The Stranger in the Woods_ The - Michael Finkel

East accent.
I plowed awkwardly on. “Have you made any friends in jail?”
“No,” he said.
I shouldn’t have come. He didn’t want me there; I didn’t feel comfortable being there. But the jail had
granted me a one-hour visit, and I resolved to stay. I settled atop my stool, feeling hyperaware of all my
gestures, my facial expressions, my breathing. No one could out-silence Knight, but I at least wanted to
make an effort. The lights in the room were flickery, and a couple of ceiling tiles were missing. Knight’s
right leg, I saw through the scratched window, was bouncing rapidly. The floor on the visitor’s side of the
booth was covered in pale red industrial carpeting; his side, blue.
He had written in one of his letters that meeting people often made his “skin crawl,” and indeed he was
scratching his forearms. He had a nebulous brown birthmark on the back of his freckled right hand; a few
stray wisps of hair coiled up from his crown like snakes being charmed. Someone had graffitied “let me
out” in black ink on one of the walls, and another person had scratched “187” onto the door, which is a
slang term for murder, based on the California penal code.
My patience was rewarded. First, after a couple of minutes, his leg settled down. He quit scratching. And
then, as if he’d finally found equilibrium with his surroundings, Knight began to come to life.
“Some people want me to be this warm and fuzzy person,” he said. “All filled with friendly hermit
wisdom. Just spouting off fortune-cookie lines from my hermit home.”
Everything he said was clear, though extremely soft. I had to plug my non-phone ear with my finger to
hear him. His gestures were minimal. But his words, when he deigned to share them, could be imaginative
and entertaining. And caustic.
“Your hermit home—like under a bridge?” I said, trying to play along.
He embarked on an achingly long blink. “You’re thinking of a troll.”
I laughed, and his face moved in the direction of a smile. We had made a connection, or at least the
awkwardness of our introduction had softened. We began to converse somewhat normally, though never at a
rapid clip. Knight seemed to weigh the precision of every word he used, careful as a poet. Even his
handwritten letters had gone through at least one rough draft, he said, mostly to remove unnecessary insults.
Only necessary ones remained.
He explained about the lack of eye contact. “I’m not used to seeing people’s faces. There’s too much
information there. Aren’t you aware of it? Too much, too fast.” Following his cue, I looked over his shoulder
while he stared over mine. We maintained this arrangement for much of the visit. “I don’t like people
touching me,” he added. He was able to endure the occasional pat-downs by guards, and that was all.
“You’re not a hugger,” he asked, “are you?”
I admitted that I do at times participate in embraces.
“I’m glad this is between us,” he said, tapping on the window. “If there was a set of blinds here, I’d close
them.” The jail authorities had given him the option of a contact visit, but he’d chosen this style instead. “I
prefer a meeting of the minds rather than a touching of bodies. I like my distance.”
Knight seemed to say exactly what he was thinking, raw and true, unfiltered by the safety net of social
niceties. There was no little-white-lie mechanism in him—the one that deems the meal at a dinner party
delicious no matter the taste, the one that keeps the gears of human interaction well oiled. “I’m not sorry
about being rude if it gets to the point quicker,” he said.