We Went to the Woods

by Caite Dolan-Leach

  When we got there, a small but vocal coterie of folks was blocking the driveway to a storage facility, holding up banners that exhorted us to PROTECT OUR WATERS and STOP GAS STORAGE and there were the requisite number of cardboard signs depicting two-color images of the earth, typically overlaid with peace signs. I immediately saw Fennel standing with Natasha and Jesse. Kayla stood there, too, her hair clumped and ratty, the bones of her arms poking out. She looked terrible. Next to her stood Sy, a gaunt and pallid young man who inhabited one of the Collective’s yurts. Though I’d heard Fennel mention him, tetchily, I’d yet to meet him. His black hair was scraggly, and his beard grew in patches. I watched as Chloe walked directly to Kayla and gave her a long hug; Kayla’s arms flapped momentarily around Chloe’s torso before falling back to her sides. She barely met Chloe’s eyes.

  “You okay? You doing all right?” Chloe asked, stroking a jagged clump of hair that had fallen from Kayla’s unkempt ponytail. Kayla nodded mutely and unconvincingly. “I know,” Chloe said, and held on to her thin wrist. Beau had joined Fennel’s side, and they were in conference over the developments of the protest so far.

  “It’s been quiet. Normally they’ve already arrested a few people by this point, but the cops have been weirdly quiet,” Fennel explained, pointing to some officers in uniform hovering near cruisers. “So far it’s just the usual suspects out today. The old-timers—and us.”

  “So what’s the goal?” Louisa asked, scanning the crowd.

  “Civil disobedience,” Fennel said. From the tone of her voice, she might as well have tacked on a “no duh.”

  “But surely there’s an ultimate goal to your civil disobedience?” Louisa asked with mock good nature. “A change in policy? An overturning of a court order?”

  “Bill has pamphlets. There’s a website,” Fennel said, gesturing towards some of the other protesters.

  Louisa stood a moment longer, clearly considering saying something, but after a glance from Beau she forced another smile. “Right. I guess I’ll go talk to the organizers then. They’ll probably be better informed, anyway.” She flounced off towards the core group of people clustered behind the long WE ARE SENECA LAKE banner; most of them were middle-aged or older. The protest generation.

  “Here,” Natasha said to me, rummaging in her backpack. She held out a small sign that read NO FRACKING WAY. She added, “We always try to make some extras.”

  “For us newbies?” I asked, accepting the slice of heavyweight paper.

  “Yeah, for people who are just starting to get involved. It’s a tough thing. We’re not necessarily raised or educated to practice dissent. There’s a learning curve.”

  “The mass of men serve the state, not as men but as machines, with their bodies,” I said flippantly.

  “Is that Orwell?” Natasha asked.

  “Oh, I don’t think so.” I laughed. “Probably just something I read in The New Inquiry.” I don’t know why I lied. Was I embarrassed about how many times I’d read Thoreau? Should I have been?

  “Oh,” she said with a shrug. “But yeah, in effect.” We stood, shuffling side to side, both mildly uncomfortable.

  “It’s Thoreau,” Beau said suddenly from behind my ear, making me jump.

  “Jesus, do you have everything memorized?” I asked.

  “Seems like you do.”

  “It just…came to me. I read a lot of him when we decided to…head out here. You know.”

  “Are you guys Thoreau fanboys?” Natasha asked, amused.

  “No,” I said, before Beau could agree. “I appreciate what he did and what he wrote but, I mean, the man was eating his mom’s cucumber sandwiches the whole time. He went home to do laundry.”

  “But that’s what made it possible for him to write,” Beau said. “Which, granted, hasn’t revolutionized the world but is still, you have to admit, damned influential.”

  “Sure, but doesn’t his absolute position of privilege negate, I don’t know, his sacrifices or his insistence on self-reliance? That whole ‘Economy’ section is basically just a tract hating on poor people.”

  “Not the most progressive stance, I grant you,” Beau agreed. “But I still maintain that his beef was with capitalism, not the poor as such.”

  “Still, the fact remains that we can’t all just withdraw from the world, like he did,” Natasha insisted.

  “That is absolutely true,” Beau conceded, and he lapsed into a thoughtful silence. We stood, awkwardly.

  “Would it be, like, an incredible faux pas to ask how you’re feeling about the primaries?” I finally asked, not sure what else to say.

  “Do not bring that up around Fennel,” Natasha said with an alarmed expression. “Unless you want to start a blood feud.”

  “Or Louisa.” Beau grinned. “There might be hair-pulling if those two girls get the chance to talk politics.” As though reminded that Louisa was on the loose, he swirled off to be by her side.

  “What’s the deal with those two, anyway? Fennel and Louisa, I mean,” I asked once Beau was out of hearing. “Do they have, like, a history?”

  Natasha shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance. “I’m not exactly sure. You should ask Louisa.”

  I felt like I was carefully being redirected. “It just feels like there’s a lot of rancor there—I don’t quite get it,” I said.

  Natasha bobbed her head in agreement. “But what is democracy if not discord?” she asked with a deliberately wistful note.

  “Emerson?”

  “Who knows?” she said to me, and grinned.

  * * *

  —

  A protest, as it turns out, can be fairly dull, especially if the police are treating it with a lack of interest. We chanted for a bit, sang a handful of Pete Seeger songs, and rocked back and forth on our increasingly aching feet. Finally, the cops asked us to move and arrested a handful of the older generation when they refused to disband.

  “We have to space out our arrests,” Fennel explained. “The Collective only budgets for so many bail hearings, and we’re currently out of disposable cash for legal fees.”

  “Ah, the practical limitations of radicalism,” Louisa said. Her smiles were distinctly passive-aggressive. “You know, my dad’s a lawyer. I could ask him if he’d be willing to do some pro bono work during hearings or whatever. If you want.”

  “That would be really, really helpful,” Natasha chimed in before Fennel could answer.

  “Mack? Could you do me a favor?” Fennel asked. She was not in the habit of asking favors, and her voice sounded false.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Could you take a picture? Of me and Beau?”

  “Oh…okay.” What else could I say? Louisa glowered at me. I raised my phone to capture them.

  “No, actually, let’s stand over here. And use this.” She held out a digital camera—I’d only seen her ancient flip phone, which didn’t even have a camera. Frankly, I was surprised she didn’t use an old-school device with film. She tugged Beau away from the group, so that they were directly in front of the gates the officers were attempting to clear. The drive up to the facility snaked away behind them. “Great, that’s great,” she said, giving me permission. I snapped a few images and offered her the camera to check my work.

  “I don’t know how—Beau, can you show me?” she asked, leaning towards Beau to look at the screen.

  “You don’t know how to use a digital camera?” Louisa asked.

  “I don’t like technology,” Fennel said airily. “I borrowed this one.”

  Louisa rolled her eyes and turned away. Beau flipped through the photos I’d taken, and Fennel frowned.

  “That one’s good, but we need one where you can see the parking lot, where the trucks are,” she said, holding the camera up for a selfie. Beau snaked his long arms up to push the button, adjusting the angle. They took
a few shots, checking them each time.

  “There,” Fennel finally said. “Perfect.”

  “Let’s get out of here and go get lit,” Sy said. He’d been mostly silent during the demonstration, huddled next to an equally quiet Kayla. At his suggestion, Kayla bobbed her head enthusiastically. Fennel’s face darkened, and irritation tautened her wiry frame.

  “Not all of us need to get ‘lit’ to have fun,” she said.

  A long, awkward moment of silence followed. “You all should come back to the Collective,” Natasha said to break the silence.

  “Yeah, it’d be nice for you guys to show everyone the greenhouse,” Beau said. “I’ve been bragging about it.”

  “Well, we haven’t planned much for the community meal,” Fennel said defensively. “The sprouts were only supposed to be for ten people, and Mike hasn’t stopped by with the new bags of spelt, so we’re running a little low.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, Fennel,” Chloe said. “We don’t eat much.” Louisa cracked an enormous smile and looped her arm through Chloe’s. Fennel turned around to head to her van without comment, and Beau went with her.

  “You know the way, Louisa,” Natasha said, packing up her signs. “See you at the Collective?” As they walked away, I could hear Fennel talking to Beau, sotto voce:

  “Can you get those photos to me? You know we need some more images, and of course, he wants to see them, too, before we move ahead.”

  Who could she mean? But I was too busy watching Louisa nibble Chloe’s collarbone to register more than vague curiosity.

  * * *

  The Collective made the Homestead look amateurish and feral. I’d been so proud just days earlier, watching bunches of dill proliferate and tugging grubby radishes from the ground. But the Collective was significantly better organized, better manned, and better maintained than our little cluster of vegetables and rickety sheds.

  The property was not entirely dissimilar to our own; there was a small farmhouse that served as the central structure, along with a number of smaller buildings radiating out from the house that functioned as housing and food storage and processing facilities. Fennel and Natasha each occupied a room upstairs in the farmhouse, where they held court, organized schedules, and monitored the kitchen. Sy and Jesse each had a small, functional yurt near the border of the clearing in which the Collective sat.

  “Fennel was a founding member, I want to say, six years ago,” explained Natasha, who was giving me, Chloe, and Jack a tour. Beau and Louisa had stayed behind in the kitchen. “Though none of the other founding members are in permanent residence anymore. Fennel’s former partner, Mischa, still comes out once or twice a year to vote on new charter amendments. She’s working on her dissertation on anarchic communities, and the Collective is one of her case studies. The founder, Matthew, stops in from time to time, though we never know when to expect him. Bit of a mystery man.” Natasha led us through the low-ceilinged rooms of the farmhouse. The floors were a scuffed but sturdy wood. The molding, though chipped, was still intact and pleasantly rustic.

  “Sy and Jesse came about three years ago, a little while before I did. They built their yurts at the same time. I came when they were finishing up construction, and took over Katie’s bedroom. She was an original member who ended up moving back to California, where there’s a satellite collective.” She led us outside and pointed to the other buildings in quick succession. “That’s the drying shed, the smokehouse, and the root cellar. The vegans live in that A-frame, that’s Anjie and Jake, and that little cabin is for initiates, people who haven’t been approved yet.”

  “Initiates?” I mumbled to Jack, who winked back at me.

  “The greenhouse is probably our most important structure these days. The growing season is so short here that you have to be able to extend it a few months or you’ll never manage to put enough up before the cold. You guys have a greenhouse yet?”

  “Not exactly,” I said, maybe a little defensively. “We did our seedlings in the kitchen window. Next winter we want to put in a small greenhouse, though.”

  “Yeah, until you do, you’ll really struggle to get your tomatoes going in time, and you’ll be waiting all summer for your cukes unless you get them started early. Fennel can share the seedling schedule she’s been putting together for the last few years.” We walked around the greenhouse, squinting through the cloudy plastic at the rows of tomatoes already turning a lovely blush.

  “This is the garden,” Natasha said, pointing to their much more substantial plot next to the greenhouse. Rows of squash and lettuce put our garden to shame, and their fences were much sturdier and taller than our own chicken-wire iterations. We walked to the edge of the woods and forged into the brush beneath the pines and oaks, sniffing the heady smell of deciduous and coniferous foliage in varying stages of budding and decay.

  “And here’s Fennel’s pride and joy.” Natasha swept one arm towards a series of logs arranged in straight lines under the thick shadow of a particularly dense cluster of trees.

  “Stumps?” I asked with a frown.

  “We’ve been calling it the mushroom factory.” As I looked more closely at the logs, I could see pockets of fungi cropping up in soggy profusions, their dun color contrasting against the occasional swath of bright green moss. “Production’s not quite where we want it yet, I’m afraid,” Natasha explained, “but we’re gearing up for a decent season in the autumn. We’ve had to experiment quite a bit with different species, to see what will grow well here.”

  “God, what if you could get truffles going?” Chloe speculated. “You could make a fortune at the farmers’ market.”

  “I know, right? Locally produced forest gold.” Natasha smiled. “Though I wouldn’t mention it around Fennel. She hates that we still have to sell things.”

  We circled around the mushroom logs and headed back towards the farmhouse, our eyes filled with envy at the well with a pump, from which they gathered gallon after gallon of fresh water, at the shower stall with a much more efficient rain catchment than our own, at the large outdoor grill pit lined with brick.

  “Well, you don’t have a sauna,” Jack said with equanimity. “So there.”

  In the kitchen, Fennel was boiling a vat of rice and a corresponding bucket of indeterminate beans. She declined offers of help, so we six found ourselves standing around the rugged kitchen table feeling unwanted and aimless. Finally too uncomfortable to continue loitering quietly, I grabbed a pot and said I would get some more water from the well and excused myself.

  Outside, I breathed in the smells of manure and hay. We hadn’t been shown the barn, and I knew there were animals because Natasha had brought us sheep’s milk cheese and a few gallons of cow’s milk. The atmosphere inside was so oddly hostile, I figured that livestock might make for better company. Leaving my water pot by the well, I struck off towards the only structure that could conceivably be a barn. The scent of warm animals confirmed my guess as I approached the doors and slung them open.

  The pigs, sensing a human presence and suspecting snacks, barreled towards the edge of their stall. Two huge snouts poked through the rough beams, sniffing for any treats I might be carrying.

  “Sorry, guys,” I said. “I don’t have anything for you.” The sheep remained in the corner of their pen, escaping the heat of the day in the cool straw of their enclosure. One bleated companionably as I walked by. The enclosed part of the chicken coop was empty; everyone was out pecking at worms and insects in the dust of the yard, and they would come in only at dark, to roost and wait out the night in fear of foxes.

  In the corner of the room sat a large metal cabinet that looked out of place; it was much newer than anything else in the barn, and there was a combination lock on its front door. I walked over to it, as curious as anyone when confronted with a barred door. I pulled on the combo lock, and to my surprise, it clicked open. Looking over my shoulder to
see if I was being watched, I slid the lock from the clasp and opened the door.

  Inside the metal closet hung two automatic weapons that I would guess were AK-47s—at least, these were the only type I had heard of. They looked military and menacing, hung on pegs against the back of the cabinet. There was also a shotgun slung less lovingly on a hook, and two handguns in holsters pegged to the wall. Shaken, I slammed the door shut and replaced the combo lock. I tried to lock it properly, but I realized a mechanism had jammed—the lock was unusable. Guilty and troubled, I slunk from the barn and headed back to the house, letting myself in through the kitchen’s side door.

  No one had missed me.

  Chapter 15

  As I’d read through William’s journal and had gotten to know the West Hill Collective, something had begun to take shape in my mind: a Story. Because he broke his journal into seasons, I found that I could sense the slip and drag of time on this patch of land along with him. His entry about the child’s death had reminded me of that cold day when Chloe and I had fallen through the ice in the pond, and I could feel our narratives twining and converging. I could sense them knitting together with the instinctual tug I’d been trained to obey, to sense the tremble of some truth and spin it into a fully formed thesis. And while I had left my schooling in my preferred vocation, I still fancied that I had something of that intuition. I was certain that there was more to be unearthed, and that I alone could knot together the disparate threads that would make a narrative. Maybe I couldn’t redeem myself professionally, but I could perhaps remake myself, produce something of worth. The notes and writing I had been accumulating in my months at the Homestead began to line up, and through the messy veil of words I’d been amassing I could begin to see how to connect all of them.