We Went to the Woods

by Caite Dolan-Leach

“We’ve got a formal process for agreeing on new members,” Fennel explained to me now, tugging bags from the truck. “We all have to agree at a committee meeting to accept a potential new member for the provisional stay. We usually have to meet someone several times before we even get to that step. I mean, these are people you have to spend years of your life with. Make decisions with. As much as we’d all like to be free spirits about it, there’s too much risk.”

  “And if you do vote someone in?” I asked.

  “They stay for six months, so we can all get a feel for whether or not they’re a good fit. Then we vote again, to accept them as permanent members who have a share in the Collective.”

  “Meaning what, exactly?” I pushed.

  “Meaning they own a piece of the property we all live on. That their investments and improvements to that property will be acknowledged in the event that they want to leave the Collective at some point.”

  “Who owns the property?” I asked. Fennel dropped her chin and wouldn’t look at Beau. For whatever reason, this question seemed to create tension between them. Beau cleared his throat.

  “His name’s Matthew” was all he said, heading back to the truck for the rest of the supplies. Everyone congregated near the picnic table. Dusk was falling, and I could feel the cool air on my ankles; I still wore my flats. Fennel launched into further explanations about the minutiae of decision-making chez Collective, but she was interrupted.

  “Knock it off, Fennulia! We’re all bored with hearing about your rigorous attempts at direct democracy,” Zelda cried, walking up to us with bottles under each of her arms. Jesse, the bearded fellow, stood with her, holding bottles of his own and a small wooden box. He set the box down on the picnic table; it was decorated with the image of a wild satyr, painted in the style of an Italian fresco. “I do declare a moratorium,” Zelda pronounced. “Jess, uncork the goods, will you?”

  Jesse obliged. Louisa appeared at Zelda’s elbow, and they winked at each other. Clearly, they had bonded in the kitchen.

  “Gather round, friends!” Louisa called. Everyone clustered around the picnic table in response, clamoring to see what sort of feast she’d been preparing for us. But there was no food, none of her usual hectic cornucopia. Instead, Louisa flipped open the lid of the wooden box, revealing withered brown nubs of organic matter. “We’re going to eat a little differently tonight,” she explained. “Everyone, grab a mushroom. But just one, for now.”

  “Compliments of our friend Sy,” Zelda said, with a wide smirk at Fennel.

  “I don’t think I need one of those,” Fennel announced to the general public, hands on her hips. Zelda continued to stare at her while she popped one of the dried mushrooms into her painted maw. Louisa did the same, then blew a kiss at Beau, who followed suit.

  I was among the last to claim my little spore. I’d never done any hallucinogens; I had, in fact, smoked limited amounts of weed and done Molly, or whatever the kids are calling it, exactly once, with my Long Island friend from college. She had dragged me to a sweaty club (near Long Beach, I think), and we had danced with manic delight until she had puked outside and left me to call a cab alone; it had cost me twenty dollars to get back to the LIRR, and I’d had to wait, shivering on the platform, until the morning’s first train arrived. All in all, the idea of taking any more psychoactive substances made me nervous. But I solidly did not want to be in Fennel’s camp, and so when I saw Chloe pluck a button from the box and consider it briefly before shrugging and swallowing it down, I did the same without further reflection.

  Zelda poured some wine, though when I leaned in to accept a Ball jar filled with red, she held on to it momentarily.

  “Careful with this, sweet pea. You’re about to get fairly nauseous, and puking up red wine can really spoil the mood if you’re not used to it. Go slow.”

  I nodded, too nervous to feel insulted by any implied condescension. Had she maybe noticed my delicate tummy last time? I took a tiny sip of the sour red and couldn’t help making a face.

  “Also, this shit is terrible,” Zelda acknowledged, tossing back her glass with a slightly unhinged grin. I watched as she careened off to collide with Louisa, who giggled and caught her. Zelda leaned into her shoulder and whispered something in her ear that made Louisa blush an even deeper hue of rose. Zelda fished a phone out of a deep pocket and handed it to Kayla before tilting in towards Louisa to give her a hearty smack on the cheek. Louisa stared back straight at the phone’s camera, eyes blazing.

  I was certain the mushrooms hadn’t worked, and it seemed like I had taken them hours ago. But as I turned around, I began to feel the early stirrings of something foreign cruising through my neurochemicals. I was afraid of feeling sick, yet excited by the possibility of tripping. I could feel the solstice drawing closer, could feel the earth rising up to greet us as we all surged towards the peak of the growing season. I imagined my feet sprouting tiny tendrils and burrowing farther into our fields as the seeds we’d planted heaved upward—me settling into this ground, into my place, as the crops I’d sown found me and Beau and Louisa and Jack and Chloe. I watched Chloe leap in her prairie dress and imagined her turning into a willowy tree that would live here at the Homestead forever. I was definitely starting to trip. But this awareness didn’t undo the feeling of rightness, of genuine belonging.

  Jack appeared at my shoulder and tugged me towards the picnic blanket, a strangely domestic space in the midst of this wild. The border of forest loomed dark around us, and the quilt that lay on the ground became a home, a fortress for us. I collapsed, giggling, onto it, laughing harder as Jack tumbled down next to me, long limbs folding in on themselves like those of a puppet.

  “Jack-in-the-box,” I said, and magically, Jack looked at me and knew exactly what I meant. He saw his own body moving downward as though someone had pressed a button to turn his bones to jam, and he crumpled into a tiny compressed space. He saw me seeing him see it and he laughed, and I knew I was understood. “Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons! It is to grow outside and eat and sleep with the earth,” I informed Jack gravely. “That’s the secret.”

  “Mack, your brain,” Jack said, and reached out to touch my short hair. He stroked it as though he were actually stroking the pleated organ beneath it.

  “Meh. It’s never done me that much good,” I said. “These hands, though. Maybe they’re the secret.”

  “No, Mack, no, it’s your mind. It’s your mind that is…” Jack rubbed my hair again, shooting static across my scalp.

  “I’m tired of it—I want to leave it behind and go trotting through life without it. With a different one.”

  “That is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” Jack said, musing. “The idea that you don’t feel like you have a home inside your own head. That breaks my heart.”

  “We all just want to be free,” I said, trying to pretend that what he’d said hadn’t struck some horrifying chord.

  “I would give anything to be inside that brain for just one evening,” Jack said. “To see the way it works, to watch how you think.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s the purpose of language, no? If I’m doing it right, you should be able to see how I think.”

  “Jesus. Yes.”

  “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to escape from it sometimes. Escape from myself. Escape from language.” Impulsively, I leapt up from the blanket. “Maybe I can.” I caught Beau’s eye; I realized he had been hovering at the edge of the blanket the whole time, listening to our exchange. Let it catch me, if it can, I said, possibly to myself, possibly out loud. I kicked off my flats and sprinted across the clearing, heading straight for the woods. I thought I could hear footsteps behind me, but I couldn’t be sure, or determine who they belonged to. I ran as though I could outrun myself, as though I could leave language behind.

  In the woods, I began to consider whether my flight was
maybe a stoned fancy that would prove to be extremely embarrassing, if not physically disfiguring. Though the forest floor, with its carpet of old leaves, was surprisingly soft, I still stabbed my feet with a twig or rock every few steps, feeling the ground come up to meet me as I streaked thoughtlessly through the trees. The branches snagged at my sweater, and in frustration, I tore it off, leaving it hanging from a tree branch, absently reminding myself that I should return to find it later, since it wasn’t mine. I now wore just a simple black tank top and leggings, and I knew I should feel cold, but my skin was roasting. Another branch scratched at my arm, and the pain felt exactly right. So much better to run through these woods, my woods, letting the trees, rather than some garment made in a Southeast Asian sweatshop, touch my skin! I may have hollered these words into the darkness. I stopped listening for footsteps, just flung myself onward, loving the feel of my burning lungs.

  Suddenly, I spilled out into a clearing. I didn’t recognize it. The moon was up now, and I could see a field stretched out before me. A single pine tree stood in the center. I froze, unable to run farther. I watched with horror as a creature moved at the edge of the field, approaching with a distinctly inhuman gallop. It leapt up and down, and as it neared me I saw horns against the sky. It was a hybrid beast that wanted me. The god Pan, here in our Arcadia. I turned to run, but I couldn’t—was I now a nymph, turning into a reed? I tried to scream and made only some strangled cry that echoed into the field. Finally, I shut my eyes and turned my head towards the moon.

  “Enough with your barbaric yawping,” Beau said firmly, and my eyelids snapped open. How did he know Whitman was on my mind? Because he knew me!

  “The goat. It’s Pan. I’m a nymph. Or a dryad,” I said.

  “You are indeed. Shoo, Black Phillip,” he said to the god Pan, and pulled me close to him. I should have been afraid to breathe, afraid to say anything to him, but we were both different now, I could tell. Running through the woods had changed us. I put my hand to his cheek and craned my neck back to kiss him, very gently.

  “You. You are faster than you look,” he said simply.

  “Mm-hmm,” I agreed, kissing him again. This time I bit his lip—not savagely, but not exactly delicately. “You never would have caught me unless I wanted you to.”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  “For now.” I snaked my hands around his hips and leaned backward, collapsing into the grass, pulling Beau down on top of me. I felt his hips grind his weight into me, and I coiled one leg around him, clinging to his rib cage. I let him kiss me a moment or two longer before I pushed his shoulders back and rolled on top of him. Straddling his middle, I looked down at him, at his familiar jaw and the jut of his lip, which I had memorized so many months ago. His eyes were dark, and the expression in them made me smile. Like he was overcome. I peeled off my tank top and felt my skin ripple, could feel the moon shining behind me. I imagined what I looked like, my short hair and hard nipples rimmed by the light.

  We tugged each other’s clothes off until we were both naked. The wild weeds scratched at my skin, but I didn’t mind, and at long last, I fucked Beau senseless in the clearing, thinking of how much we would grow and change.

  * * *

  —

  We must have dozed off temporarily, as impossible as it seemed with the mushrooms coursing through my system. I had the sensation of having momentarily left my body—perhaps achieving what I had just fantasized about with Jack. I sat up, wondering if I would be able to locate all my clothes, then wondering if I would mind wandering back to the Homestead naked. I currently felt I would not.

  “Hey, you,” Beau said softly next to me. “That was fun.”

  “Yes sir, it was,” I agreed, leaning down to give him another kiss before springing up. “I’m still feeling a little flighty.”

  “Oh, really?” Beau grinned at me mischievously. “Three-second head start.”

  I shrieked and dashed towards the pine tree in the center of the field. Now my fleet-footedness seemed to have deserted me. Or perhaps I wanted to be caught. In any case, after a moment or two of giddy prancing, Beau gathered me up in his arms and swung me around easily.

  “You’re so tiny,” he murmured, and for once I felt not like some stunted, underdeveloped creature but more like something spritely, unearthly. We grappled, naked in the middle of the field, until I heard a soft braying noise.

  “Pan!” I said again. “He’s back.”

  “Let’s find him—maybe he has something to say,” Beau said, and I couldn’t tell whether he was mocking me or dead serious. We began to race across the field, looking for the god.

  “Goat!” I called, and tried to imitate his hearty bleat. Beau chuckled and did the same. I was giggling at his interpretation when I nearly slammed into Jack.

  “There you are. I called for you in the woods, and you kept talking back, answering me,” Jack said. “We’re getting naked now?”

  I burst out laughing anew. Sweet Jack. “I love you, Jack,” I said earnestly, and curved up to give him a kiss. I drew him towards me and grabbed Beau’s wrist. We stood, the two of them towering above me. I kissed Beau, then Jack, then Beau, drawing them closer with each kiss until all three pairs of lips met in the middle. I leaned back to watch them, tormented and turned on at once.

  “Now I’m fucking freezing and I’d like to find my undies,” I finally said.

  “Treasure hunt!” Jack answered happily, breaking the kiss, and we grabbed each other’s hands and raced back towards where I thought Beau and I had left our things. Ferdinand bleated again, and we saw him shuffling around the little circle of our clothing. He’d gotten a corner of Beau’s black shirt, and we wrestled it away from him, leaving in his mouth a ragged tithe to the deity. I dressed, wondering why I felt so unself-conscious, but delirious with the feeling. We gave Ferdinand a fond nuzzle and tried to convince him to come back to the Homestead with us. In goaty fashion, though, he stubbornly headed off towards something of more caprine interest. Jack was chattering happily, covering a lot of intellectual ground very quickly. I smiled at him, then at Beau. My boys.

  We had been much closer to the Homestead than I had thought, and we rejoined the party with no one remarking on our absence. Chloe sat on the picnic table with a rapt circle of admirers at her feet as she sang and strummed chords on her ukulele—presumably some of her former co-op friends had arrived while we were racing in the woods. Louisa and Zelda lay on the picnic blanket staring up at the sky and whispering to each other. The two men who had come on the motorcycle were making out in the grass not far away. Fennel was sitting next to Jesse, talking to him in a steady stream that Jesse didn’t seem very inclined to interrupt. He was watching Chloe. I grabbed a bottle of wine from the picnic table and took a giant slug, grinning happily at this scene. Argos bounded over to me and nuzzled my midriff with his big sweet head. I crouched down to tussle with him, and whispered in his ear:

  “We’re soulmates, buddy, you and me. Built to run.” He poked his wet nose squarely into my mouth in response, and I hugged his scruffy neck. He smelled like he had been in the pond, but I didn’t care.

  * * *

  We finally crashed around dawn, creeping back towards our cabins or cars feeling chemically depleted but strangely buoyant. Beau offered to drive the West Hill kids home, and for once, Louisa didn’t seem particularly concerned about whether he was going to stay over or not; Fennel insisted on driving, in any case, which even Louisa had to admit was reasonable. She and Zelda had fallen asleep on the blanket, and when Zelda woke her up, Louisa beamed at her, and asked her if she wanted to stay.

  “No, firebird. I’ve got things to do, I’m afraid. Busy day for me.” She wore a sad smile as she said it, and turned to wave goodbye as she clambered back into her truck. Her friend Kayla had fallen asleep in the cab not too long after dark and looked like she was still unconscious, curled up in some sort of shawl. Lou
isa moseyed back to her cabin, waving at Chloe and me as she yawned. Chloe, Jack, and I had a cup of tea and watched the sun rise over the Homestead, feeling the calm settle over us before we dissipated, heading back to our own cabins. We wouldn’t be making a dent in repairing the drying shed today, I guessed.

  Chapter 14

  We learned of Zelda’s death two weeks later. Beau arrived home on his bicycle one afternoon after a visit to West Hill, his face drawn, and trailed by the blond waif Kayla, who struggled with an oversized bike. He called us all to the picnic table, and we sat in the full sunlight, expecting to hear something awful.

  “It was a fire, in her barn. On the night of the solstice,” he explained. “It’s not official yet, but they’re investigating. So far it looks like an accident, but they have to be sure. Her sister should be arriving at their house any minute.”

  “Ava. That fucking girl,” spat Louisa. “What utter bullshit. I don’t see how she can show her face in this town after leaving the way she did.”

  I assumed from this comment that she knew something more of Zelda’s situation than the rest of us did, but I figured now was probably not the time for gossip.

  “Ava’ll be here soon, anyway. I mean, at her house,” Kayla stated.

  “Will there be a funeral?” Chloe asked gently, laying a hand on Louisa’s arm. I could see Louisa fighting not to cry.

  “They don’t know yet. I don’t know if you know much about her family,” Beau said, glancing at Louisa’s downturned face briefly, “but it’s fairly chaotic at the vineyard, especially now.”

  “Fuck this,” Louisa said, shaking her head. “I don’t believe it.”

  “I saw her, that night,” Kayla said, stuttering a little. “I went to the barn. She was strung out, Louisa.”

  “So what?”

  “She was—I don’t know, barely upright. She seemed totally out of it.”