Alone in a Cabin

by Leanne W. Smith

  “See?” Ollie raised a crooked shaking finger at her. “That tells me right there you’re the person for this job, Maggie. That’s mighty good of you. Not required, but mighty good.”

  “One of the biggest holes I have is why Zeke escaped. I understand how he got out, but several people have mentioned that he didn’t seem like the type to try to escape from prison. Can you shed any light on that?”

  “I wish I knew, Maggie, because if he had stayed put, he would have been out by now. He could have buried me, ’stead of me buryin’ him. Sometimes at the prisons—a lot of folks don’t know this—but the guards just don’t come in. It had come a big snow and ice storm that day. Lot of the guards couldn’t get to work. Zeke worked in the laundry, they all have jobs in prison. Don’t get paid anything much for ’em, but it helps ’em buy toiletries and food from the commissary. They have commissary, like in the army.

  “His mother had already died, and I guess he was worried about me. He evidently came here first, but I was passed out cold. Canon told me later.” Mr. Thompson’s lips quivered and he squeezed his eyes hard against the memory. “Canon found marks on my front door that proved Zeke came here first. He tried to get in. But I had the place locked up tight. There was a key in the shed—the shed never had no door on it—to that cabin down the road. That key was gone when we looked for it later.”

  Maggie and Ollie had been over this part of the story, but Ollie must have needed to tell it again. Maggie let him. She wondered how many times he’d combed over the details in his memory, as curved and shaking now as his fingers.

  “I found Zeke curled up on the porch two days later, froze to death. The temperature dropped down into the single digits then exactly like it did that first week you stayed there. Christmas was on a Thursday that year, and Zeke escaped the next Monday night. I found him late in the day, last day of the year.

  “I brought him home. Didn’t tell nobody, but Canon stopped by. You know, Canon found his wife dead. That’s an awful thing, to see someone slumped over and to realize it’s the person you love most in the world.

  “When the ground thawed back out, Canon helped me bury him in that old family cemetery behind the shed. Those other people out there aren’t even our family. It goes way back, to the people who first built that cabin.

  “I didn’t put a marker on Zeke’s grave for years, but I got worried something would happen to me and nobody but Canon would know where he was. So a few years ago I got Nate Carlson to make a headstone. That’s a guy in town who works for the funeral home.

  “Canon comes by here to check on me ever’ time it snows. It’s good of him. He’s a good sheriff.” Mr. Thompson looked at Maggie slyly, “I think he’s got an eye for you.”

  “I’ve got an eye for him.”

  Mr. Thompson smiled and put a gnarled hand on her arm. “I guess that knocks me out then.”

  Maggie and Canon were going to have to adopt him, seeing as how they were short on parents. “This may seem like a strange question, Ollie, but something else I haven’t found information on is whether Zeke had any special markings or tattoos. Do you know if he did?”

  Mr. Thompson’s face screwed up. “Not that I know of. He never had any tattoos I ever heard about.”

  Maggie hadn’t been able to confirm Zeke had the ‘everlasting’ tattoo running under his collarbone, but she knew it was there. She saw it. Yet nowhere in any of the information she’d combed through had it been mentioned. Seemed like a father would have known if his son had a blue word stamped across his chest, that he would have seen it peeking from a shirt when they sat in the recliners and talked.

  She stared at Zeke’s picture, then studied Mr. Thompson. How would it feel to watch your son be sent to prison? Maggie thought of Yvette, Cal’s fiancé. She was a sweet girl. Maggie liked her. And she liked Mark. She wondered what the future held for her children. She also wondered how much it would have hurt her father to see her and Tom divorce, and to know that Tom had an affair with a girl his own daughter’s age.

  “Do you know what ‘Ezekiel’ means, Maggie?” Mr. Thompson asked suddenly.

  Maggie shook her head. “Doesn’t the ‘el’ mean God?”

  “God strengthens. That’s what Ezekiel means. Ezekiel was Irene’s favorite book in the Old Testament. She liked that story about the bones. Our boy never did have a middle name. Irene said that one was enough.

  “I don’t know if folks will want to read about Zeke or not. I don’t know if it will make any difference to anybody. But he was a good boy. And I like to think his life wasn’t lived in vain.”

  Mr. Thompson studied his hands. “Took all the fight out of Irene for battling the cancer when Zeke was sent to prison. He was our only child, only child the Lord ever blessed us with.”

  The old man’s voice caught then. It was an awful sound—the sound of an elderly man’s heart breaking—the evidence in the pull of the vocal cords. Maggie wondered how many breaks there had been over the years, and marveled that the human heart had the capacity to keep on breaking.

  “I hated I couldn’t bury him in the cemetery where Irene’s buried. I guess I was trying to protect him…or keep him close…something. I didn’t want folks to know. I didn’t want folks to have any more reason to feel sorry for me…or him.

  “Canon didn’t charge me with any crime for burying Zeke here. I’m glad of that. He let ’em know at the county records office, I guess.”

  “Canon’s in the hospital,” said Maggie.

  Mr. Thompson looked up. “What happened?”

  “He went to check on a domestic dispute last night and the man said his gun went off by accident. A bullet grazed the back of Canon’s head.”

  “Well, I’ll be.” Ollie studied her. “You’re not going to hold it against Canon for being a lawman, are you?”

  Maggie shook her head. “No.”

  She had stayed longer than she meant to. Maggie closed her notebook and stood. Ollie was the first to reach out and hug her this time.

  At the door she remembered the keys. “I almost forgot.” Maggie held them out for him. “This is the cabin key, and the key to Canon’s truck. It’s parked there. He’ll be by to get it in a few days.”

  32

  “Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.” Jonah 2:8, some NIV translations

  Maggie didn’t see Canon again for six weeks. His head wound healed, but from his text messages she knew his heart still stood on a precipice.

  The day after she left he texted.

  Thanks again for the quiche.

  Did Paul let you go home?

  Not yet.

  How do you feel?

  Fine.

  Good time to catch up on reading? Movies? Sleep?

  Too much time to wish I didn’t have a scanner at my house.

  A week later he texted again.

  The cabin on Patterson Road misses you.

  Then, before Maggie could think of a clever reply…

  Ollie misses you.

  And once more…

  I miss you.

  I miss you, too, Canon. I’m sorry I had to leave town while you were in the hospital, but I had an appointment scheduled with an agent.

  How did it go?

  I’m hopeful. She has my proposal. She’s thinking about it.

  When will you know something?

  Couple of weeks.

  After two weeks passed…

  Been trying to think of something I could come arrest you for.

  I paid my taxes.

  Damn.

  My car tags are coming due. I could hold off on those.

  That’s only a misdemeanor. Any word from the agent?

  Not yet.

  Another two weeks passed. Maggie was lying in bed one morning after staying up late working on her manuscript when she heard her phone ping. It was a picture from Canon, of the sunrise over his apple orchard. She stared at it a long time.

  Nice.

  Better in p
erson.

  If Maggie could have blinked herself to his porch, she would have. In fact, she considered running to her car and seeing how fast she could get there. She’d text him to say, Hold on! I’m coming. The condo was close to I-40. Her phone said it would take her seventy-two minutes. It was Saturday morning. Light traffic.

  When she hesitated…

  How’s the book coming?

  Maggie looked over at her desk in the corner. Should she snap a picture of those piles of books from the library? Or of her wastebasket, with all those papers ripped and wadded?

  Slow, but sure. No word from agent yet. She may have decided to pass.

  You’d rather she take her time and be sure about it.

  Maggie wondered if he was telling himself the same thing about her. She knew it was only a matter of time until she and the Marston Country sheriff saw where things might take them. Maggie made a decision that morning at the hospital. She told Shirley she could do the hard things. It was a hard thing to take a chance on love again.

  But Maggie had also made a commitment to the story. And if Canon couldn’t live with her pursuit of a writing dream then he wasn’t the next man she should fully give her heart to. Plus…it was still so soon…not even a year had passed since the day Tom told her about Bethany. Still, it felt like a lifetime, perhaps because Maggie spent so much time in her own head.

  True. If she decides I’m the one, I want it to stick. I want it to be for life.

  I’d want that, too.

  * * *

  For six weeks, Maggie wrote. She was neck-deep into the manuscript, typing the words as she heard them, then proceeded to edit, edit, edit until she worried she would edit the soul out of what she was trying to craft.

  Marriage and love are curious things. I had a lot of time to think about each when I was in prison.

  I remember standing at the courthouse with Tandy, both of us just kids, in that too-big jacket of my father’s, looking into my future wife’s green eyes, thinking I had the world by its tail. Tandy’s hair was all fussed up in a perm, and she was wearing a cream-colored dress she’d made. I bought her a wrist corsage at the flower shop like we were going to the prom, a big white orchid.

  If you had asked me that day if I loved Tandy, I would have sworn the answer was yes. And I was convinced she loved me, too. But what did either of us know then of love?

  Love, I realized later, was more complicated than the way my knees got weak when Tandy Wilkins first smiled at me in English class, slamming my heart like a sledgehammer. And love went deeper than the tangle of our bodies on the vinyl seats of a car.

  Here was my first test of love: when I found a white orchid in the trash the morning after going to the courthouse.

  When I asked Tandy how come—did she not want to freeze it, or press it, or something—she laughed and said what for?

  How did a writer ever get to the final stages and know the story was finished? Every time Maggie read back through her Scrivener files there was one more word that needed changing, one more line to be added, another to be taken away.

  And the research! The research never seemed sufficient to the task. Intuition, gut feelings, and a lot of time on the treadmill in the fifth floor’s exercise room were needed to fill in the gaps.

  I died on a Monday—same Monday I broke out of prison. My name was Ezekiel Thompson. Everybody called me Zeke. I killed three people, but only one from hatred. Or maybe I killed four. Do you count yourself if your own bad decisions lead to an early departure?

  Maggie long ago lost count of how many times she’d gone back through the opening lines, scrolled down through the chapters, checking the pacing, checking the grammar, checking the emotional pulse of the story. She was convinced those opening lines, which simply came to her, much as Zeke had—unbidden and unexpected—was what helped her get the final offer from the agent who called to sign her at the end of May.

  This time Maggie called Canon instead of texting. She wanted to hear the deep timbre of his voice.

  “Hey.” He sounded surprised.

  “Guess what,” she breathed.

  “She signed you.”

  “She did!” Maggie silently pumped her fist into the air. She had needed a win.

  “I knew she would,” said Canon.

  “How could you be so sure?”

  “Sometimes you just know. And because you’re fabulous. And it’s a story that needs telling.”

  Maggie held her breath. “You think I’m fabulous?”

  He chuckled. The sound of it sent thrills running up her back. “Don’t act like you haven’t figured that out by now. You know what this means,” Canon said. “We have to celebrate. My place or yours?”

  “You would come to Nashville?”

  “Woman, I’d drive farther than to Nashville to see you.”

  Maggie’s heart was already in the clouds. Now it felt like it might burst.

  “I’ll cook,” she said. They agreed on Friday night, 6:30.

  Tandy and I got married on a Friday. Nobody came to our wedding. The judge called a cleaning lady in to serve as witness, but as we came down the outside steps when it was over I saw my mother at the end of the walkway crying. I figured Dad was off drunk somewhere. Mom knew as well as anybody the kind of life I had just signed on for.

  At my trial, lawyers from both sides wondered why I would stay married to Tandy for so long. If my mother hadn’t been sick by then, she could have told them. Seemed like I owed it to her to stick it out with Tandy. Seemed like the least I could do for breaking her heart.

  Later, when Tandy had that first abortion, I found the cream-colored dress in the trash next morning. That time I didn’t even ask her about it.

  * * *

  Canon was prompt. He wore a navy dress jacket over a white collared shirt, jeans, and his ostrich boots, holding up a 10-gallon bucket filled with gladiolus—yellow, red, orange—when Maggie opened the door.

  “You should see the hummingbirds swarming around these things.”

  When Maggie kissed his cheek his shoulders relaxed. He didn’t blend well with the contemporary design of the building or urban landscapes in the windows. This man belonged on a farm.

  As he followed her to the kitchen while Maggie looked for large vases and arranged the flowers, he said, “I was afraid you’d given up on me.”

  “I needed time to finish the story.”

  “So it’s finished?”

  “I’m sure an editor will think it still needs work, but Julie believes in it, and that feels good.”

  “Always feels good when somebody believes in you.”

  Canon’s eyes followed Maggie as she walked a vase of flowers to the living room table and another to the dining table. She left one on the kitchen counter, setting his 10-gallon bucket by the door. When she turned to look at him he was doing surveillance again, checking out her condo. The kitchen was open to the living and dining areas. The single bedroom and bath sat to the left of the entry. The layout always reminded Maggie of a nice hotel suite at the beach. It didn’t feel like his place…it didn’t feel like a home.

  “How’s your head?” Maggie asked. She stepped closer to him and craned her neck so she could see the spot they shaved. His hair was growing back over it.

  Canon wouldn’t be still for her to get a good look. “Fine. Hard as ever.”

  They exchanged awkward it’s-been-a-while smiles, then she turned back to finish dinner. “My kitchen’s not as nice as yours.”

  “I’d share.”

  Maggie stopped and looked at him. Biting her bottom lip, she pushed a cutting board with washed vegetables toward him. “You want to chop these for our salad?”

  Canon took off his jacket and laid it on a nearby chair, rolled up his sleeves in that customary way he had, picked up the knife and got to work.

  “I’m not good at being subtle,” he said. “I’m not good at playing games or being debonair. I didn’t mean to launch right into things, but I had an hour’s drive…six
weeks, seven days…to think about that kiss in my kitchen and I’ve got some things to say.”

  He made quick work of the chopping and pushed the cutting board back toward Maggie.

  She slipped the Brown Sugar Salmon into the oven and reached for the asparagus.

  “I’m listening.”

  “First, I’ve gotten clearance to take you out to Turney Center. I think it would be good for you to go out there and see where Zeke was. I got the current warden to go back and look up the original reports from his escape. Thought that might help you.”

  Maggie salted and peppered the asparagus, had the olive oil heating in the pan, and was ready with the balsamic glaze she liked to drizzle over it. She was going through another round of edits now. Seeing the prison that Zeke had escaped from would only deepen the story. “How soon can we go?”

  He looked pleased that she was pleased, and nodded. “Soon as you’re ready. Although I thought about this, and it would be good if we went on a Wednesday night. There’s a group of volunteers that comes in to teach classes every Wednesday night that would be the most similar conditions to the night Zeke walked out.”

  “Would next Wednesday night work for you?”

  He thought a minute. “I can make that work.”

  “I can, too.” Maggie put the asparagus in the pan. “What’s the second thing?”

  Canon looked sheepish. “I’ll wait on that one until after we eat.”

  “Okay. No hints?”

  He only smiled at her, but it wasn’t a happy smile, it was a tortured smile. So Maggie didn’t press the point. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what it was if it had him nervous. This was supposed to be a celebratory dinner for her signing with an agent. Had Canon forgotten that?