“Nice work. Now can you give me a hand? I want to see how my pieces fit.” I turn around to peer into the welder’s tool box. “Are there any ninety degree clamps in here?” Without waiting for his answer, I find some on the bottom and pull them out along with a pair of locking pliers.
I hand one of the clamps to him as we walk to the end of the first welded rib. We’ve been working together for so long that I no longer have to tell him what to do. I attach my clamp to the end of the rib. I have already marked the center of each skirt piece so Jared really just has to steady it on one end while I finish securing the new piece with the clamp. After clamping the second piece, and using the pliers to secure one skirt piece to the other, we step back to look.
“Wow!” Jared exclaims. “It’s starting to look like a saucer.”
Using our method of fabrication results in a lot of trial and error, and to me it looks like a lot of error right now. We won’t be able to weld these pieces until all of them are in place and we can measure for more accurate spacing.
“Yeah. Finally.” I try to sound enthusiastic.
“A lot of work, isn’t it?” Jared asks, sensing my drop in passion.
“It was fun putting it down on paper and dreaming about the day that, back then, I thought would never come.”
“You can’t always be the dreamer,” he says. “You’ve got to be the doer at some point.”
“Geez! You sound like my dad!” I chide him half-humorously.
“Well at least your dad’s not saying ‘get busy mister’ all the time.” He grins. “The sooner we get busy, the sooner we’ll be done.” He heads back to the welder.
I remove the original skirt to use as the form to draw the remaining pieces. I move sluggishly over to the cutting area I have set up. If this is what the day-to-day adult working life consists of, I really see no reason to look forward to it. Except maybe the money. But most of that would go towards buying a house, or a car. Then the money would go towards fixing up the house or the car. I wonder what the point of it is as I lay out and cut two more pieces.
We stop for lunch an hour later. The coolness that had infected the building the night before, has now been chased away by the heat of the day. We open one of the large hangar doors out to the taxiway and sit in what shade the building can give us while the sun makes its way westward. The breeze is picking up, but feels hot.
“Maybe we should do this at night. At least while this hot spell lasts.”
Jared looks up from his sandwich. Sweat is rolling quickly down his neck. “I suppose you’d like to go back to the house for lunch?” he asks.
I think about it for a minute. “Why don’t we?”
“I don’t want to lose any time,” he answers. I look at him curiously as I take a drink from my mostly warm pop. “There’s just too much chance for distraction,” he explains. “Dad might want me to do something; you and Kylie would probably start yakking about something or other. We’d just lose a lot of time and we can’t afford that right now.”
I see his point, but being around Kylie would be a lot more fun than this. I can see Jared staring at me out of the corner of his eye.
“You need to drink more water Ty.”
“What?”
“You’re getting dehydrated, which is making you crabby.”
“That’s a bunch of crap!”
“I don’t think so. I’ve been watching you all this week and you haven’t been drinking a whole lot.”
“I’ve been drinking as much as I always do,” I reply tersely.
“Maybe, but you’re out here sweating more than triple what you usually do. Your brain’s drying out.”
I lift my can of soda. “Well, there’s no pleasure in drinking a warm pop,” I declare. “And the butter’s pretty much melted through my bread by lunchtime.” For a moment I listen to myself analytically. Maybe I am getting crabby. With a cross look, I glance over at Jared.
“Why don’t you bring over that little fridge you’ve got up in the storage area tomorrow. We could keep our lunches and a gallon of water in it to make this activity a little more bearable.”
It doesn’t happen often, but I hear and feel an honest tone of concern in Jared’s voice. Despite all of his usual clowning around and sometimes annoying comments, today I sense the depth of our friendship is more than neighborly convenience; that we’d probably be friends the rest of our lives.
“Okay.”
We finish our lunches quietly. Jared gets up and starts walking back to the work area. As I get up, I spot Kylie coming around the side of building ‘D’. She stares at the ground as she passes through the shade of the building. Then she looks up, spots me and smiles. I look over my shoulder. Jared has disappeared around the back of the cowling. I say nothing.
She carries a gallon jug of water in one hand and some plastic glasses with faded baseball logos on them in the other. She’s wearing short shorts and a bathing suit top to counter the heat of day. She glistens in the sun as she comes closer, the fragrance of tanning oil overriding the stench of work that Jared and I have cultivated. She stops in front of me, holding out the gallon of water. I hear ice rattling around inside.
“Dad thought you guys might need this.” Her sentence is abrupt. I take the water from her. “They said on the noon news that today is the hottest day of summer so far. He doesn’t want you guys dehydrating.”
I don’t mention that Jared thought the same thing. “Thanks.”
She separates one glass from the three I now see she is carrying. She holds it up so I can pour. She watches the water as it spills into the glass. I notice tiny drops of sweat on her upper lip. When the glass is full, she hands it to me so I can drink. Then she holds up another glass. After I have filled it she spins Jared’s chair around, sitting so she can see him working on the saucer. I look down at her as she stares into the heat of the building. As I spin my chair to join her, I can’t help but notice beads of sweat rolling down her neck, eventually getting absorbed by the swim suit top. I look away, hoping she hasn’t noticed my gaze. The sound of welding comes from the back of the hangar.
“Looks like it’s going well,” she comments about our work.
“Yeah, I guess so.” I take another drink of water. “So… you’ve been out working on your tan today?”
She shoots me a glance and immediately I feel like I have said something wrong. “No,” she answers, feigning patience. “I put the lotion on so I wouldn’t burn bringing the water out to you. I’ve actually been programming all morning and it’s giving me a headache. I thought a walk might help. And this is the thanks I get.”
“I’m sorry,” I mutter defensively. “Your brother thinks I’m a little crabby from lack of water.”
“Then I guess I got here just in time.”
We sit for a couple of minutes trying to cool off. “How’s the program going?” I ask quietly.
“Not so good?” she spits out.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. I can’t seem to find the right words today. Another couple of minutes pass in silence.
“Well, I guess I’ll go back,” she says, getting up quickly. I stand up too.
“Thanks for the water,” I say gently.
“You’re welcome,” she says reflexively and, without looking back, walks off towards the house. I watch until she rounds the corner of the other building. I feel bad for some reason.
I pick up the third glass she has left behind, carrying it and the water back over towards Jared. I watch as he finishes up the weld and shuts the torch off. He looks at the water and glass.
“Visitors?” he asks.
“Just your sister.” I hand him a glass and fill it. He drinks, watching me curiously, then holds the half-empty glass out for me to top off.
“Something happen? Usually you’re in a better mood after she’s been around.”
“Nothing,” I say. “It didn’t go well.”
“See?” he chides. “You’re crabby from the heat. And dehydrated.”
<
br /> I don’t argue. I just head over to where I had been cutting the skirts, set the water down, and get back to work. It’s going to be a long afternoon.
Gramps helps me load the mini-fridge into the old truck the next morning. I had hoped to feel more enthusiastic about the project today but just can’t.
“Trouble in paradise?” Gramps asks, sensing my mood.
I finish latching the tailgate and stand for a moment, staring out into the bright morning sky before I answer. “For some reason I expected this to be more… fun.” I turn around to wait for his response.
“Fun,” he repeats, sounding disappointed. “Very few people find fun in their work. In fact, I don’t think even half the people in the world enjoy what they do.”
“But Mom and Dad seem to like their jobs,” I point out.
“Like? Yeah, well maybe,” he agrees hesitantly. “I’m sure they find satisfaction in what they do, but I don’t think they would say their jobs are fun. Your mom helps people recover from illness or injury; your dad is making it possible for this country to kick its addiction to oil. Satisfying work at the end of the day, that’s for sure, but it’s not fun.”
“I suppose. It’s just… I just don’t feel ready to get serious about the rest of my life.”
“That’s understandable,” he says with compassion in his voice. “You’ve gotten into a situation which is highly unusual for a man your age. But if you see it through, I can pretty much guarantee that you’re going to feel extraordinarily good about the outcome.”
I smile when he refers to me as a man, but I’m puzzled by something else. “You said ‘if I see it through’ like I have a choice. I don’t feel like I have a choice right now.”
“Oh, you have the choice all right. You could quit right now if you wanted to.”
“No I can’t.”
“Oh yes you can! Nobody’s twisting your arm to finish what you’re doing, are they?”
“No. I guess not,” I agree, becoming glum again. “But I’d sure be letting my friends down, wouldn’t I?”
“And yourself,” he adds, pausing to let the words sink in. “You’re a responsible individual. You’ve grown up with small jobs to do and you do them well. Now you have this chance to do something really essential to the well-being of everybody on the planet. How can you turn your back on that?”
Put in that perspective, the project sounds important. It somehow seems that I have shifted the focus to me instead of the result. The weight I had been feeling, lifts a little.
“You know, when I was a couple of years older than you are now, video arcade games were a big thing, and after riding around the countryside on my cycles got boring, I ended up getting a job fixing those clunky old things. I didn’t have much ambition then. I just wanted something fun to do, kind of like you do now. While I was doing that, I met a guy who showed me how games were changing from hardwired to software based. He taught me how to program and we did some military type games together.”
“So you found something fun to do,” I point out.
“Fun? I suppose it was, but after a couple of years I felt empty, like what I was doing had no significance; no purpose. In fact, none of what I did during that time of my life has had any impact on today’s society. Looking back now, it seems like a complete waste of time.”
“So what changed it?”
“Well, like I started to say, that guy who taught me how to program and I had done some attack and destroy type games, and somehow the military became aware of them. They offered him a job developing combat simulation programs for training, but he didn’t want it.”
“How come?”
“He’d been in the military. Vietnam. Lost a couple of fingers and that was enough of military life for him.”
“But he wrote those games with you!”
“That’s right. But his purpose had been to show the horrors of war to a younger generation, and he thought he could do that through the games. They were pretty realistic because he had seen a lot of nasty stuff.”
“So they, the military, asked you to work for them?”
“Yep. I could do hardware and software, and I didn’t have any grudge against them. My draft number had been low, and I actually had been classified for active duty after a military physical, but they quit drafting and I was free to go ride my cycles. I guess you could say I’ve been pretty lucky in my lifetime.”
“Was the government work fun?”
“It was creative, and challenging. What I didn’t know, they eventually sent me to learn. And the people I worked with taught me a lot. The fun part was when somebody would ask for something and we’d figure out how to make it work and then build it. That was satisfying. Then I got hired by that contracting firm and it became a job.”
I walk around him to get to the driver’s side of the truck. He sticks out his hand in a very businesslike manner. I look into his eyes.
“I’m really proud of you, Tyler. And I’m sure your parents will be too, at the end of all this.”
I shake his hand, accepting his encouragement. “Thanks Gramps.” He nods at me, and then towards the door of the truck.
While I’m driving to the hangar, I ponder what we’d talked about and then what I have to do today. I’d easily finish cutting the skirt pieces, but we didn’t have enough clamps for them all. I get my phone out and dial.
“Willie? Hi. It’s Tyler. Pretty good. Hey do you have any more clamps for setting those skirt pieces? Great! Around noon? We’ll be there.”
I feel better after the call, in control again and moving forward.
Our lunch break is just about over when Willie silently rolls in driving a fuel cell car. Jared has finished welding the outer junctions on the ribs, and I have all the skirt pieces cut out like I’d hoped. We feel like we have made good progress, which has put us in a good mood. Willie gets a cheerful greeting.
“You two look like you’re having way too much fun,” Willie says. “My ol’ man would say you must not be working much, but I can see that a lot’s been done.”
“You bet, man! We’ve been ‘getting busy’!” Jared replies with a twist of his father’s words.
“And you’re timing’s perfect, too,” I say. Then nodding towards the car, “When did you get the FCV?”
“Oh, that’s Cheri’s. She’s out of town for a couple of days, and asked if I would do a rotation and lube job.”
“Ah, the burdens of love,” Jared snickers.
“Hey. You should be so lucky,” Willie mocks back. Then he gets dead serious. “Cheri’s one of a kind and I think we could be pretty tight.”
“Sounds like this is getting serious,” I suggest, eyeing him suspiciously.
“Man! You’re only a senior!” exclaims Jared. “What makes you so sure?”
“You just know,” explains Willie gently. “I look at her and feel like I’ve found somebody I could spend the rest of my life with, and we’ve talked about it and she senses the same thing,” he finishes matter-of-factly. I watch his focus fall on Jared. I turn my gaze also. Jared looks like he is about to burst out laughing. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” Willie says defensively, taking offense at Jared’s attitude.
“I believe we’re in the presence of a man in love,” Jared comments in a mocking, playful tone.
“Oh shut up!” I tell Jared. “You wouldn’t understand, you’re such a moron. I say congratulations Willie. If Cheri’s the right girl for you, then go for it.”
“Thanks Ty.” Willie grins.
“What do you know?” Jared eggs me on. “You probably think my little sister is the right one for you. I suppose you want to marry her, don’t you?”
“If I didn’t have to have you as a brother-in-law, I might consider it!” I shoot back.
He gets that fierce, defensive look in his eyes. Funny thing was, I had thought about it. I just thought we should be a little older before talking about it.
“Hey!” Willie interrupts. “There’s no point having
this conversation now. Let’s just get back to business. Okay?”
“Fine with me!” Jared snaps, getting up and heading back to the saucer.
I watch him go. Our upbeat attitude has changed. “I’ll help you with the clamps Willie.” We walk over towards the car.
“You know, I’ve never understood why he flies off the handle like that, and for the strangest reasons,” Willie confides, sounding bewildered.
“So, he’s always been like that?”
Willie opens the car’s trunk, looking over the top of it in Jared’s direction. “Ever since his mom died. Uncle Carl would bring him and Kylie over to stay with us, you know, to be with family. He was real angry when his mom died. They were close. Didn’t understand; cried a lot, couldn’t be consoled. I guess maybe he still isn’t over it.”
“I can’t imagine what that would be like,” I say honestly.
“I can’t either, but you’d think after a while it might get a little easier. I’ve often wondered if there’s something else I could do, but he’s hard to get close to.”
I nod, wondering how close I might be to him. My mind flashes on his jokes, the sarcasm he can generate, and the fierce, reckless way he sometimes does things. Perhaps being a close friend meant understanding what makes a person the way they are, and just accepting it.
“Here,” Willie says, handing me some clamps. He closes the trunk lid and we walk over to the saucer.
Jared is staring at the saucer when we get back, arms crossed over his chest. “I guess it doesn’t matter where we start, does it?” he says quietly.
“Nope,” Willie replies simply. I set my clamps down.
“I’m sorry, Willie,” he says. “I’m happy for you and Cheri.”
“Thanks buddy,” Willie replies, a little more at ease. “Now let’s get to work. Tyler? What’s the measurement for the space between the tips of the ribs?”
Willie helps with the first perpendicular clamps to set two of the skirts in place. With two skirts on, we measure between them, securing them with a combination of spring clamps and pliers. After that, Willie has to get back to his dad’s shop and finish repairs on some cars. He offers to return Saturday afternoon to help with the welding. Jared quickly accepts.
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