The Stranger in the Woods_ The - Michael Finkel

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He’s shaved, the wild whiskers now a smooth, rounded chin. He is wearing a brown-and-tan plaid
flannel shirt tucked into faded blue jeans, and a brown baseball cap with no insignia. He still has the silverframed
bifocals given to him in jail. On his feet are old leather work boots.
I hold out the lilac branch, drooping with flowers, and Knight looks at it crossly. It’s like offering a glass
of water to a fish. There are lilacs, I now notice, blooming pink, purple, and white everywhere on the
Knight property. I lower the branch and lift my other hand, like a waiter, pie box on my palm. “I brought
something for your mother,” I say.
Knight’s eyes slide over to the box. “No,” he says firmly. I retreat to my car, open the driver’s-side door,
set down the lilacs and the pie, and shut the door.
We stand there, unnaturally far apart. “Can I shake your hand?” I ask. We’d never had the chance; a wall
had always separated us.
“I’d rather not,” Knight answers, so we don’t.
Knight indicates, twisting his head, for me to follow him. We walk behind the garage with the weather
vane on top, out of sight of the road, in the perfumy breeze of a lilac tree, branches grazing our heads. The
grass is vivid green after a week of rain. Apple trees bloom with white flowers, the forerunners to fruit.
Nearby is the weathered wooden shed, sagging, where Knight does his salvage work.
There are swarms of no-see-ums, flying grains of pepper, and I continually brush them away but don’t
grab or slap. Even during our jail visits I’d tried to keep my gestures in check around Knight, to preserve
his calm. His movements were always so clean and careful. Knight seems not at all disturbed by the insects.
Everyone I’d spoken with in his circle, without exception, had exclaimed how ably he was adjusting. He
appears healthy and his skin has nice color. He’s still thin—the end of his belt dangles—but not emaciated
like he once was. The lack of a beard skews him younger. He’s been to a dentist; one tooth has been
removed, I see, and the rest are shiny and clean. But one of the first things he says is that the optimistic face
he’s displayed in public is false, another mask. In truth, he’s hurting.
“I’m not doing very well,” he admits, gazing over my shoulder in his usual manner. Nobody understands
him, he tells me. People constantly take offense at what he says. “They misconstrue me as arrogant. I feel
like I’m in high school all over again.” He sacrificed everything else in the world for complete autonomy,
and now he’s nearly fifty years old and not allowed to make simple decisions for himself.
The judge, his counselors, and his therapist, says Knight, speak to him as though he’s a child. Every time
he admitted he was struggling, they fed him platitudes. Knight rattles them off: “Oh, it’ll get better. Look on