We Went to the Woods

by Caite Dolan-Leach

  I couldn’t think too hard about what I would do with my story once I had written it, but I spent some time fantasizing about the possibilities. If I could publish it under a different name, maybe I could start over, without the tarnish of what had happened. Could I leave behind my shame? I could scarcely allow myself to think about the alternative: to publish with my own name, to write something so wonderful that it would annihilate the blemish on my identity and remake me as the teller of this new story. I was galvanized, envisioning, for the first time, a return to the future I had tried to secure for myself—perhaps no longer within academe, but maybe, possibly, within the larger world of letters?

  I craved information. My project was currently anecdotal, a handful of recipes and copies of entries from Jack’s planting almanac, little snippets of life here at the Homestead. The narrative I had in mind would collapse the past and the present, so that the historic attempts to carve out a life here would meld into the current one. I knew so little about the Collective—or, for that matter, the strange utopians who had set up shop here more than a century ago. I thought I would start with the company the Collective had been protesting; we’d been so woefully underinformed at the actual demonstration, I felt it was my responsibility to learn more.

  Lakeview was a fracking company, basically. It was a local offshoot of a major Texas corporation that had investments all over the Marcellus and Utica shale, and it was trying to expand a facility on the eastern side of Seneca Lake, where we’d been protesting the other day. Not far from Silenus, Zelda’s family vineyard, I saw. There had been some local outcry about this expansion, predictably, and a lawsuit had been brought against the company. I scanned through the entries I could find online: a few mentions in the local paper, a website for the Protect Our Waters group that we’d seen at the protest. I wondered why the Collective was so interested in thwarting this corporation. Obviously, they were anti-fracking and anti-corporation—perhaps this was just the most local opportunity for protest?

  Google searches about the Collective itself yielded little information—a defunct Facebook page from 2014 featured a handful of pictures of sunflowers and compost, plus a photo that might have included Fennel, ropy and tan in the distance.

  I resolved to interview someone and find out about these strange neighbors who were working themselves into our lives. I wanted an origin story, a tale of like-minded souls finding one another linked by a common purpose. Yet again, I’d forgotten a basic rule of research: you write the story you find, not the one you want to find. If I hadn’t been so fixated on uncovering the narrative I wanted, would I have seen the one in front of me?

  * * *

  Louisa and Chloe had vanished together (in my truck) and had not bothered to tell me where they were going. I was miffed at yet another exclusion—their lamps had joined Beau’s last night, and I had watched as all three streaked into the darkness, giggling quietly but without any sincere attempt at stealth. I had dozed propped by the window, sullenly reading Dickinson, until further sounds alerted me to their return sometime just before the early dawn of a hot summer day. Disgruntled, I had gone outside to sulk on my porch, childishly hoping to be noticed by one of the three, but only Argos had acknowledged my presence, and I had gone back inside and slept far too late.

  I awoke sticky and thirsty, feeling guilty for my indulgence. Usually only Chloe lollygagged in bed, and I always took pride in being up early, already out in the field when the sun finally started heating the ground. I felt strong and capable in the morning, and today I had robbed myself of that feeling through my pointless jealousy. I harbored some self-contempt, disgust at my laziness.

  I put on a pair of overalls and a bandeau top of Chloe’s, since the temperature in my cabin already indicated a toasty day. The sun was baking our garden, and I hoped the mint wouldn’t get cooked in the heat. Oddly, no one was in the garden or, I soon learned, in the big cabin. Standing on the porch with my hand shading my eyes, I scanned the property. A hearty halloo alerted me to Jack’s presence on the dock.

  I sidled over to the structure, where Jack lay stretched out, basking in the sun. He wore a battered straw hat and his underwear, nothing else. At my approach, he propped himself up on his elbows, a dog-eared copy of The Republic laid split open on his ribs.

  “Mornin’,” he said, smiling up at me.

  “Where is everyone?” I sat next to him, dangling one foot over the dock to swing near the water.

  “Chloe and Louisa are fetching more compost from Rudy’s house—it seems we’re running low, and she wants to put in a pumpkin patch?” He shrugged. “Pumpkins’ll grow pretty much anywhere, so it’s a shame to waste compost on them, but I guess Rudy has tons.”

  “And Beau?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Jack said. “He was gone when I got up.”

  “Brushing up on your Greek?” I gestured to his book.

  “Oh, I haven’t got too much Greek. Very patchy—I stopped trying in my AP independent study. I just—oh, you were kidding,” he said bashfully when he saw my amused smirk.

  “I didn’t realize you had any Greek at all. But I suppose it’s good to revisit one’s Plato.”

  “It’s been a few years since I read it,” Jack agreed. “I mean, of course I’ve got some objections—”

  “Of course you do,” I said. Jack had objections to nearly everything—tiny clarifications he insisted were necessary, subtle points of departure. Where exactly to plant dill, when to dig up a carrot, whether there would be thick fog at night. “I, for one, was never nuts about his gender politics,” I said.

  “No, you’re probably thinking of Aristotle,” Jack hurried to say. “Actually, I was just reading Book Five, which really deals with the question of gender in this ‘ideal city’ Socrates has been describing. Here, listen…where did it…here it is: ‘But if it’s apparent that they differ only in this respect, that the females bear children while the males beget them, we’ll say that there has been no kind of proof that women are different from men with respect to what we’re talking about, and we’ll continue to believe that our guardians and their wives must have the same way of life.’ ”

  “That’s nice and egalitarian,” I said. “There are people today who wouldn’t be quite so willing to grant us womenfolk such parity.”

  “Well, there is the inevitable discussion of the ‘weakness’ of women,” Jack pointed out. “That’s what I struggle with in this book: sometimes Socrates—well, the character of Socrates—forces us to walk through minute steps just so we can agree on something like, say, ‘the skills of a carpenter being carpentry,’ and then he’ll just say, ‘and of course we all agree on the weakness of women,’ and Glaucon is all like, ‘yup, for sure, obvs.’ ”

  “Well, Jack, some things are just self-evident,” I said, flexing my biceps, which were rather small but were certainly not weak.

  “In any case, Plato is trying to figure out the problem of sexual selection in this part of The Republic—”

  “ ‘The best men must have sex with the best women as frequently as possible,’ ” a voice intoned from underneath us. I almost fell off the dock.

  “Jesus, Beau!” I tugged my foot up away from the water as he slithered out from his hiding spot, treading water and giving his curly shoulder-length hair a shake in the sunlight.

  “Howdy,” he said.

  “How long have you been lurking down there?” Jack asked.

  “Long enough. Have you solved the problem of mating in the perfect state?”

  “Hardly,” I said, looking him directly in the eye with the quirk of an eyebrow. He grinned back and pulled himself almost effortlessly onto the dock. His skin, naturally, glistened—there is little else young skin can do in summer sunlight.

  “Well, Plato thinks it’s natural that men and women thrown together will inevitably find themselves attracted to each other—that’s
just how sex works,” Jack plowed on, as usual somewhat oblivious to any subtext. Beau didn’t stop looking at me while he answered Jack.

  “What’s the phrase Plato uses? Geometric versus erotic desire?” Beau asked.

  Jack nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly. I really, really like that. Basically, you’ll end up wanting to sleep with your coworkers and the people you went to high school with because, well, they’re there.”

  “How romantic,” I said.

  “I’m not sure it’s about romance,” Beau responded.

  “You would say that,” I couldn’t help adding churlishly. I broke eye contact and stared pointedly at the dock.

  “Wee Mack, you seem bent out of shape,” Beau said, grabbing my ankle firmly. I tried to pull it away from him, but he held fast. “Are you miffed?” He curled his neck downward to look up at me, and I had no choice but to meet his eyes.

  “No,” I said unconvincingly. He pulled my ankle closer to him, so that my leg extended into his lap. His skin was cool and wet, and my foot rested just an inch or two from the border of his underwear. My heel nestled in the strong meat of his thigh, and my calf quivered. I wanted very badly to point my toe and lay back on the dock, stretched out and vulnerable.

  “Because,” he said, folding my toes over and cupping my foot. “Just so you know. This is mine.” He bent and bit my calf very lightly, then the inside of my knee, then my thigh. I couldn’t look at Jack, but I knew that he was watching us intently. I imagined that he must surely be jealous, and while I felt some guilt, this realization of his want made me even more turned on. I closed my eyes, feeling Beau’s mouth linger on my leg, his hands curling more possessively around my shin and cupping the back of my knee. My head fell back.

  “Does anyone contest that?” I said, opening one eye to look at Jack, daring him to speak up.

  “Is it really a contest?” he asked evenly. Jack could be more perceptive than I gave him credit for.

  “Why don’t we find out?” I pulled my leg from Beau and swung it out and away from him, careful not to accidentally knee him in the teeth. As I moved, I imagined Chloe making the same gesture and felt, for once, graceful—lovely even. I leapt daintily to my feet and unclasped my overalls, letting them drop to the dock. Each of my movements felt choreographed. I imagined us as a realist pastoral, three nearly naked young bodies, caught in the sun with the glimmer of water and the swoop of a willow nearby. In the painting, Argos would romp in the foreground. And somewhere, hidden or conspicuous, there would be a memento mori, reminding the viewers, if not the subjects, of their mortality. Shivering, I turned and leapt into the pond.

  “Always running away, that bloody nymph,” I heard Beau say to Jack, and I waited for the twin splashes of their bodies to join me in the water.

  Chapter 16

  Chloe and I were trimming basil and fortifying the tomato stakes. She was eerily quiet—had barely spoken a word all morning. I wavered between trying to draw her out and letting her brood furiously next to me. Her silences had grown long and unpredictable, and sometimes, when I watched her surreptitiously, her eyes took on a blankness I didn’t especially care for. She wore a large sunhat, but I could see that her forearms were getting freckled and pink.

  “They look good,” I observed as we trellised another tomato plant. I fondled the hard, green flesh of a beefsteak, imagining its slow swelling over the next few weeks. Louisa had insisted on a fantastic quantity of tomatoes, and a good third of our garden was committed to Cherokee Purples, Big Boys, Sungolds, Brandywines, pastes, Juliets. We would be swimming in tomatoes by the time August and September rolled around. Chloe said nothing, swatting at a horsefly that lurked near her shoulder blade. She had been withdrawn like this all week, and I was worried for her.

  As I straightened up and dusted my knees off, a large truck pulled into the drive. It was a new Dodge pickup, sitting high off the ground, looming. The radio was playing something that sounded a lot like country, and the lights were on, even in the middle of this summer day. I glanced around the clearing, hoping to spot one of the boys or Louisa, but Beau was off on a mysterious errand and Louisa and Jack were in the woods, clearing a trail and collecting kindling for the woodpile.

  Two large men swung out of the pickup from either side. From their dusty boots, grimy T-shirts, and noticeable tan lines, they appeared to be men who worked outside for much of the day. Chloe seemed to withdraw further, and for a moment I thought she might actually run wordlessly off into the woods. Where the hell was my damn dog?

  “Which one of you’s Louisa? Stein-Jackson?” the driver of the truck asked me.

  “Who’s asking?” I countered.

  “You her?”

  “She’s not here now,” I said. “I don’t know where she is.”

  “Sure you don’t. Listen, I need to talk to her before things get any more…out of hand.” The driver moved towards me, closing the distance between us, and I tried not to flinch visibly.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said cautiously.

  “Right. I know her daddy’s a lawyer, and you kids have been making quite the mess with all your paperwork and filings,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “But that’s not how we do business out here. That’s not how neighbors treat one another.” He took another step towards me. “So I wanted to come out here and straighten things out. Make sure we all see eye to eye. As neighbors.”

  “Well, I’d be happy to leave a message,” I said, realizing as the words left my mouth how sarcastic and unhelpful they sounded. Our neighbor picked up on this.

  “I think you might want to suggest to your friend that she’s meddling in over her head. I think you might want to remind her that this is a”—he paused—“tight-knit community, and that we all look out for each other. I wouldn’t want her to end up on the outs with anyone.”

  “I’ll be sure to mention it to her,” I replied, as sincerely as I could manage.

  “Good, that’s a good idea. And I think we might stop by again, just to clear the air, like I said. Make sure she gets the message. It would be nice to keep things civilized.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about a little accident that happened out here a ways back, would you?” asked the other man, who hadn’t said a word until now. His colleague glanced over at him with a flicker of censure, but then looked back at me.

  “There was a fire. That’s about all I know,” I answered.

  “How about you, sweetheart?” he asked Chloe. “You know anything about that little incident?” Chloe looked alarmed, her blue eyes big and blank. I didn’t like the way he was looking at her.

  “She doesn’t know anything, either,” I answered for her.

  “That so. Where are the rest of your little friends today?”

  “Errands,” I answered. “The boys are due back soon, though,” I added instinctively. Since childhood, I’d been warned always to behave as though a man were on the premises. Not that I’d want Jack or Beau starting a kerfuffle with either of these gentlemen. But it was Louisa who would be the most confrontational, and the most likely to cause an escalation. I hoped she stayed in the woods.

  “Well, you pass it along to all your friends. I think we can do a better job…communicating in the future. Otherwise life out here is going to get downright unpleasant, am I right?” The driver of the truck tipped the brim of his baseball cap in my direction in a mocking salute, and they both swung themselves back up into the elevated truck. The giant engine revved aggressively, and they turned the truck around, gunning the engine so that its tires carved deep grooves into our drive. I could feel the hammer of adrenaline in the veins of my throat, my palms shaking slightly.

  “Well, fuck,” I said to Chloe. “I think we just got threatened.”

  Chloe just nodded, then walked towards her cabin as though nothing had happen
ed. I watched her go, feeling a surge of anxiety as she shut her door, leaving me alone in the clearing to wonder how to interpret this unwelcome visit.

  I went back to the garden, even though I couldn’t think of any other tasks to do there. Finding the safety of the high chicken-wire fence reassuring, I pulled the simple door shut firmly behind myself, so that I was fully surrounded by the flimsy barrier. Then I walked up and down the rows of vegetables, looking idly at the irrigation furrows, occasionally checking the underside of a leaf for any bug that would signal an infestation. I finally sat in the back corner of the garden, near the potatoes and other root vegetables, waiting for someone to return.

  Jack and Louisa got home first. I watched them for a moment before dragging myself upright. They were both bright red from exertion; Louisa’s arms looked like she’d plunged them into a bed of poison ivy. They each carried a burlap bag slung over one shoulder, out of which poked twigs and small branches, all manner of green wood that would go in a corner of the woodshed to thoroughly dry out before the cold weather came.

  I rotated the rough wooden latch that kept the garden gate closed and nudged it open with my hip, crossing the clearing to help them unload the kindling.

  “Mack! How’re the tomatoes? Where’s Chloe?” Jack asked. He took a deep gulp of water from the thermos clipped to his belt.

  “In her cabin. The tomatoes are fine, but we might have an issue with our neighbors.”

  “What neighbors?” he said. “The Collective?” Louisa maintained eye contact with the woodpile.

  “Louisa, what happened to the back field? With the tractor?” I asked, trying to look her in the eye.

  “I told you, we didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “I find that a little hard to believe, actually,” I said. “And so, apparently, do some of the locals. We had a visit today.”

  “Who came?” Louisa whirled around to face me. “Someone came here?”