline moonlight flickered across water ripples on the reservoir ahead. Several couples strolled along the shore.

She parked in front of the frame house with the stained-glass door. I
don't want to do this.
She was almost disappointed to see light behind the window shades.

Marrying Hutch and settling down on the ranch had been a safe if hardworking interlude after the upheaval the wedding mirror had caused her. But a hungry little boy and his mother shredded in a few hours the protective cloak it had taken her years to weave. She could never be Shay again. Now she didn't feel like Brandy either.

She stepped out of the car and walked up to the house, startled by the sound of her own knock at the door, half-wishing it wouldn't open. But it did.

"Brandy? Is that you? What-"

"I have to talk to you, May Bell."

"Well . . . sure. Come on in." But May Bell couldn't hide her reluctance.

"Are you alone? This is private." She walked into a dark Victorian room of worn furniture, hideous lamp shades with dusty fringe, and red-flowered wallpaper.

"I'm alone. Has something happened, Brandy? Is it Lon? Hutch?"

"No, they're fine. May Bell . . ." She sat on a lumpy chair and closed her eyes on the garish room. "I. . . think we should have a drink."

"Didn't know you drank."

"I do now."

May Bell left the room, returning with a bottle and two glasses, her many bracelets jangling. "Something awful's happened out at the ranch, huh?"

"No." She took a slug of raw whiskey and had to wait for the fire to die down, to simmer, before she could go on. "But something's happened. You better sit, May Bell. Or should I say, Christine?"

Short curls dyed an un-uniform orange plopped about on May Bell's head as she sank into a chair so hard she hit bottom. "Who told you about Christine? It's a lie!" But she emptied her glass and poured herself another. "Who told you?"

"Your daughter."

"Catherine?" May Bell's eyes seemed smaller now that she'd added so much weight around them. "I don't believe you." She had to dislodge rolls of fat from between chair arms to stand. "You get out of here, Brandy McCabe-"

"Maddon."

"Look, I know I owe you something for warning me to get my money out of the bank before it closed but--"

"You don't owe me anything. But you do owe Catherine something."

"You got no right prying into things that've been dead for years." May Bell's tent like dress quivered and she put her hands out as if to ward off an attack. "You're a witch. Else you wouldn't know the things you do. Christine is dead."

"Well, Catherine isn't. You can be May Bell to me and all of Nederland, but to your daughter you're Christine Pintor--sometime, onetime mother."

"I was only sixteen when I left and--"

"May Bell, she's in town. Here. Now. And she's looking for you. She wants to see you."

"You're lying. After all this time ... no, it's somebody else . . . pretending." May Bell's lipstick and rouge looked as if they'd been applied on white alabaster. "You ain't so smart, you know. And not always right either. You were a year off on the crash. I took your advice and lost a year's interest."

"Nobody's perfect. Can we get back on the subject?"

Fumbling in her pocket for her cigarettes, May Bell lit one and puffed while she paced. "I was fourteen when I had her. I'm not old enough to be her mother. She must be a grown woman now."

"Try meeting your own grandmother when she's twenty years younger than you sometime. I need another drink." Brandy/Shay reached for the brown bottle.
Who the hell am
I?