The Stranger in the Woods_ The - Michael Finkel

emotional one day and said, ‘I wish I could hug you.’ I found the idea of her touching me to be an alien
idea.”
Knight’s double winter progresses, and I fulfill his assignment by filming all the books in my house,
sixteen minutes of unviral video. I mail the disc to him but hear nothing back. I don’t even know if it reaches
him. Every time I hike in the forest, and others times too, I wonder how he’s doing. “The state can run him
through programs,” said Terry Hughes, “and he may do fine, but then again, on some Monday or Tuesday
morning, he could walk out the door and go back to the woods.” I keep expecting to hear that he’s gone, but
the news never comes.
I telephone Daniel Knight to inquire about Chris. Daniel answers, and I introduce myself and he says,
“No thanks,” and hangs up. His brother Jonathan, who lives in Fairbanks, Alaska, hangs up without a word.
Timothy never answers.
Joel Knight runs an auto-repair shop in the tourist town of Belfast, on the Maine coast. I take a trip to
Maine in which I do not contact Chris but drive over to Joel’s shop and walk in. There’s a flurry of activity
in the four-bay garage, but Joel is easy to spot, in a black T-shirt, dipping in and out of the rear of an SUV,
holding a drill, then a wrench, moving fluidly about the small space inside the vehicle. Natural physical
grace seems to run in the Knight family.
“He’s a genius with my Prius,” says the co-owner of Left Bank Books, the town’s independent bookstore.
The co-owner says that of course everyone in town knows about Joel’s brother. “I could never ask him about
Chris,” she adds. “I don’t know Joel that well.” She does, however, share the town rumor, likely apocryphal,
that Chris’s mother continued to celebrate his birthday, even with a cake, for many years.
I walk across the garage and introduce myself to Joel, and I see from the look on his face—not mean but
firm—that we aren’t going to speak much. His hands are dirty, and we don’t shake. Joel does confirm that
no one in his family ever knew where Chris was, and that as far as he knows, no one ever helped Chris, no
one saw him, and anyone who thinks he’s lying is mistaken. It is clear from his tone that he doesn’t
understand Chris’s actions, either.
“When did you start to believe that Chris had died?”
“That’s personal.”
“What was it like when he returned home?”
“That’s personal.” Joel slips back into the car, conversation over.
I also stop by Chris’s girlfriend Alice Macdonald’s house. She opens her front door and says, “I can’t
speak with you,” and closes it.
When I call his mother and tell her I’d like to chat about Chris, she says, “I understand,” and disconnects
me. Phil Dow, of the historical society, says that Joyce Knight told him it’s good to have Chris back. She
reported that his appetite has returned and he’s been devouring the groceries. “She loves to see him eat,”
says Dow.
One thing does elicit a response. I mail Chris a holiday card, with a photo of my three children, and a
couple of weeks later I receive a note, written in familiar shaky print, black ink on a white index card.
“Such a display of beauty and happiness is not possible without contentment,” he says about the holiday
card. He refers to my children, endearingly, as “the cowboys.” “Well done,” he adds. “Solstice greetings?
Acknowledgment? Whatever.” There is no name, as usual, but it warms me to hear from him. It seems like
getting out of jail has softened him a bit.