The Cabin on Lake Belle Taine

I sat on the old wooden porch swing overlooking the Lake Belle Taine sunrise, and began gently sifting through the stained and crumbling bankers boxes, careful not to mishandle the century old artifacts. Eric and the girls had ventured off for a morning canoe trip, while I stayed behind to repack and organize the cabin history.

Eric’s great-grandfather, Walter, built the Northern Minnesota log cabin in the early 1900’s as a summer hide away from the hustle and bustle of life in Kansas City. It’s been alluded that he may have been involved in bootlegging during prohibition; the cabin was his retreat. His daughter, Helen, Eric's grandmother, was an artist who covered the interior logs with pinned pages ripped from old magazines, now mostly tattered and torn, but every bit a part of the structure as the walls themselves. Over 100 years later, the cabin was still standing, albeit a bit more rundown.

Eric and the girls would be gone for about three hours, which allowed me enough time to sort through at least five boxes and place their belongings into three piles: keep, toss, or donate. The first box contained remnants of Helen’s sketches, hand drawn greeting cards, and a stack of acrylic paintings on clear vinyl. All of these went in the keep pile. The next couple of boxes were filled with miscellaneous newspaper clippings, vintage Life magazines from the early twenties and black and white photos of Eric’s father as a child.

I quickly realized the task of decluttering was much more difficult for my sentimental heart than I had anticipated. ‘How could I possibly be the judge of what was to keep and what was to discard, when long ago someone spent their time creating and collecting such eclectic treasures?’ Still I progressed, moving onto the fourth box. I pulled the lid off slowly, anticipating another stack of an unknown artist’s relics, only to be surprised by a stack of little, black, leather bound books, each no bigger than 4 inches long and 3 inches wide. Curiosity begged me to open one of the mysterious journals.

“June 18th, 1927

Charles and I had the most delightful time dancing in the square. Could it be?”

And that was it, no other words, just a doodle from the artist’s pen recreating the moment in a deco-style drawing. ‘These must be Helen’s diaries,’ I thought to myself. The romantic in me was eager to read the intimate thoughts that, for almost a hundred years, once only a little black book had known. Page by page I rummaged through the autobiographic picture book love story. By the third book, among sketches and one-liners of a cherished, yet sometimes torrid, love affair, I stumbled upon a pattern of words that didn't fit within the context of the statements. I wondered, 'Could this be a code?' Helen was trying to tell me something. But what? I tried to decipher the hidden message within the journals, but couldn't quite place it.

As I reached the final page of the final book, the last doodle immediately grabbed my attention. I had seen it before, here, at the cabin. I went inside, the screen door slamming shut behind me. My stride was a ferocious pace, until I found it. There it was, in the bedroom I had spent so many nights, a three piece vintage poster of a pinup lying on a velvet, pin tucked sofa.

I dragged a chipped, hand painted chair across the creaky floorboards, and placed it under the poster. I delicately pulled the first push pin out of the wood beam. Then the second. Then the third. “Shit!” I said out loud as the paper disintegrated at my fingertips. ‘Oh well,’ I thought, and on to the next one. I slowly tore away the nude, piece by piece, tossing the remnants onto the floor, revealing a hidden hole carved inside the log beams.

I would need a ladder to truly investigate and see inside, but I reached up and stuck my hand in the hole. As I felt around the surface, my finger looped around something. I gave a few soft tugs, inching it closer, dust falling on my head, until I could finally grasp it. I pulled it down.

A red velvet sack.

I stepped down off the chair and sat on the bed. I gently unraveled the black rope around the sack’s neck, and pulled out an antique wooden box.

-

I jerked at the sound of the screen door slamming shut again. I could hear the shuffling of feet and giggles in the hallway. Eric and the girls had returned from canoeing.

“Ash?” Eric called from the living room.

“In here,” I replied.

Eric stood in the doorway of the bedroom.

Taking in the mess on the floor of dust and ripped poster debris, he asked, “Are you okay?”

As if I was in slow motion, I nodded, and held up a stack of bills I had found inside the wooden box.

Eric cocked his head to the side, and leaned toward me with confusion, “What is that?”

Still in shock, I whispered,

“Grandma Helen had a secret... a twenty thousand dollar secret.”