We Went to the Woods

by Caite Dolan-Leach

  “Such a boy,” Chloe said, though she smiled. We snaked through the quiet streets of Fall Creek, avoiding the slushy patches of partially melted snow where salt had been chucked onto the sidewalk. Everyone was inside their cozy houses; I wondered if they watched us from behind frosted windows, envious of our youth, our camaraderie.

  We turned right off the pavement, careening down a small, steep hill. In my clogs, I slid and cartwheeled my arms; Beau and Chloe each caught one, and we barreled down at a pace just too fast to be safe. The waterfall was tucked back in the woods, down a short foot trail about a hundred yards long, but we could already hear the boom of water surging over the frozen lip of the gorge. As we drew nearer, our cheeks were coated in an icy film of spray. My eyelids flinched. I could feel freezing moisture collecting in my hair.

  Standing before the waterfall, I found it hard not to feel overwhelmed: by the cold, by the sight of such casual natural power, by the pleasure of being with these two people. The waterfall was wide, and the water moved with clout over the stony lip of the gorge. Perched on the slick rocks near the edge of the angry pool, we huddled together, and Beau turned his back to the waterfall briefly to shield us with his body and coat, tipping his forehead into first Chloe’s, then mine. It was tender, and felt more significant than just the tap of two skulls in the cold. There was care in the gesture that belied the carelessness he often projected.

  “What’s that?” Chloe interrupted, lifting her arm to point up at the waterfall. Her movement broke the warm sphere we had created with our bodies, and Beau turned to look, briefly obscuring my vision. When I took a step forward, I saw what she’d seen. A figure stood at the top of the falls. Or, rather, it didn’t stand but clung to an unsteady-looking tree near the edge; there was too much water for anyone to stand in the gorge itself. I couldn’t tell from here whether it was male or female, but the form looked slight and fragile.

  “Fuck,” said Beau. “That is not at all good. Do one of you gals have a cellphone?” I would learn that although Beau owned a cell, he rarely had it with him. His voice was even, and he seemed unworried by this situation, even as my heart rate climbed.

  “Do you think they’re trying to jump?” I asked as I fumbled for my device. My hands were stiff from the cold. When I tried to unlock my screen, the phone wouldn’t recognize my touch; it was heat-sensitive, after all, and my fingers were bloodless.

  “Either way, they’re in trouble. Let me call,” Beau said, taking the phone from me. He was quickly on the line with what I assumed was a 911 operator.

  “We’re at Ithaca Falls, and it seems as though someone is either trapped or trying to jump from the falls,” Beau explained, his voice neutral. Chloe stared blankly ahead, unable to take her eyes from the body above us. It wasn’t such a high drop, and whoever was up there seemed so close, as though we could almost get to them, if we really wanted to.

  “Stay there!” Beau called up, but with the roar of the water, he probably wasn’t audible to anyone but us and the emergency operator. The figure moved, either deliberately or because the snow and slush beneath their feet were eroding; the intention was hard to read. I imagined the panic on this stranger’s face. “Yes, I’ll stay on the line,” Beau answered. “But I’d get here real quick. This might not take too long.” We stood, the three of us, staring up at the top of the falls.

  “There’s no way they’re up there by accident,” Chloe said, her teeth chattering.

  “I tend to agree,” Beau said. He moved a few steps closer to the bank of the pool beneath the waterfall. It was roiling with the precipitation and snowmelt that had come swelling through the gorge, and a heavy, brownish film clung to the driftwood that had washed up on the bank. Beau was carefully choosing stones to get closer to the edge. There was no way he could climb up the side of the waterfall, though; the rocks were smooth from millennia of erosion and covered in ice. Beau seemed to realize the futility of trying to make his way upward, but he still called out to the figure. I could barely make out his words. It sounded like a name, like he was calling for this person. But that couldn’t be, surely.

  And then, they jumped. One moment the body was standing at the top of the gorge, and the next, it was gone, suddenly subsumed by the violent roil of water at the base of the falls. It was whitewater and wrath there, and we could see nothing but the power of the water. Beau made a move to go into the pool, but Chloe clung to his arm. Although my instincts were slower, I grabbed his other arm, pulling him back. Beau didn’t fight us; he was a practical man.

  “That water is freezing,” I said. “And there’s zero chance you can swim to the other side. Just wait. If they pop back up…” I didn’t finish my sentence as we all hoped for the body to reappear. There was nothing. Seconds ticked on, and I began to count them. Beau seemed to remember that he held my phone, and he put it back up to his mouth to say, “They jumped. Send an ambulance.” He handed the phone back to me without meeting my eyes, continuing to stare at the spot where a human being had vanished.

  We huddled on a log, shivering, as the paramedics and cops arrived. Chloe had said nothing since the jump, and Beau and I answered questions. The cops seemed unruffled; clearly this wasn’t their first waterfall suicide—probably not even the first of the season. These deaths were a regular occurrence in Ithaca, and many of the other, steeper gorges and bridges had protective nets to ensnare jumpers. The cops wanted to confirm that this had, indeed, been intentional.

  “I can’t think what else they would have been doing up there,” I said. “Not exactly a good day for a hike.” The cops nodded in agreement and wrote down my words. After the questions, the three of us continued to wait, even though we were all shaking now. None of us acknowledged it, but we were still waiting for a body, for someone to surface in the water. Not alive; we understood that. But for the finality of reappearance, a phoenix gone wrong. Beau, who had begun to fidget, ushered us away from the cops, and we slunk away without asking for permission.

  We stumbled back up the trail, realizing we had a lengthy walk back to town ahead of us. Chloe was shivering, and I had long since stopped feeling my fingers and toes.

  “I don’t know about you ladies, but I’d like a drink,” Beau said, and I smiled at him gratefully, able only to nod my head. He steered us across the road and towards the bar that sat there, a townie dive that looked warm and inviting. I staggered along, my numb feet stubbing gracelessly against gray slush. I wished my feelings were as numb. I was jumpy, as though that inexplicable death would follow us three in the dipping light. I wanted to take Chloe’s arm—or, rather, I wanted her to take mine, as she had just an hour earlier—only she seemed shut down, lost in her own head. I tried to catch her eye, but she kept her face shrouded in the hood of her parka.

  There was a handful of committed day drinkers perched at the bar, but the rest of the space was largely empty. The lighting was pleasantly dim, just the pale neon of ads for domestic beers. I’ve since had the chance to admire the neutrality of the affect produced by dive bars—the generic coziness created by crap music and anonymous men in trucker hats, which obscures and soothes. That day, though, was one of my first entrées into such adult escapes from sadness. We were so young. Beau strode up to the bartender.

  “Do you think you could fix us up three hot toddies?” he asked. The bartender nodded and returned to his boozy labors. Chloe and I headed for the back room, leaving Beau to wait for the drinks. We sat in a booth, sandwiched next to each other. I started to remove some of my layers, hoping to let the warm air in, but Chloe just sat, staring at the sticky table.

  “Hey, are you okay?” I asked her with a nudge.

  “Honestly, Mack? I don’t know,” she said. I thought she might be crying.

  “You don’t have to be.”

  “Good.” She sniffled. Beau slid into the booth across from us, holding the handles of three mugs filled with hot ocher liquid. I claimed mi
ne and Chloe’s. I tried to think of something to say, to craft something comforting we could cling to, but I had nothing. There was no narrative for the death we’d just seen. Had we witnessed the end of someone’s life? Could my own end just as quickly, and without purpose?

  “There’s no reason for it,” I said aloud. “It’s just so fucking pointless.” Chloe nodded her head vigorously.

  “His life—or hers—it ended that way—and for what?” She took a deep slug of her toddy.

  “Is death meant to have meaning?” Beau asked. “Most people don’t die for a reason. They die because their time is up.”

  “His time wasn’t up!” Chloe protested.

  “Well, evidently it was,” Beau said with a shrug.

  “His life must have meant something,” I suggested. “Surely it did to the people who loved him.”

  “He was probably just some college kid, depressed over midsemester grades or something even more meaningless,” Chloe said, a hitch in her throat. “We’ve all been there. It’s so easy to imagine yourself into that headspace, that kind of…desperation. He was just too young to see how unimportant it was. Would be.”

  “Who decides what’s important?” Beau asked. “If she were a suicide bomber, would she have died with more purpose?”

  “No!” I said, irritated. Though I noticed how Beau had switched the gender—did he, somehow, know that the jumper was a woman? Had he called out a name? I scrutinized his face, not yet used to its impenetrability. Was this the first time I searched his features for information, to see only his wide green eyes, the plump lower lip that pouted out when he was amused or thoughtful? If it was the first time, it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

  “Well, I wonder,” Beau answered. “Maybe that was for her to decide.”

  Chapter 4

  Though we felt we could dispense with formality among the five of us, the Homestead did not technically belong to us, and we were forced to acknowledge this inconvenient fact before the others reneged on their leases and we all traded in our party frocks for overalls. I was very reluctant to whisper even a word of this to my parents, they of the infinite capacity for disappointment. I had no intention of revealing to them even a shred of our burgeoning plot until it was more or less officially settled. And to settle it, we had to convince a lawyer.

  Thankfully, Rudolph Stein was not a stern figure of justice rigidly hewing to the letter of the law. He was a rotund creature of mirth and a great lover of after-dinner liqueurs. His absurd ginger curls spiraled from his balding pate much more frizzily than did Louisa’s, and his pale skin was latticed with visible veins. He was really a lot of fun to have around, especially when he was moved to argue. We resolved to formally ask him for use of the estate, even though Louisa had assured us that no one would mind if we just moved in. The idea of this made me skittish, and I was very relieved when it was Beau who insisted that we treat it with some ceremony and a degree of legal authority. We had Mr. Stein come for dinner one night. His second wife and her kids, Louisa’s stepsiblings, were left at home.

  He was late, and I was on edge, worriedly sipping at my glass of Chianti and feeling like a penniless pauper asking a member of the landed gentry for his beautiful daughter’s hand. I had no qualifications for this. I had a degree in anthropology, for Chrissakes. I needn’t have worried. About Rudolph, that is.

  He arrived eventually, jolly, his round belly quivering as he tugged on his striped suspenders and boomed cheerfully at everyone. The day had been warm, a glimmer of spring, and he arrived on Louisa’s porch just as the diminishing icicles were refreezing for the night.

  “Beauregard! Good man, nice to see you.” He slapped Beau on the back. Beau smiled coyly. They liked each other.

  “Daddy! You’re here!” Little Louisa scooted in from the kitchen, pink-faced from leaning over the steaming risotto. She gave her father two quick pecks on his vein-besmirched jowls, tugging affectionately on his gingery goatee. “Wine?” She was already fluttering back to the kitchen for a glass, ever the hostess.

  “Of course. And introductions!” Rudy gestured to the three of us, lurking around the living room. “Strangers! How exciting. Almost never happens around here.” He stuck his hand out first to Chloe, who leaned in and shook it, introducing herself with one of her most winning smiles. Jack, taking up more space than he needed to, shouldered forward next.

  “I’m Jack Schumann,” he explained, pumping the moist hand offered to him rather too many times. I was last, and more or less swallowed my own introduction along with another glug of wine, hoping to be soon forgotten. As usual, I got my wish.

  Over Louisa’s Swiss chard and Gorgonzola risotto, we laid out our plan, oscillating between mature practicality and (hopefully) endearingly youthful enthusiasm. We were young and healthy and realistic about the amount of work we were facing, and articulate about why we felt it was a better option for us than slaving away as baristas and scullery maids. Honestly, Rudy didn’t take much convincing. His description of his once-upon-a-time summer of roughing it out on the Homestead filled him with bucolic nostalgia, and he understood all too well our desperation to eat things we had harvested ourselves. He seemed to agree with our political motivations, nebulous as they were, and even commended us on rejecting “the system of underpaid labor that exploits workers, and to which your well-educated and creative generation is falling tragically prey.”

  “You know, they used to call this part of the world the Burned-Over District. This area was rife with religious movements, people who believed the Rapture was about to happen any second. Intense part of the world. And, of course, back in the seventies we had our share of communes and all that. Seems like everyone was dropping out and signing up for free love. In fact,” he said, settling in for a lecture the way only professional talkers do, “the man credited with coining the term ‘free love’ has some connection with this property. Some defectors from a commune he helped found lived here, for a while. At least that’s what I was told. I’ve always had a fondness for heady idealists. Right, Lou?” Because of his teasing tone, we all glanced at Louisa, who was blushing.

  “I hadn’t told them about my namesake, Daddy,” she said, evidently hoping for a change in subject.

  “But you’re named after one of the best!” Rudy said. We waited expectantly.

  “Louisa May Alcott,” she continued reluctantly. “Her father began a utopian commune too. It didn’t last long, but Louisa May got some decent material out of it.” She shrugged.

  “Always loved people who are willing to attempt the impossible, however destined for failure they are!” Rudy boomed. Perhaps we should have heard the omen in this comment. He then waxed enthusiastically about the sun-ripened tomatoes we would pluck and devour. Before Louisa had even brought out the (slightly collapsed) tiramisu, he had agreed that we should lease all one hundred acres for a three-year period at the rate of fifty dollars per annum, ten dollars to be contributed by each of us for the first year’s rent. He chortled in amusement as Louisa sketched out a simple lease agreement on her phone, and, laughing, he accepted the handful of cash we thrust into his fingers.

  “So it’s a done deal! Excellent. I will be expecting some of your delicious strawberry jam, little one, before the summer is out.”

  “Not in the lease agreement!” Louisa giggled and got up to fish around in her cupboard for port.

  * * *

  Among the five of us, we were reluctant to be so official. There was some discussion of a charter, or a manifesto. Chloe mentioned the “Roommate Rules” that passive-aggressively dictated chores and quiet hours in her co-op up on South Hill, but we all soon rejected this as puerile.

  “If we can’t agree on whose turn it is to do the dishes through reasoned conversation, then we have no business doing this,” Louisa said, ending that discussion, as she ended so many, with sheer authority. Jack wanted a document of core principles and s
hared beliefs, a statement of purpose; he wanted to put everything in words, to tease out all ambiguity and make every stance explicit. Jack could be very literal-minded. But Beau quietly objected until Jack stopped insisting. I wanted something else—anything I could use to demonstrate to my parents that I was not cracking up or joining a cult, preferably proof of 501(c)(3) status and a payroll stub proving at least a minimal income. In the end, we settled on nothing except a vague verbal agreement to be honest and forthcoming with one another. I guess we should have put it in writing.

  Telecommunications were another stumbling block. Beau advocated for being totally off-grid: no cellphones, no TV, no Internet. This appealed to me deeply, for obvious reasons; I would be completely cut off from the nastiness of my emails and voicemail. No one balked at the TV interdiction (we couldn’t remember the last time any of us had switched on a television), but Louisa insisted that she needed the Internet to work (she was doing freelance editing and copywriting for some online publication—not that she really needed the money).

  “Look,” Louisa said. “We’re not doing this out of some half-baked spiritual notion of cutting ourselves off from the world and finding ourselves in nature. We’re not fucking Thoreau. We just want to be more in control of what we put in our bodies, how we spend our days and lives.”

  “Closer to the means of production?” Jack offered.

  “Sure.”

  “We absolutely can’t give money to one of those huge communications corporations,” Beau insisted. We agreed.

  Chloe expressed little preference (we didn’t yet realize how completely cut off from the world she was; she continued to conceal her worrying isolation for months), and Jack agreed with Beau. I halfheartedly advocated for Beau’s Luddite position, but I didn’t want to draw too much attention to myself. In the end, Louisa won out, naturally, and we began the long and frustrating process of trying to get Wi-Fi access in a remote rural location that had no electricity, without involving Verizon or Comcast. As it eventually turned out, that was impossible without running electricity to one of the cabins, and we ended up using our cellphones as hot spots whenever we needed the Web. We charged our phones in my truck and plugged in our laptops whenever we went to town, sometimes sitting in the café and watching Beau and Chloe work, sometimes purloining electricity and Internet access from the corporations we otherwise eschewed.