I’m twelve years old. My dad is a TSA agent at the empty Ogdensburg airport in upstate New York near Canada. My mom doesn’t work. I come home from school to our two-bedroom house built in 1959 and get on Roblox. When computer time is up, I go out to the cold woods behind the house and bash a stick into my favorite tree.
The tree is a red maple. Acer rubrum. But I don’t think about that. Tree is the only word in my head to describe what I’m hitting. I don’t have the eyes or the words to recognize the maple leaves on the ground, and I definitely can’t discern the difference between a red maple and a sugar maple by the serrations on the leaves. Just tree.
The stick came from the same tree I’m hitting, but I don’t think about that either. The stick feels like something that belongs to the world; a weapon made just for me, lying there on the packed-down snow. I’m not even sure I internalize that the stick came from a tree. If you asked me, I probably would make that connection, but the thought isn’t in my head at the moment. The stick is thick, just below the thickness of what might be used as firewood. It’s perfect for sustained wood-on-wood blows.
Bashing the stick into the tree feels so good. I slam into the tree with the whole thrust of my body, as hard as I can. I crack the bark of the tree and open up a wound, exposing the lighter, fleshy wood below. Chunks fly out with every blow. It feels so good to break something physical that no one cares about. And am I breaking this tree? It’ll heal. Well, trees never really heal, trees just grow over their wounds. But it won’t die from this. I’m not angry at anything specific, or even angry at all, but still, every smash feels like an ecstatic release. I lose track of time. I lose track of myself. I’m not thinking about school or home or Roblox right now. I’m not even thinking about the tree. I’m just hitting it. No one ever comes out here. I’m by myself and I’m breaking open the world that belongs to me.
I smash too hard and my stick breaks. I’m tired, breathing from my mouth, my breath leaving steam in front of me. I look back at the house because I feel like I’ve done something wrong, and now that I’ve stopped, I’m going to get caught. But no one is coming.
I discard the piece of the stick I’m still holding into the snow and walk back inside. I’m cold.
I’m thirty-nine years old. I’m working for the TSA at OIA, Ogdensburg International Airport. My wife stays at home, and our twelve-year-old son goes to public school. For my son’s whole life, this job has paid the mortgage on our house.
Travelers put their luggage in the X-ray scanner and I ensure no hazardous materials or weapons pass through into the secure area. From the all-seeing eye of the X-ray, I watch bags with hairbrushes, travel-size toothpaste, and medication roll across the conveyor belt in gray, beat-up plastic totes. I pull a tote to the side when something looks wrong. The work doesn’t make me feel anything. I don’t feel more in touch with fundamental shared human truths by virtue of seeing my fellow man in such a vulnerable state. On my own I wouldn’t have thought about how this job offered me that opportunity. I’m at work, looking at bags.
OIA isn’t very busy. Each year more routes are canceled. At the moment, my shifts have been reduced to part-time. There are only two commercial flight routes out of Ogdensburg this winter. One daily direct flight to DC, and then a twice-weekly flight to Orlando, Florida. My recent reduction to part-time has put some financial stress on us, but at work, I’m not thinking about that. All I think about is fulfilling my role. It’s the simplest way to live, to dedicate myself to what’s right in front of me.
After work, I walk to my car. It’s dark outside, but I can’t see the stars because of the overhead lights in the airport parking lot. There are big mountains of snow in two corners of the parking lot, which won’t melt for a while. On the drive home, I start thinking about how I’m going to pay our mortgage if I’m only working part-time. Should I find another part-time job, or should my wife go back to work? But she’s really tired, and I’m really tired.
The roads are empty, so other drivers are on their phones. At a stoplight, this woman in a car in front of me doesn’t notice when the light turns green. I let a second pass, and then I lay on the horn. Absolutely slam into the steering wheel with both of my palms. It’s just me and her, so I have no pretensions that I’m helping out anyone else, but I want to go home. Or maybe I just want to move. I lay on the horn for about three seconds, and she still doesn’t drive, so I release my hands from the horn and then slam into it in small bursts, pulsing loud horn sounds from the car. It feels really good. I feel relieved. She puts her phone down on my fifth pulse.
I pull into our driveway and walk around our porch to the back, before I go inside to talk to my wife and son. Behind our house is a forest, opening out to the cold wilds. Lovely, dark, and deep. I light a cigarette. I watch the smoke from the cigarette and the steam from my breath. I don’t go into the woods, but I like to look at them. When I was a kid I used to play in the woods with my friends, and I have fond memories of that time of my life. My son, growing up in today’s world, never does anything like that. He’s always on his computer.
