The Mirror by Marlys Millhiser

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