We Went to the Woods

by Caite Dolan-Leach

  “What exactly is going on with the Larsons, Louisa?” Jack asked.

  “Why don’t you ask Beau?” she said.

  “We all know about Beau’s little breaking and entering. And the destruction of property charges. I was the one to bail him out, if you recall,” he said testily. “What’s going on in court?”

  “I don’t even know,” Louisa said with an exasperated sigh. “But this—I think they’re trying to intimidate us. Make us panic and withdraw.”

  “Clearly they don’t know you all that well,” Chloe said. Louisa stuck out her tongue.

  “They want us scared so we’ll back off?” I asked.

  “Well, it’s not going to work,” Louisa said.

  * * *

  —

  I spent the next few days in my room writing and rereading my own writing, as though I would find the truth of Argos’s death inscribed somewhere in the history of the Oneida Community or in my transcription of our chutney recipe. Could I predetermine the end of our story if I fully understood the stories before us? And always, I found myself with a missing piece of the puzzle when I flipped through my notes on the Collective. I knew virtually nothing about them, even after nearly a year. I still had no real answers about Lisa, or Allison, or even Louisa—just accumulating anecdotes. I knew that I needed to speak to Matthew, though I dreaded it.

  I drove over to the Collective alone; it was too cold and slushy to walk, a forty-five-degree sleet coating everything around us with the wet. The sun hadn’t even bothered to try coming up this morning, and the sky had been frozen in a predawn gray. Everyone else was battened down in their cabins, I assumed, flipping through philosophy books. Or keeping each other company. Distracted as I was by my work, I had less space for my own jealousy.

  I climbed the steps to the farmhouse and knocked on the door. Natasha answered.

  “Mack! What a surprise! Are you alone?” She looked over my shoulder, expecting to see my people, no doubt, but I shrugged in assent. “It’s cold out there, did you walk? Come on in,” she said, ushering me inside. “We were just starting dinner. Let me check with Fennel, but I’m sure you can stay.”

  I smiled in thanks and peeled off my gloves, looking around myself. Maybe if I could get Natasha alone, she would open up.

  “Come to the kitchen,” I heard Natasha call, and I shucked off my soggy boots into the heap of footwear by the door, abandoning my parka to a chair. I clung to my phone, though, ready to record.

  The kitchen smelled of food, and there were six people inside: Natasha, Fennel, Jesse, the vegans, and Matthew. I was the seventh. Fennel glanced up at me from the onions she was chopping, her expression neither friendly nor unfriendly. Jesse waved hello, though he was in the midst of what looked like a heated debate with the vegans. Matthew stood up and moved towards me, giving me a half hug. I flinched, but he felt so warm and genuine that I found myself softening towards him, all at once uncertain. Could Louisa have gotten it wrong? I was angry with him, and angry with myself for doubting what I had heard. Righteous indignation faded to uncertainty as I had to confront him.

  “Mack, right?” he said, smiling, those intensely blue eyes meeting mine.

  “I guess that’s me,” I agreed, wary.

  “Look, I’m not sure we have enough for another plate at dinner,” Fennel explained, setting her knife down on the cutting board. “You know we have a pretty careful menu schedule for the winter, right? I mean, you have to know how many turnips and onions you’re going to need, and that involves planning. Something not everyone manages to get right.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of depleting the winter stores,” I said, rolling my eyes. I was hoping to get a sympathetic roll from Natasha, but she was looking at the counter. “Actually, I need to talk to you,” I said, turning back to Matthew, hoping he could hear the chilliness in my voice. “Could we?” I cocked my head in the direction of the living room, which was empty.

  “I hope I can make up for our ungenerous hosting in any way I can,” he said graciously, with a quick look towards Fennel. She blushed at the recrimination, something I had never seen her do, and I instantly felt allied towards Matthew. I wondered if this was his strategy: let Fennel alienate people, and leave him to apologize. It worked pretty well; I felt less on guard.

  The living room was warm and smelled of pine. There was one tattered couch and several cushions on the floor. I didn’t know where to sit, so I sidled close to the stove, making a show of warming my cold fingers and hoping Matthew wouldn’t invite me to take a seat.

  “Listen, I’m here to talk about something uncomfortable.” I wasn’t sure how to even begin.

  “Lisa?” he asked.

  I blinked in surprise. “Yeah, actually. How did you know?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” He waved his hand. “Listen, it’s no secret. What happened with me and Lisa was a really important part of my life. I’m not ashamed of it.”

  “So you guys were together?”

  “Of course! I was in love with her for years. She’s really special—have you met her?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Then you know. You know she’s just got this…integrity.” He smiled widely.

  “Yeah, but she didn’t exactly leave here on the best terms.”

  “I do blame myself for that. Things with Allison…well, let’s just say that was a stupid, naïve mistake.”

  “What exactly happened with you and her? Allison?”

  “I didn’t know her age. If I’d had any idea, nothing would ever have happened. But she said she was nineteen, and I think I was…God, I was probably just blinded by lust and didn’t question that, because it was what I wanted to hear.”

  “And you’re, what? Thirty?”

  “Something like that, thanks,” he said with a smile. “But I get your point. Too old for her. Look, Allison was just a fling. I liked her, and she was so beautiful. But if I’d thought for a second it would jeopardize our life here, or her life, I wouldn’t have looked at her twice. So what can I say? I’m weak.”

  “Okay, so you were in a relationship with Lisa, even though she was, what, fifteen?”

  “Christ, is that what she told you? No, no, I never even touched her until she was eighteen. She was just a fucked-up kid when she got here. It took her a couple of years to find herself and grow into this really incredible woman. That’s when our relationship started, and we were really happy for a while.”

  “And Fennel?”

  “Fennel’s always been part of my life,” he said with a soft smile. “And don’t worry, Fennel’s twenty-seven.” He arched his back, stretching. “Look, Lisa was jealous. Of Fennel and, later, of Allison. So when things kind of blew up in that arena, it wasn’t surprising that she got upset. She could be really possessive, and it was something we were working on.”

  “Working on?”

  “Part of our mission is to not try to own anything. And that includes people,” Matthew said. “From the very beginning, we’ve tried to let everyone make their choices as independently as they can. Choice is, you know, kind of our thing.”

  “What about Louisa, then?”

  “She’s still pissed, huh?” He ruffled his hair with both hands, and it poked up fetchingly.

  “Yeah, a bit.” I leaned against the beam behind me, my hands stroking the soft old wood.

  “Well, the thing is, I don’t totally remember that night,” he said, looking genuinely embarrassed. “Does she?”

  “You should ask her,” I said, trying to maintain a hostility that was fading. “So you don’t actually know what happened?”

  “If anything happened, I don’t remember it. I remember having a conversation with her that got pretty silly—we were actually right over there”—he pointed at the cushions closest to the stove—“and then I woke up in my bed. I even had coffee with her the next day.
We were hungover, and we started the day later than everyone else,” he added with a rueful smile. “She didn’t say anything to me then, and it was only a few days later that she mentioned that she was upset. I felt terrible, but I really just didn’t know what had happened.”

  “So ‘she said, he said.’ ”

  “I mean, that’s the tricky thing, right? Everyone has different memories of what happened, and it’s easy to interpret things so differently. Do I wish I’d done some of it differently? Absolutely. But I’m not a monster. I never wanted anyone to feel unsafe. And the fact that Allison died—”

  “She killed herself.”

  “Yes,” he answered, burying his head in his hands. If this was a performance, it was convincing.

  When he looked up again, I studied his face, which seemed honest and open. Could I trust him? Did I? I didn’t know what to do with what he’d told me, or with the feeling I had that he was sincere. I turned my face away from him and leaned my cheek against the flesh of the beam, cooling my skin from the heat of the fire. My cheek rubbed against something jagged, and I pulled away in surprise, to see what it was. The word ARCADIA was notched deep into the wood and looked as though it had been charred.

  “What’s that?” I asked. Matthew looked where I was pointing, startled, then shook his head to clear it.

  “Oh, that’s from our utopians. A family named Fulsome. They carved that—or, I should say, William did—while they were living here, back in the late nineteenth century.”

  “Actually, they lived on our property,” I said, correcting him. “We think they were the ones who planted our orchard. Such as it is.”

  “That’s strange. There can’t have been too many utopian communes in these five square miles. Our Fulsomes? Are you sure you’ve fact-checked?” Matthew waggled a finger at me. I flinched. “Here, follow me. I’ve got some photos that came with the farmhouse.” He walked over to the modest bookshelf, which held mostly ragged cookbooks and moth-nibbled classics. From the top shelf he produced a slender handful of old daguerreotypes—is that what they were called?—very old-looking photos mounted on stiff black paper.

  “This is William Fulsome and his family,” he said, handing me the top photograph. “Or, I guess, his family and fellow laborers towards a perfect society.”

  I looked at the image of two couples, three children, and a teenage girl. Of course I had no way of knowing what William looked like, but this could easily be him, Elizabeth, Jeremiah, Annabelle, and the silent Mary, with their combined brood of offspring.

  “I didn’t realize,” I said. “So, wait, they lived here?”

  “In this very farmhouse,” Matthew said. “It’s one of the reasons I wanted to buy the place. I loved the idea of these people having been here before, trying a similar thing. That beam was originally right by the front door, but the farmhouse has been renovated a few times since they lived here. Now the reminder has moved from entrance to hearth, which I think fitting. A little grandiose, maybe,” he acknowledged. “But we have to aim high.”

  “I thought they lived on our property. I found—” I stopped myself before revealing the existence of the journal. I didn’t want to share it, not before I had completed my project. “Do you know about what happened to them? Whether they found their Arcadia?”

  “I don’t know for sure. I turned up some old documents, records of their spending, and I don’t think they stayed here for too long. I called the historical society in Trumansburg, though, and apparently they have a few scraps of paper on the Fulsomes. I meant to go over and check it out, but I ended up getting distracted. Fennel says that’s my major character flaw,” he added with a smile. I wondered if Fennel was counting his sexual predation. “Always starting the next big project before I’ve finished with the last.”

  “I’ve been accused of that myself.” I was wary of him, but still drawn to him. I found the conflicting feelings unsettling.

  “What have you two been discussing this whole time?” Fennel said from the doorway.

  Matthew and I both straightened, as though we had been interrupted doing something we shouldn’t have. I felt guilty, even though I couldn’t have said why—perhaps because I was warming to Matthew, believing his story.

  “History,” he answered lightly. “But what’s past is past.”

  No, it’s not, I thought. That is completely inaccurate. We are living in it now.

  “Actually, I have one more question, and then I’ll get out of your hair,” I said. “What happened to Lisa’s dog?”

  “That mangy old thing? Wolfhound or something, right?” Matthew asked. I watched Fennel’s face. “He took off into the woods, didn’t he?”

  “Right as Lisa was planning to leave,” I said.

  “Dogs don’t like stress.” Matthew shrugged. “Those were a bad few days to be here at the Collective.”

  “You’ve met Argos,” I said to Fennel. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Lisa’s dog was named Rex,” she said breezily.

  “Yes, but we didn’t know that when he turned up as a stray at the Homestead. Didn’t you recognize him?”

  “I guess not. I’ve never really been an animal person.” She shrugged.

  “How long was he out in the woods? Before we found him?”

  “Oh, not that long. A month or two maybe? Nothing could kill that dog.”

  “Well, something did,” I said.

  Fennel looked me in the eye.

  “Rex was never a cautious dog,” she said.

  Chapter 25

  At the Homestead, in my little cabin, I raced through William’s journal, poring again over the few entries I had already read. How much did I know of this man? I had researched his family for my project, of course, and knew that the original community, Oneida, had begun to collapse after the leader was threatened with charges of statutory rape (uncomfortable associations with Matthew’s legal trouble crossed my mind). He had decided to abandon his noble project, leaving behind several dozen disciples to fend for themselves as he snuck across the Canadian border. It was a flighty, romantic tale, and I’d consumed the scant number of books and journals that detailed his doomed colony.

  Though William’s journal wasn’t dated, I had guessed it to be from the late 1800s, so well over one hundred years old. His recounting of their time in Oneida suggested that he and his family had left sometime around the start of its decline as the community became embroiled in infighting and a collapse of leadership. And sexual jealousy, of course.

  But I knew nothing of what had become of William. I had, indeed, incorrectly surmised that he had lived on our own small property, basing my suppositions on Rudy’s apocryphal claim that a utopian society had dwelt there. I hadn’t fact-checked at all, merely indulged in my own romantic fantasy, pretending that the righteous William or the creepily quiet Mary had maybe slept in my own little cabin, fantasies that made me feel connected with the past, and perhaps a little less alienated from my own confused present. The photographs Matthew had shown me were not irrefutable, but they strongly suggested that William and his friends had resided at the Collective’s farmhouse; it seemed unlikely they would have expended the time and finances to take a picture in front of a home that wasn’t their own. I had seen no evidence of any time on the Homestead in that handful of photos, and judging from the condition of the wood, our cabins didn’t seem to be more than a hundred years old, when I considered it objectively. The farmhouse had been at the Collective since the early nineteenth century. Yet again, I’d gotten it wrong.

  I’d never heard of the historical society that Matthew had mentioned, but I headed to Trumansburg as soon as I could, chomping at the bit to unearth more documents. The petite woman who manned the desk proved to be indispensable, showing me how to navigate the deeds and some of the frayed documents that were the centerpiece of the institution. As she helped me dig deep
er, I was distracted by a poor reproduction of a life-sized dapple-gray mare; the statue dominated the museum’s insubstantial square footage. Said horse had a hoof in the air and a postal bag affixed to her hindquarters; her display was meant to signify the importance of the postal system to this region and, in particular, to this small village in its fledgling days.

  “She used to have a rider. A U.S. government worker in uniform,” explained the woman, whose name was Pat. “But we had some teenagers who thought it would be cute to vandalize it, and I don’t know if we can repair him. Poor Chuck,” she said, shaking her head fondly. “I’m afraid it doesn’t seem entirely believable that a lone horse would trek through the wilderness delivering mail. But that’s what happens when the municipality cuts your funding.” She clucked disapprovingly and turned back to the matter at hand. “What’s the address again, dear?” I repeated my request.

  “Of course, of course. You mean the utopians. We won’t be able to find the property marked on any of the contemporary maps from the period, since the cartography was so basic then. And, of course, the place they were living was so remote. Not like now. But I think it’s on the next survey—yep, here we go. Does this look about right to you?” She held out a county map and pointed to a small cluster of properties. “This would have been after they left, of course, but from what I understand, several properties are still there. And the pond, of course, which is distinctive.” Her long fingernails circled the almost figure-eight-shaped pond. Likely not ours, then.

  “That solves it, I guess,” I said.

  “You know the place?” she said, brightening.

  “Quite well, actually.”

  “Then you know the whole gruesome tale?”

  “The what? What tale?”

  “Of how their little adventure ended? I suppose it’s a bit of a ghost story, rather apocryphal, but it was an old favorite.”

  “Do you have any relatives who knew them?” I asked.

  “I’m old, missy, but not quite that old. My grandfather lived out in Hector, though, and he had a soft spot for scary stories.” Pat paused, raising her eyebrow at me, seeming to know that she had me on tenterhooks. I wondered when she had last had a captive audience.