Alone in a Cabin

by Leanne W. Smith

  No… he’d gotten her clearance to visit the prison. He hadn’t forgotten about her book. Canon wasn’t the kind of man who forgot anything, and he wasn’t the kind of man who acted afraid.

  So what had him looking tortured?

  Me and Tandy, we had some good moments. We fell into a rhythm, me and her. We’d do okay for a while, then I’d get a call from a bar…a hotel…the hospital.

  I learned to hide the money. But Tandy was good at finding it. She could take us back to zero in one afternoon, all for one good high. I never did understand how she knew where to go to find what she was looking for. But I did understand that the thing she really wanted—the thing everybody wants—wasn’t in those places she was looking.

  Tandy never did figure out how to find the one thing that really mattered.

  In the New Testament, Paul said love was what mattered most. More than faith, more than hope, love trumped it all. But you couldn’t go buy it with the last of your husband’s paycheck. You couldn’t smoke it, you couldn’t drink it, you couldn’t shoot it into your bloodstream.

  Love was right there for Tandy, all she had to do was accept it.

  Maggie tossed the cut vegetables in with the salad greens, stirred the asparagus on the stovetop and turned off the oven. All was nearly ready. The table was set.

  She pushed a bottle of her favorite Pinot toward Canon. “You mind opening that?”

  “Glad to. I need a drink.”

  He filled two glasses and took them to the table while she brought the plates. Maggie’s condo was on the eleventh floor. The views were spectacular. The dining table sat next to the windows with an unfettered view of downtown Nashville.

  “Wow,” Canon said. “I could tell it was a great view from the kitchen, but sitting here I have more appreciation for it.”

  Maggie picked up her glass. “It was the best view I could get with my severance package.” The one thing she and Tom had argued most about in buying their house was the windows. So windows became Maggie’s top priority when shopping for her next living space. Windows were helpful when trying to clear your vision in looking down the road toward your future.

  “I won’t be able to afford it forever…unless my book ends up on the New York Times bestsellers list.”

  Canon raised his glass. “Here’s hoping it’s a bestseller.” Maggie raised hers. “But not so you can live here forever.”

  Surely Canon wasn’t planning to profess his love, or ask Maggie to marry him. Was he? The thought caused Maggie conflicting emotions: joy, fear, warmth, panic. Canon was acting so uncharacteristically uncomfortable.

  Or was there some chance his feelings for her had changed? Maggie might have made too many presumptions about that picture on his nightstand, and Shirley’s words at the hospital. Had she read too much into his text messages? Or his “I’d share” comment about the kitchen?

  They made stilted small talk during dinner. Canon praised the meal, grinning. “I’ve been wanting this meal ever since the morning I met you.”

  “I’m glad you like it.”

  His voice dropped. “That brings me back to that second thing.”

  Maggie would wait on the dessert and coffee.

  “I need to be honest with you, Maggie.”

  She studied his eyes, trying to read the words on his face, waiting, hardly daring to breathe.

  Canon opened his mouth to say more, but nothing came out. He tried again, his voice low. “I saw it.”

  She put her hand on his arm above the wrist, offering reassurance. “Saw what, Canon?”

  “Everything. Zeke. Rodriquez. You. The cabin.”

  Maggie took her hand back, staring at him. He looked out at the Nashville skyline. Neither of them spoke while Canon threw back the last of his wine like it was a shot of hard liquor.

  33

  A woman goes to the woods to gain clarity and listen for a story. She’s alone but for a ghost. Then a second man shows up with several ghosts of his own, looking for someone to mend his heart.

  “Rita died thirty years ago, Maggie. I found her in the garden.” Canon nodded toward the gladiolus on the corner of the table. “Near where those are planted. Paul wasn’t the coroner then, Doc Anderson was. He said she had a brain aneurysm. We’d only been married a year. I swore when I lost her I’d never love anyone like that again. And I kept my word.”

  Canon rubbed his forehead. “That night, the night I met you, I had a dream. Truth is, I’d had it three nights in a row. Wasn’t the same every time, but parts were. Ollie drunk, passed out on his bed. His phone ringing. A woman undressing a man—a woman with brown hair.” Canon’s eyes bore into her now. “I saw it, Maggie. I saw you bandage his leg. I saw him take your cell phone—pin you to the bed.”

  Maggie’s eyes widened. She had never told Canon that Zeke pinned her to the bed.

  “Didn’t you think it strange I knocked on your door at 4:30 in the morning? Or that I knew I ought to search the woods behind your cabin?”

  Maggie’s breathing was thin. “Are you telling me you saw that, too? You saw what happened?”

  Canon nodded.

  “Was it Zeke? Before he knocked on my door?”

  Canon nodded again.

  Maggie gasped. “Then why did you act like you didn’t believe me, Canon? Why did you make me go down to the station? And talk into your phone?”

  “Because it’s so hard to explain, Maggie.”

  “You’re telling me!” That came out harsher than Maggie meant for it to. But Canon’s words were a shock.

  “At least you’re a fiction writer,” he said. “A lawman depends on the facts, so I tried to gather the facts. I didn’t have a ghost come see me, I had a dream and dreams are vague…wispy. Nothing was an absolute. I couldn’t see Zeke’s face. I couldn’t see yours.

  “All I know is I woke up at 3:38 in a cold sweat that morning worried about Ollie. I thought my subconscious made up some crazy dream to get me to go check on the old man. You know how a dream can be.

  “Rodriquez had escaped from Turney Center. I’d gotten a couple of calls and been on the lookout for him for two days. I thought my mind was swirling with all that and I had this far-fetched dream, but I couldn’t shake it. It rattled me. So I called Amos to cover the dispatch and I drove out to check on Ollie. He didn’t come to the door, so I drove down to the cabin.”

  Canon’s forehead pinched like he was in pain. “When you opened the door you took my breath away. I thought maybe I was still dreaming.”

  Maggie’s eyes burned. Canon looked like he was going to cry. It made her cry.

  “I checked that cabin,” he said. “You know it, you were there—looking for someone, half-expecting to find him. And I was so relieved not to. I told myself it was just a crazy dream and a crazy coincidence. But I still had to check the woods behind the cabin at first light.”

  Canon waited for her to say something, but Maggie didn’t know what to say. He rubbed the creases in his forehead again. Maggie wondered if his gunshot wound was really healed, or if he was rubbing the front of his head because the back was hurting.

  “I almost told you when you started talking as we were coming out of the woods that day,” said Canon, “and again standing at Zeke’s grave. But then Ollie showed up. In late January when I stopped by the cabin, I was going to tell you then. But by that time…”

  “What?” asked Maggie when he stopped. “By that time, what?”

  “By that time I was afraid I would run you off. By that time, I was having other dreams, dreams of my own making.”

  There was that tortured look again.

  “The day Robbie met you she claimed you were scared of me. Is that true, Canon?”

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “Why?” Maggie put her hand on his arm again, above the wrist. He covered it with his own, clinging to it like it might save his life.

  “Because I swore I’d never love anyone again. And I can’t explain you. I can’t explain that dream.”


  “The same way I can’t explain that Zeke Thompson was in my cabin.”

  “You’re the only person I’ve told,” said Canon. “You’re the only person I can tell.”

  “Same here.”

  They stared at one another, emotional waters passing silently under the bridge.

  “You know how a dream can change on you?” asked Canon. “First you’ll be dreaming one thing, then it will change into something else?”

  Maggie nodded.

  “I dreamed a man was kissing you. Then I was kissing you. And I felt something.” Canon’s eyes filled then—tall, broad-shouldered Canon Dale. “I felt something so strong my heart wouldn’t settle back down. And I felt it again when I kissed you in the car before the festival. I feel it every time I’m around you, Maggie, every time I think about you. When you opened the door that night, I knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “I knew you’d come for me.”

  Like a light in the distance. From a long way off.

  Every hair on Maggie’s arms was raised. Still, she said, “I can’t believe you acted like you didn’t believe me, Canon.” She pointed to the bottle of Pinot. “You even suggested I might have had too much to drink.”

  He looked sheepish. If Maggie had any renewed misgivings about her own feelings for Canon, with that sudden sheepish look, they vanished.

  “I hope you’ll forgive me, Maggie. I did believe you, but the whole thing had me spooked. Plus, it’s my job to prove things. I had nothing for the report but a ghost and a dream.”

  * * *

  On Wednesday Canon drove Maggie to Turney Center. They went inside, through checkpoint. Hearing the clang of the heavy doors as they opened and locked again was sobering.

  When I got to prison, I read everything I could find in the library on euthanasia. It’s a real thing, one of those issues where morality, science, and the justice system clash. I know I’m not the only person who ever killed someone out of mercy. Still…I don’t recommend my choices.

  Another book I read when I got to prison was Hosea. God said his love was a love everlasting. Everlasting. That word seemed to be everywhere I looked in the Old Testament.

  I liked that word so much I decided to tattoo it over my heart. You can do that in prison if you make friends with the right people. One guy gets the ink, the other gets the needles. I did it myself. Took a while, standing in front of the mirror, reading backwards. It hurt. But I got where I liked the prick of the blood on my skin. It became a nightly ritual until it was finished.

  The New Testament says baptized Christians are stamped with the seal of the Holy Ghost, and that old bodies are discarded for new ones. Still, something in me wanted to mark myself to remind anyone—or any collecting death spirits who might come across my body one day—of the cross that had been mine to bear, and that I was promised God’s love regardless of my sins. Or maybe I just needed to remind myself.

  No man wants to think his life was lived in vain. Only time will tell the final outcome of my choices.

  Canon showed Maggie the educational wing where Zeke had taken classes, keeping his hand on the small of her back, protective as they moved along hallways and sidewalks, Canon scowling at the inmates as they admired Maggie with their eyes.

  I hope I’m not remembered as being a tragic figure. My story is not a tragedy to me. But I know I could have had a wider influence. That’s the part I’d change.

  The first day Tandy showed interest in me, the first moment, I would have said, “I’m going to medical school, Tandy Wilkins. If you want to wait for me, live life on my terms, great. And if not, I wish you well.”

  Maybe that’s what heaven will be—a chance to do it over again, to get it right the second time around. I’m sure most folks would think, what do I know of heaven? What makes me think I’ll ever find out? And they’d be right.

  Of course…my chances are excellent if it all depends on mercy.

  Driving back to Marston, Maggie said, “He walked all this way on foot? In the snow and ice?”

  “As the crow flies, it was twenty miles. I’ve actually been over it in a helicopter. Dense woods most of the way. The fact that he kept moving and had some shelter from the wind in those woods helped him for a while. The snow didn’t start until about the time he walked out. But when he came out of the woods near Ollie’s and stopped to try to get in…”

  “His body temperature started dropping,” finished Maggie.

  She’d only come up for the day, to ride out to the prison that afternoon with Canon. They met at the cabin, but she wasn’t staying the night. She had an early morning meeting with her agent.

  When they got back to the cabin, before the sun set, they walked up the hill to the ridge and peered down into the ravine where Canon discovered the body.

  “In my dream, Rodriquez was staring into the windows of the cabin when Zeke materialized. He whacked him with a broken tree limb. Hit him in the head, then drug him up to this ravine and threw him in. As dreams are sketchy, I didn’t see what he did with the tree limb. I came back out here after the snow and ice melted looking for it. Never could find it. No evidence to prove anyone else was ever here.”

  “Same as in the cabin,” said Maggie.

  Why did I leave prison that night? Because the door stood open.

  That’s it.

  True, in the days that preceded, I had longed to see my mother’s grave. I longed to sit with my father and tell him he was not a failure. I longed to taste free air on my lips once more.

  But in that moment, I didn’t take a lot of time to think about all this. My departure wasn’t planned, any more than I had planned to shoot Tandy that night I drove home from the fish place. Maybe that was the biggest part of my problem—I should have planned more, instead of rolling along where life took me.

  Anyway, that’s why I did it. That’s why I walked out.

  An unexpected opportunity fell into my lap. I found a badge on the sidewalk, for a man who looked a little like me—white, mid-thirties, brown hair. And I had a notebook because I was going to class. So I dropped that notebook on the ground like it was an accident, and scooped the badge up with it when I picked it back up, slipping the hard plastic inside the pages.

  When I got down to C-School for class I told the officer on duty I’d forgotten a paper that was due. Because he knew me and trusted me, he said I could go back and get it. So I made it look like I was going back to my room, but I slipped inside the laundry, instead, where I knew there was a set of street clothes in a locked cabinet. They always had a few street clothes in that cabinet for guys being released. And I knew where the key was hid.

  I grabbed the key, opened the cabinet, and stripped off. I put a set of street clothes under my prison garb, then redressed over them. Thankfully, my prison jacket was bigger than the jean jacket I put on underneath it.

  Then I relocked the cabinet, hid the key again, slipped that badge down in my pocket, and went to class. Soon as class was over, I went to the bathroom—there’s a couple of private bathrooms in C-School—one-person-only bathrooms.

  I took off the outer clothes real fast and tucked them up under one of the ceiling tiles. I wet my hair and slicked it back, tried to look a little different, more like the man on the badge. Then, as I listened at the bathroom door to the sounds of the guys leaving out, and the visitors milling behind, in conversation, I heard the guard call down the hall, “time to go,” and I opened the door a crack. He saw me as the last of the visitors turned the corner of the hallway to go back up to checkpoint.

  “Come on then,” he said. It was the new guy, and he didn’t recognize me. I had the street clothes on and the badge. When I stepped out of the bathroom he pointed down the hall where the guests were moving out and said, “you don’t want to get left behind.”

  I flashed him my best smile and said, “No, I don’t.”

  I felt him watching me as I hustled to fall in behind the guests who were moving out of the building into the cloud-covered
evening, up the outdoor sidewalk, toward checkpoint. They gathered at the doorway. I heard the lock click open. They filed inside a hallway, one-by-one, showing their hands under an infrared light.

  A guy up in front of me realized his badge was missing. He felt in his pockets, then turned to look behind him. I heard him say, “My badge must have fallen off,” then he stepped out of line to go back out the door to check for it on the sidewalk.

  During the commotion, I moved up quickly and stuck my hand real fast under the light beside another man’s, hoping the guard on the other side of the glass wouldn’t notice. And he must not have, because then the main door clicked open. I listened to the heavy roll of it feeling like I was standing somewhere else, seeing my life play out in a dream.

  A couple of the men stepped out of line to wait for their friend who’d gone out the door looking for his badge. I slipped up past them and through the door, watching the folks in front of me, doing like they did, handing their badges over to the guard behind the desk to get their driver’s licenses back, signing their names in a book. I took the badge off and looked at the name, knowing I needed to get out the door before the guy outside got back in and they figured it out.

  “Matthew Dyer.” That’s who I was for the next five minutes.

  I handed the badge over, acting like I was one of the regulars, not saying a word to anybody. The guy in front of me, whose signature I couldn’t make out on the paper handed me the pen and I signed Matthew Dyer’s name and the date, then the guard handed me Matthew’s license and I was past the glass of the door, moving into the parking lot, grateful for the darkness of an early night.

  Folks in the group were talking to one another. “Where’d Matt go?” asked somebody.

  “Dropped his badge. Went back to look for it.”

  “He’s got my car key.”