Dinaw Mengestu - How to Read the Air

She was living at that time in a coastal village an hour outside of Providence, Rhode Island.

“It’d be nice if I could see the ocean from here,” was her only complaint, if it could even be called that. She had enough memories of the ocean by that time to get her through, and a view of the ocean would have simply served as a nice but unnecessary prop for her memories. While my father had chosen to plant himself firmly in the middle of the country, she had opted for a series of small eastern towns, moving up and down the coast, from Boston to Virginia. I visited her rarely. The two of us went to dinners and movies together, more like an old tired couple who had nothing left to say than a mother and son who saw each other no more than once a year. I never visited her unannounced, and would have been unable to had I tried.

She wouldn’t have remembered the name of the fort, and at the time I hadn’t thought to ask her. There were hundreds if not thousands of things that she had never forgiven my father for, and taking her to that fort could have easily been one of the minor ones, on par with his tendency to fall asleep with the lights on and to leave his fingernail clippings on the bathroom floor. But perhaps it’s because that conversation was one of the last I had with my mother before we lost touch for several years, or perhaps it’s because when I was younger I had a special love for forts that the image of my parents standing outside the ruined remains of one somewhere along the road to Nashville stayed with me. As a child I built dozens of forts in my bedroom, in corners around the house, and on a few occasions in the garage when either my mother or father had left with the car with promises never to return. None of the forts were especially sturdy. I was never a crafts-man; even at my most diligent the rules of geometry failed me. My forts were often too tall or short on one side. They were always crooked and looked as if they would break at the slightest touch. Nonetheless, there was a gradual development in size from one to the next. The first ones had been made of small rocks and twigs, no longer or taller than a book lying flat on its back. I built them from pieces scavenged from the driveway and held them together with tape and glue when I could find them. Those forts housed nothing, or nothing that was tangible. They were built under my bed, out of sight and therefore protected. I suppose I imagined that even if they were too small to hold little more than a paper clip and a few scraps of paper, they still represented at least one sanctuary that could not be broached. On more than one occasion I prayed for the ability to shrink down into a thumb-sized version of myself so I could enter the fort’s stone and wood walls and discover that there was nothing there that could find me. In later years I studied how-to books written for children. How to build an igloo, a tepee, a birdhouse, a tree house. The books carried full-page diagrams with numbered instructions at the bottom. They told you how to build the walls and the roof separately, and how to create a proper foundation to hold them together. All you needed to know according to those books was how to put each piece together, and this was, inevitably, where I always failed. My walls were always too weak and my roofs had a tendency to slope at odd, irregular angles, too fragile to carry anything but the smallest weight.

For seven years I tried to construct as many versions of home as I could find. By the time I was twelve I had probably tried them all, but always with one distinct variation that was of my own making. I built each, regardless of how poorly it may have been constructed, as far as possible out of anyone’s general line of vision. I put the birdhouse in the closet and kept a small circle of rocks near the head of my bed. There were no back- or front-yard forts for me. I didn’t build protective cocoons to fight from or to defend. I built mine to hide in because I always knew an attack would come, and that even at their best, the most my forts could do was soften the blows when they came.

It’s nearly one p.m. by the time I arrive at the single wooden barrier and guard’s post that mark the entrance to Laconte’s failed fort. From the highway exit, after a few quick turns, the route becomes a narrow dirt and gravel road, wide enough for only one car at a time. The sun is high and shining bright, casting its full force down on the large open green meadow, in the middle of which sits what looks from a distance to be a small pile of building blocks, the kind a child would use to arrange towers and squares in the middle of a playpen. Most of the trees surrounding the edge of the meadow have bloomed but not yet fully matured, so there is still a mix of white petals and green palm-sized leaves along the branches. I’ve arrived a few hours later than my parents would have, but on a clear day such as today, I don’t imagine it makes much of a difference. The leaves would have begun to turn for them, and the grass I imagine would not have the same shimmering green effect it has now, but otherwise nearly everything else is surely the same. The lone guard gate, the absence of any other cars or people, the arrangement of stones lying scattered on the ground — I can say with confidence that we all shared this.

I park immediately in front of the entrance, in a space designated for the handicapped. It’s a touch I admire, this desire to make every part of America seemingly accessible to anyone who wants it. The fact that few want or care for this particular part is beside the point entirely. Here is proof of our largesse and our generosity, freely given, with nothing expected in return.

The noise from the highway and the main road leading into a town of only a few hundred residents is hardly audible. It’s the first time in almost a week that I’ve been beyond the sound of traffic, and getting out of the car, I can’t help feeling that there is something missing to the air, that it’s the silence and not the sounds of horns and shifting gears that is the real intrusion. The guard steps out of his little wooden compound, a man-sized shoe box if ever there were one, and takes note of my out-of-town license plates and clothes, suspecting, I suppose, a madman of some sort. He has a bored but wary look to him as he carries his clipboard and pen, his face hidden under a dark green park ranger’s hat that seems to have been lifted from an advertisement for Boy Scout paraphernalia. He is clean-cut and wholesome, no doubt born and raised not too far from here. I don’t hold his suspicions against him, even as he stands in front of my car pretending to note the year and make of the model I’m driving while secretly eyeing me for any odd behavior from underneath the brim of his hat. I suppose like most of us he’s seen too many horror films about what happens when a stranger comes into town. His sort never fares too well, always the first to die and with the least to say.

I play my role perfectly, standing nonchalantly to the side while he takes his notes. I know that we’re all supposed to be wary these days, of strangers and strange bags and especially of strangers carrying strange bags, and I want to do my part in easing some of the collective tension as best I can. In the past I’ve held back a few seconds before revealing my last name, and have been quick to offer my support or condemnation of violence and war, whichever one was needed to ensure that everyone around me felt well, and that all was well indeed. Today, however, I’m guilty on both counts, with my clothes wrinkled from a week of travel, my face unshaven, and my black leather attaché case strapped around my neck. I want to make reassuring small talk with the guard. I want to discuss the weather, the rising cost of gas, a baseball team that I know nothing and could care less about. I wonder if this would be enough to put his mind and pen at ease. I know it would be too much to say, “Don’t worry, I come in peace,” or to offer him, without asking, a peek inside my bag, or into the trunk and backseat of my car, where he would find the remains of three days’ worth of fast food eaten while driving. I could tell him that yes, I understand, it’s a dangerous world, but he need not worry, at least not about me, and if he wanted I would even go so far as to put a reassuring arm around his shoulder, a sign of camaraderie that I’m sure he could use. I say and do nothing, however, hoping as I always do for the best — that perhaps he will find a measure of comfort in my prep-school uniform of khaki pants and dark blue shirt, of which I have a suitcase full, one for each and every day of the week, and that he has a large house and dog to turn to at the end of the day.