2. Grant
Grant
Northern Michigan is paradise in the summer. Old growth pine forests circle small towns like soft green hugs. The lakes are so full of fish that catching one feels less like luck and more like a courtesy. We have clean air, cool nights, and stars that shine like they’ve got nowhere else to be.
From May to September, tourists hit our shores in weekly waves. Families from Chicago. Seniors from Arizona. Europeans who speak better English than I do. Hikers, fishermen, beach people, and my personal favorite—girl trips.
The locals meet on Wednesdays at The Driftwood to drink beer and try to top each other’s tourist stories.
One week it’s Dove telling us about the teenager who licked the display case at her bakery.
Just…licked it. “Not enough Windex in the world,” she told us.
The next week, it’s Pam from The Twisty Whip complaining about the man who asked if this was “one of those adult-themed places,” when he’s at a building shaped like an ice cream cone, surrounded by sticky children.
Or my brother Felix telling us about a group of frat brothers who signed up for an extreme hike, not realizing that extreme means rigorous, not just expensive, and how one of them cried because he had to carry his own gear.
Wednesdays at The Driftwood are half blowing off steam, half bragging, because summer tourists are so unpredictable.
Winter tourists, on the other hand, only come in three kinds. I always know exactly what they’re going to do.
First are the folks who own their own cabins. They’re here for snowmobiling or ice fishing, and only come into town for groceries or gas. Good people.
Second are the ones who are running away, or lost on the way to somewhere else. I tend to avoid them if I can, but occasionally they show up on my doorstep. I don’t turn them away. Everyone’s working through something.
Then there’s the third kind of winter tourists. The worst kind. The kind that don’t want to be here, but have to be, because their boss says so.
It happens every year. Some middle manager will have the stupid idea to bring their colleagues to the Upper Peninsula in the middle of winter for a week of team building.
They stay at The Frostline Hotel and try to book activities, which they can’t because Echo Creek basically shuts down in the winter.
But my rage room stays open, and the corporate people always book it.
This time, it’s software developers. Four men in their thirties are hyping each other up and trying to get to the weapons before I’ve even handed out safety gear.
I really hope nobody gets hurt tonight.
I pass out coveralls, helmets, and gloves, then go over the safety guidelines. Maximum of two people on any piece of equipment. No kicking or pushing. Take turns. Throw the breakables, not the weapons.
These guys have opted for our popular “Office Space” layout. We’ve got the room set up with old computers, printers that don’t work, dead phones, and chipped coffee mugs. For the next twenty-five minutes, they’re going to use baseball bats and sledgehammers to destroy it all.
“We’re going to play music while you’re smashing,” I tell them. “Just to set the mood.”
“Hell yeah,” the beefiest guy says. He’s heading toward the weapons.
I get there first, standing between him and the rack. “Did you bring a playlist with you?”
“I thought you provided that.” This is from Tim, who booked the room and is nominally in charge. The other guys told me their names, but I don’t remember any of them. I can get them off their liability waivers if I have to.
“We’ve got three playlists to choose from,” I tell them. “Would you gentlemen prefer angry, angrier, or full animal?”
“Full animal!” they shout in unison. No surprise there. We only have one playlist, but the tourists don’t have to know that.
Beefy drums his fists on his chest. “Let’s goooo!” He draws out the word to an absurd degree.
“The shit in here doesn’t stand a chance.” This is from a short guy with an earring.
“Smithereens,” a guy with glasses says.
“Dibs on the printer,” Beefy snarls.
“Not if I get there first.” Tim is trying to shoulder Earring out of the way. Earring shoves back.
Glasses and Beefy rush to the weapons rack and pick up crowbars.
I throw up surrender hands. “Whoa, whoa, guys. You can see I’m not dressed for this. No helmet. No faceplate. I’m going to need you to slow your roll.”
“Just getting ready,” Beefy says.
Glasses smacks his crowbar on his palm. “What are we waiting for?”
Earring and Tim have sledgehammers and are swinging them in practice arcs. The scent in the air is the acrid tone of nervous sweat overlaid with some kind of battle pheromone. It’s setting my teeth on edge.
“Let’s fuck some shit up!” Tim yells.
This is met with a primal howl from Beefy and a “Fuck yes!” from Glasses.
Great. We’re at the f-bomb stage already. I run a rage room. I’m not concerned about swearing, but the frequency and style of cursing tells me a lot. These guys are trying to pump themselves and each other up. It’s the kind of male pack behavior that turns dangerous if it’s not controlled.
I used to let this kind of excessive testosterone go unchecked, but over the years, I’ve learned how to diffuse it, or at least how to channel it. People come to The Break to smash things, which requires a certain amount of adrenaline and righteous anger, but that anger needs somewhere to go.
General unhappiness at the state of the world?
No. There’s too much. Ten minutes of evening news will give you a year’s worth of rage.
But it’s the kind of helpless rage that you can’t do anything about, so destroying objects tends to make it worse, not better.
Then there’s rage at the “unfairness” of life, which always spirals into rage at women or minorities or gay kids.
That kind of toxic punching down has to be nipped in the bud.
We need something specific. Something that will bond the group, but won’t spill out of this room. These guys need to vent their anger completely and thoroughly, so they can leave calm and happy while the staff cleans up the mess.
I catch Tim’s eye and tilt my head, then move off to one side. Tim follows. He removes his helmet to talk to me.
“I’d love to set the tone for you guys, to give you the best rage experience.”
“Yeah, man. Let’s do it.”
“You all work together, right?” I already know that, but getting him to agree on small points will make it easier for him to agree on bigger ones.
“We work for Solduxe,” Tim says. “You ever work at a startup?”
“I started this business,” I say, gesturing at the plywood walls, the cement floors, and the fluorescent lights covered in protective cages.
Tim scoffs. “Not even remotely the same.”
“Wow,” I say, pretending to be impressed. “I guess there’s a lot I don’t understand about what you do.”
“Hardly anyone does,” Beefy says. They’re all listening now. Good.
“I bet even your boss doesn’t understand what you do,” I say. “He thinks he can just sign the checks and…” I spread my hands, letting them fill in the rest.
“This guy gets it.” Beefy points a finger toward my chest. “This guy, right here. The owners don’t know shit, thinking we’re just stupid code monkeys. Keith’s the stupid one.”
Murmurs of “idiot,” and “asshole,” and “fuck that guy,” fly between them. We’ve found our target.
“How about we write Keith’s name on some of this equipment before we get going?” I ask.
They cheer at that. I grab a can of spray paint from the hall cabinet, along with some sharpie markers.
I spray KEITH across a monitor in bright red.
I ask what else I should write, and a list of grievances comes out—everything from missing vacation to stale snacks in the vending machines.
I hand Tim the paint, pass out sharpies to the rest, and let them tag everything in the room.
The guys are even more hyped than before, but their energy has shifted. They’ve gone from snarls to whoops, and their eyes have gone from narrowed to wide and eager. I’ll gas them up just a bit more and then set them loose.
I open a side cabinet and make a big deal out of giving “premium” baseball bats to the others. They’re ordinary bats painted black, but they look tough and the guys receive them like they’ve been given a prize.
“Give me a minute to get out of here,” I tell them. “When you hear the music, go.”
I hustle up to the booth that hangs above the room like a press box. It’s got bulletproof glass plus a mesh screen, so I can monitor the activity below in total safety. I slide on ear-protecting headphones, turn the playlist to maximum volume, and watch the controlled destruction.
My brother stomps in a few minutes later, shouting to be heard above the music as he apologizes for being late. He hangs his thick parka on a peg near the door and shakes snow off a fleece beanie before tucking it into a coat pocket.
I pull one side of my headphones out. “Is it still bad out there?”
“Snowing like it’s got a quota to meet.” Felix snags the extra pair of ear protectors and snugs them on.
We watch the rage room for a few minutes.
Two of the men go hard on a printer while two more kill the oversized computer screen.
I check the playlist. It’s on “Angry Again” by Megadeth. They’re halfway through their time.
Felix grabs a scrap of paper and scrawls a note. Let me guess. The monitor is their boss?
I nod.
The premium bats?
“So premium,” I mouth.
Full animal playlist? Felix writes.
I nod again.
“Ee-cray!” he shouts, calling back to a tourist we had once who insisted that euchre was pronounced that way, no matter how many times we told him that our favorite card game was pronounced you-cur. Since then, it’s become our shorthand for idiots who don’t listen.
I don’t think these guys are idiots. They just needed some guidance. I wave my phone at Felix, showing him the time. “You owe me ten minutes.”
“I’ll come in early next week.”
That’s what he said last week, but I don’t mention it. I’m just happy my brother’s willing to work on Fridays so I can get a night off. I show him the schedule. Besides the Solduxe guys, we have two of our regulars, a couple who come after marriage counseling. They always book separate sessions.
Felix gestures for me to take off my headphones so he can shout at me. “It’s going to be past eleven by the time I’m done cleaning. I swear you schedule it that way on purpose.”
“Waaah.”
“The snow’s coming down hard. Let me stay upstairs tonight.”
“If you want, sure.” I unhook the spare key from my ring and toss it to him.
There are two apartments above The Break—mine and a fully furnished one across the hall which the landlord was never able to rent out. I let my brothers use it from time to time. “Leave the key in the office when you go,” I say.
“Where are you headed tonight?” Felix asks.
“The Frostline.” It’s way too loud for me to stay home while the rage room is operating, so I always go out on Fridays. When the weather’s decent, I’ll hang out with friends, visit my parents, or go fishing. But in January, it’s too cold and dark to do anything but drink.
“Not The Driftwood?” Felix asks.
“The Frostline.” I’m still thinking about the woman blocking the door of the bakery this afternoon, with her cocoa and her selfie stick.
She doesn’t fit into any of the boxes labeled “winter tourist.” She’s too young to own a cabin, too put-together to be a drifter, and too happy to be here for work. What’s her deal?
One way to find out.