The Stranger in the Woods_ The - Michael Finkel

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Chris’s oldest brother, Daniel, provides him with a job. Daniel runs a scrap-metal-recycling business,
and he begins hauling old automobile and tractor engines to Chris, who takes them apart in a shed on his
family’s property. He is not getting paid; it’s in exchange for room and board. But he works alone, fulfilling
his employment requirement without social interaction.
Each Monday, a family member drives him to Augusta for his meeting at the courthouse. He never
misses one, and he’s never late. He follows the rules of his punishment to the letter. “He is doing a
remarkable job,” says Maeghan Maloney. “He has been working hard to understand what it takes to
become part of society again. He hasn’t had a single setback. I often see him on Mondays and say hi. We
always talk a bit. He seems to be content.” He registers to vote, as an independent.
Phil Dow, the president of the Albion Historical Society, has known the Knight family for fifty years.
Joyce Knight calls him one day and asks if there’s any work Chris might do, to accomplish his community
service. “I told her I’d love to have him,” says Dow.
About once a week, Dow drives to Knight’s home and brings him to the train station. The village of
Albion, enthuses Dow, has one of the few remaining narrow-gauge railroad stations in the world. The tracks
are two feet apart, less than half the standard dimension—easier and cheaper to lay across difficult terrain.
Passengers and freight were transported on this line through central Maine from the late 1800s until
June 15, 1933, when a train going around a curve broke the outside rail and tumbled down a bank of the
Sheepscot River. The Albion Historical Society is restoring the cedar-sided two-story station.
Knight is volunteering as a painter. “He doesn’t talk much,” says Dow. “Though I don’t really let him
because I’m such a ratchet jaw. But he seems happy.”
While Knight was still in jail, a woman named Alice Macdonald, who went to high school with him, sent
him a letter. She was a couple of years older, she wrote, but she remembered Knight and hoped to conduct
Bible-study lessons with him. Knight did not want the lessons, but something about Macdonald interested
him. She wasn’t prying to get at his story and seemed to have no ulterior motives. She knew him from
before the woods. She was female. They met several times at the jail, his only other regular visitor, and
Knight continues to see her.
“So you have a girlfriend,” I’d teased, feather gentle, during our final jailhouse meeting.
“No, I’m not engaging in a romance, if that nasty little thought crossed your mind,” Knight replied,
knocked over by my feather. The visits with Macdonald were also non-contact, the window between them.
He did say he preferred speaking with a woman. “She’s a nice lady. She provides me comfort. She got