The Cabin

by Wilder Jasinda

  “Lady happy time buzzy fun helpers. That’s your idea of being considerate?”

  She snickers. “NO, but it’s fun to say, isn’t it?” She has the duffel on her shoulder, still. “You need them. You need to use them, Nadia. You are still a sexual being.”

  I shake my head. “I’m broken, Tess.”

  A sad smile, her hand on my cheek. “I know. He knew you would be, too. That’s why you’re going.”

  I can’t fathom leaving this house. “Tess, I…I don’t know if I can.”

  “You are.”

  “Tess.”

  She points at the letter still clutched in my fingers. “Nadia, you have to. You know you do.”

  “Yeah, I…” I scrub my face with one hand. “I know. I know I do.” I look up at her. “But I don’t want to be that far from you.”

  She laughs. “You can’t get rid of me. I’ll come visit. But I think you need this.” Sober and serious, then. “You need time alone. You need to…well, exactly as he put it. You need to relearn how to live. This is how you do it.”

  I sigh. “I guess there’s really nothing else left to do but just…go.”

  She nods, points at the kitchen. “Your marching orders are to first make yourself coffee. Second, as big a breakfast as you can manage. You’ve been starving yourself so long it may not be much, but you need to eat. Third, you have to call Doc Wilson and tell him you’re taking an extended, open-ended leave of absence, starting immediately. For health reasons.”

  “Okay.” I blow out a nervous breath. “Tess?”

  “Nads?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Anything, anytime, always.”

  * * *

  An hour and a half later, I was behind the wheel of my car, fed, caffeinated, jobless, with all my clothes packed in the trunk and back seat of my little red A5. All the lights in my house were off. The garage was empty. The doors were locked.

  It felt like I was going on a vacation…alone. It felt weird.

  I’d said goodbye to Tess, hugged her at least four times, and then she physically shoved me in the car, leaned into the passenger door and input the address for me in the nav system, pressed “GO,” and kissed me on the temple.

  “Next time I see you, you’re gonna be a different person, right?” She palmed my cheek.

  “Yeah.”

  “You have to invest in the process, Nads. Okay?”

  “I will.” I booped her nose. “Get some good dick for me.”

  “Oh, I’m getting all the good dick. I might even keep one, someday.”

  I laughed. “And the rest of the man attached to it, I hope.”

  “Maybe. If he’s nice enough.”

  “You’re a dork.”

  “Bye, Nads. Drive safe.”

  “Bye, Tess-icles, I will. Thank you.”

  “Don’t call me when you get there. Don’t text. Just turn your phone off, leave it in the car. If I hear from you, it’s because something went horribly wrong. So I don’t want to hear from you. Okay?”

  “I can’t promise, but I’ll try.”

  She exited the car, closed the door, and stepped back onto my lawn. Waved.

  And I drove away.

  Next stop?

  The cabin.

  Resurrection

  I’ve been here two weeks. It’s boring, sometimes, but that’s good. Boring is good. I’ve carved a bunch of new pieces, a squirrel, a raccoon, a cardinal, a moose, a little clutch of field mice. I sit and drink coffee on the porch in the morning, sip whiskey at night. Never more than one, because for once I’m not trying to escape.

  I’ve cried a bunch. It was embarrassing at first. I’m a man’s man, raised by a man’s man. I drink whiskey and punch sissies, and only sissies cry. But Dad died lonely and bitter, of cirrhosis and misery.

  Fuck that noise.

  The first time I was sitting on the dock, toes in the water, drinking a beer, it just…hit me. I missed Lisa. Missed her laugh and her voice and her soft curves. And my eyes stung, my nose itched, and then I just couldn’t stop it. And hell, I was alone, right? No one to see, so I just let it go.

  And you know what? It felt good, in a weird way. Like I’d been holding it in all these years.

  After that, I was as emotional as…well, the only comparisons that come to mind are probably sexist and shitty, so skip ’em. I cried a lot. Just sat around and let myself cry for…me.

  I’ve fished. Caught a few lake trout, mostly just tossed ’em back.

  Read books—turns out there’s a library next town over, and I got myself a card and checked out some fiction. Westerns, mostly. Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour, Larry McMurtry. Some historical stuff, a couple biographies.

  Mostly, though, I whittle and I carve.

  And I wonder about that cabin down the way.

  Just sitting there empty, and it feels ominous.

  I know I should be reading Adrian’s book, but I just can’t. I dunno why. I’m not ready for it. I have to…let the bats in the belfry of my soul air out a bit, so to speak.

  I can’t fathom why Adrian gave me this place, what his greater purpose was, but I’m goddamn thankful. I was suffocating, I’m starting to realize. Wearing a path in the floor of life, pacing back and forth from work to the bottle to work to the bottle, rarely even engaging in conversation with anyone beyond idle chitchat, and I ain’t got time for that most of the time. Well, patience is what I lack, more than time, but still.

  I needed this.

  I’m starting to breathe, a little, finally.

  * * *

  Four in the afternoon. I’m on the porch, sipping an IPA, reading Lonesome Gods. I hear tires on gravel, a car motor. Squeal of brakes that need a tune-up. Glance left, and there’s a little red convertible pulling up on the far side of the other cabin. The top is back, and I get a glimpse of black hair.

  The engine shuts off, and there’s a while of silence, followed by the car door opening…closing. I can make out the nose of the car, some of the windshield, and some of the front seat. A tall, slender figure emerges around the front of the cabin. A woman.

  She’s wearing black leggings, colorful sneakers, and a baggy gray sweatshirt hanging low on one shoulder. Her hair is long and black, loose around her shoulders. A purse hangs from her left elbow; sunglasses perched up on the top of her head.

  You know how sometimes, even though you can’t make out someone’s features, you can tell just by seeing them from a distance that they’re good-looking? I get that feeling with her. She’s gonna be beautiful.

  It’s weird to even think that. I haven’t really noticed women, not for years. I tried, too. But it just went…nowhere. I couldn’t make my heart less of an ice block, couldn’t make my brain interested, nor my body. It’s like I just shut down when Lisa died, and not all the systems came up online again.

  So to even think about a woman as being beautiful, worth noticing, is in itself weird.

  She just stands on the porch, staring at something in her hand—a key, I imagine. Something about the way she’s just standing there feels familiar. Like she’s getting up the nerve to go in. Like I did, the first time.

  Whoever she is, she was given that key by Adrian. Or this is whoever he sold the other part of the property to. But somehow, my gut tells me he didn’t sell it. He bought it at the end of his life, with a particular purpose in mind.

  Maybe it’s his wife.

  Nadine? No, I always think it’s that, but it’s not. Nadia? I think that’s her name. Maybe it’s her.

  I just sit on my porch, the sweating bottle cold in my hands, and watch. Eventually, I see her sigh. Even from here, it feels heavy, that sigh. She unlocks the door, and vanishes inside.

  She’s in there a while. An hour, maybe. When it’s clear she’s not coming back out right away, I go back to reading, but now my mind is on her. Wondering who she is, if my—not assumption, nor a guess; my feeling, I suppose it is—if my feeling that the woman is Adrian’s widow, is correct.

  It
feels right. Who else would it be? Showing up now, on the anniversary of his death. When I was in town getting library books, I looked up the obituaries around the time I know he died, and today is the one year anniversary; the funeral was immediate family only, so I wasn’t there, and I was out of town for work anyway. So…yeah. Who the hell else would show up, here, today, and stand there as if summoning the nerve to go in?

  What does it mean for me?

  In light of the note and the letter he left me, the book I have yet to read…what does it mean that she’s here?

  The math of Adrian’s arrangements seems obvious. But…I recoil mentally from going down that road. I haven’t even met the woman. She’s grieving. Hell, I’m grieving—and I’m realizing I never did that. I just shut down, and then went about shuffling zombie-like through a muddy, miserable half-life.

  I keep reading.

  When she comes out again, it’s to unload her suitcases. I count five, and a duffel bag, plus her purse. Looks like she’s planning on staying a while. But so am I; on my last trip into town I brought a few of my carvings, showed them to the owner of the little shop that sells knickknacks and local art, and he agreed to try to sell them, for a few bucks off the top. I don’t need the money, but if I’m going to be sitting around carving, and the pieces don’t go anywhere, I’ll be up to my neck in them in a month.

  Once all her suitcases are inside, she’s in there again for another hour, closer to two. I’m getting hungry, but my dinner isn’t ready yet. I found a second-hand crockpot in town the other day, and I’ve been playing around with pot roasts and such. Ain’t much for cooking, but you gotta learn sometime, right? Out here, living off fast food and pizza delivery ain’t an option. Which is probably a good thing for the diameter of my midsection.

  She comes back out, a third time. This time, with a glass of wine in one hand, and the bottle in the other. It’s sunset, and a marvelous one. Lots of purple and crimson and orange reflected in the gently rippling lake. She sits in the Adirondack, sips her wine. Sighs, now and then.

  I have no impulse to go over there. Not yet.

  I go back to Louis L’Amour. Johannes Vern is talking to a giant—one of my favorite parts.

  But really, I’m watching her. She’s uncomfortable just sitting there, doing nothing. She crosses and uncrosses her legs. Sips too fast, then sets it down as if to slow herself down. Rakes her hand through her hair, then realizes she’s fidgeting, and tries to still herself again.

  I want to tell her she’s trying too hard to relax. It won’t come right away, the ability to slow down. If you try to force it, you’ll just stress yourself out even worse. For a go-go-go type of person, like me, like Lisa was, it takes some practice.

  I think, too, she’s just too sad to be able to enjoy anything.

  And that, now, that I get.

  I’ll bide my time. I don’t really understand anything, but I feel like this is what Adrian intended. What this even is, I don’t know. Maybe I’m crazy.

  I put a receipt into the book to mark my place, take it inside, and set it on the little shelf next to the bed. On top of the shelf is Adrian’s book.

  It’s time to read it, I think.

  I open it up, and turn to chapter one, page one.

  When my wife died, I died with her.

  Okay, a doozy of a first line.

  When my wife died, I died with her. It wasn’t supposed to happen. Or, if it was, it should have been me. I should have been driving. I shouldn’t have had so much to drink. I wasn’t drunk, but she’d had less than me and it was just safer to let her drive. It was just ten minutes to home, and we had a back route we knew, no main roads, no highways.

  There was a deer. She swerved and hit the brakes. We spun out on a patch of ice, and ended up wrapped sideways around a tree. Driver’s side impact. I broke some bones, cut my head open, whiplash, bruises. But her? She died. Not instantly, either. There was time for her to look at me, goodbye in her eyes, and then the life drained out of her, onto the seat belt buckle. Drip, drip, drip, crimson life pooling slowly on plastic and leather.

  She died, and I died with her.

  But it was the worst kind of death, for me. The kind where your body stays alive, but your heart and mind and soul go down into the grave with her.

  But, this is only the prologue, so I can tell you the good news, too.

  I was resurrected. It took time. There was pain—don’t ever let anyone tell you that coming back from the dead doesn’t hurt, because it does. A fucking lot.

  Sorry, that was supposed to be good news. Let’s try that again: I was resurrected.

  Her name is Nadia, and she brought me back to life.

  This is the story of how.

  I close the book around my index finger, head lolling back on the couch. Holy shit, Adrian. You’re gonna hit me over the head with a hammer, aren’t you?

  I open the book again and keep reading. I hear Adrian’s voice in it. Feel him speaking to me.

  “Redemption’s Song is for you, Nathan. Read it, and hear my final song.”

  I hear you, buddy. Not sure what you’re trying to tell me just yet, but I hear you. I’m listening.

  I’m listening.

  Stars

  Not what I expect, when I pull up. Or maybe it’s exactly what I expect. It’s like something out of a Thomas Kincaid painting, late afternoon sunlight golden-yellow on pine trees crusted thickly around the banks of a placid lake. Private. The only cabins on the lake are the one I pull up to, and another one next to it. My hindbrain registers the pickup truck pulled forward at angle in front of the other cabin—it’s steel gray, enormous, with a silver toolbox across the bed behind the two-door cab. A thick black brush guard protects the headlights and grille, and black running boards stretch from front tire to back. It’s a macho truck, but not so over the top as to be unusual.

  The truck means the next-door cabin must be occupied; that’s all I have mental or emotional room for, that observation.

  The cabin is incredible. Thick pine logs, a dark green metal roof, covered porch, a chimney made from big stones and boulders. The two cabins are twins, not identical, but alike. The other one looks a little smaller and the roof is red rather than green.

  The covered porch is homey, cozy. A rocking chair that looks antique and handmade sits at an angle near the door, with a short, thick section of tree trunk denuded of bark beside it for a table. I am standing beside my car, just taking in the fact that I’m here and that Adrian chose this place for me. He let me spend a year alone, mourning, before telling me about it. But he knew me. He knew I wouldn’t have come before now. He knew I’d need this now.

  I mount the steps to the porch, which is bordered by crooked lengths of tree limbs in two rows fastened to the upright posts, with two small steps up. You could sit out here at sunset, lean on the top rail…stare out at the lake as the sun stains it on the way down behind the trees.

  On the porch, I feel my heart start hammering. He’s not in there, I know that. It will be empty. A simple rustic cabin in the woods, a place to get away for a while. To rest. To try and heal. To do as he said—start learning how to move on.

  The door is made of wide, rough-hewn planks secured with black wrought-iron straps at top and bottom, and another plank running diagonally from top left to bottom right. Brass doorknob, tarnished, key-scratched. Leaded panes of glass, four-square, old glass, bubbled and distorted. I can’t really see inside through the glass, other than vague shapes and patches of darkness.

  My hand shakes as I stare at the small brass key nestled in the palm of my hand and just stare at it. As if something momentous will happen when I put the key in the lock.

  What do you want from me, Adrian?

  Why am I here?

  How am I supposed to move on? How am I supposed to…to live, without you?

  He wants me to try. So…try I will.

  I unlock the door, push it open. The hinges squeak softly. I step in. I’m prepared for, well, the kind
of thing you’d expect from a hundred-plus-year-old cabin on a lake an hour from anything like real civilization. Dusty, rustic at best. Old and uncomfortable and plain. Colorless, everything decorated with animal heads and horns and the iconography of the nineteenth century.

  But what I find is inside is not that…at all.

  I find Adrian’s fingerprints all over the inside. His knowledge of me.

  Not an animal head to be found, not a single set of antlers, no stuffed fish or raccoons or foxes, much less those stupid “jackalope” things. I close the door behind me and put my back against it, hand over my mouth as I struggle with an onslaught of emotion at what Adrian has given me.

  There are large windows on either side of the door, letting in buckets of natural light, making the cabin feel airy and light. The fireplace is on the right-hand wall, a towering expanse of round stones each roughly the size of my head. A thick mantle runs over top, deep, square, stained dark.

  On the mantle is a single framed photo: my favorite of him—he’s at his desk, leaned precariously backward with his feet up on the corner of the desk, his laptop on his thighs, a mug in one hand, his favorite mug, with levels marked ranging from “don’t even THINK about talking to me” at the top, “nope, not yet” below that, “still shushy time” below that, and at the very bottom “okay, NOW you can talk.” He’s wearing his blue-light-blocking glasses, and he’s grinning at me, laughing at some dumb joke I told him to break his concentration. It’s my favorite photo of him because it captures the essence of everything that is my Adrian. His joy, his humor, his deep, abiding addiction to strong, bold, single-origin coffee, his dedication to his craft.

  There is a couch facing the fireplace, and it’s bohemian and chaotic and colorful. White cloth cushions, wood armrests, covered in knit throw blankets and a one-of-a-kind pillows: one made from an old flannel shirt with a single huge wooden button in the middle, and one made from thick pile purple shag carpet, and another with a wild red and yellow and green zebra stripe pattern. Rugs line the polished wood floors, a profusion of various patterns and styles all overlapping. An industrial-style floor lamp stands beside the couch and it’s made from old copper piping decorated at sporadic intervals with antique hosepipe knobs, the lampshade a bowl of hammered copper, with a long, dangling pull chain and an Edison bulb. Overhead is a chandelier that is clearly a handmade work of art, crafted from sections of stained glass in a brilliant explosion of colors, almost an imitation of a Tiffany lamp.