He is cleaning the carburator of a small motor on his kitchen table. His long fingers behind oily cloth. There is frost on the window, slightly girly country curtains, the sun finally meeting him at 6:30 before work. Scrambling eggs, looking for shoes, squeezing around the airplane frame that crowds from the living room to the kitchen, the elephant in the room. Its wooden skeleton lacks wings, there is a horror to it; such skinny pieces of wood, such a small seat for its future pilot, visible wood glue. It will be a biplane, replica of some World war. It is penetratable by bullets. His red van starts cold. He will work with his father today.
They both hammer nails across from one another in an unfinished room. His father’s company is in most of the unfinished rooms in the town, hammering without speaking. The son is now independent, his own clients mostly, only lending Dad a hand on important projects. Last night, over a dinner prepared by their mother/wife- they fought mildly:

“You didn’t even try with Diane. You can’t expect it to be like a movie. It takes work like everything else.”
“You didn’t like her to begin with Dad. You were the one who said a single mother comes with baggage.”
“I never said I didn’t like her. She was fine. Maybe you could use some baggage.”
“I’m busy Dad.”
“Work isn’t everything.”
The mother adds, “Don’t you want someone to come home to?”
Now the son sets his fork down, interrupting the flow. “I just got dumped here. You guys are not helping me feel better.”
“I know honey, I’m sorry.” She pauses, attempting to redirect her commentary, failing completely. “It’s just that maybe your Dad is right, maybe you didn’t give enough to Diane. You spent more time with your plane.”
The son looks away. His forehead is prematurely large from receding hair, shiny and bare.
“How are you going to meet another woman here?” his father says in a practical tone.
“I’m not looking.” He gets up abruptly, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Thanks for dinner Mom.”
“We’re only trying to help.”
At home he clamps skinny slats of wood together to form a fin on the right wing, while sitting on his living room floor.

Time is measured crudely by the plane, it grows into his home, taking up more space. Time on the plane clock is hard to read, the barely visible rudder mount stands for two months passed. But the flightless clock is there, growing in space as his life shrinks in time. One day he will push it through front door, bring it to a hanger for the final assembly, attach the wings firmly like a harderning insect. At that moment it will lose its perversity entirely. There is a knock on the front door. It is a cold night. His heart jumps up into his throat as he squints through the front door window.
He opens the door to a skinny man wearing a hooded sweatshirt and vest, not nearly enough warmth for the night. His hair is black, his cheeks slightly concave. He smiles imperceptibly, knowingly, and steps in to hug him very tightly, grabbing his shoulders from underneath. The hug is so welcome that no one can pretend to be mad about lost time. But reality interupts, and he quickly pulls him inside out of the cold, out of sight of the neighbors.
The man brings his visitor tea from the kitchen, two cups and they sit in the living room. The tea is an offering to say what the visit is really about. The visitor doesn’t speak of the plane that is almost wedged between them. Thank god he doesn’t comment on the stupid plane.

“I need your help.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“No. It’s business. I need you to help me with some merchandise.” Merchandise is a grotesque word.
“I don’t want anything to do with drugs. You know that.”
“It’s not drugs. But it’s not exactly legal. I need you remove some serial numbers.”
“What did you steal?”
“I didn’t steal anything. I just met some crazy characters, who needed this done. I told them I could do it for a price. I thought of you.”
“You’re still completely psychotic. I thought you would grow out of it after school. I couldn’t imagine you would keep it up.”
“I can make a lot of money quick. Ten grand.”

 

The flourescents in his shop jump on down the line, making it colder inside somehow. The simple tin building houses a standing army of power tools, pristine, well-maintained. He opens the garage door on what he knows is a very bad idea. His friend backs his truck up to the door and kills the engine. They open the tailgate and remove a tarp. Beneath it is a couple hundred guns in excellent condition.
“Oh Jesus, you’re kidding me.”
“Relax, they’re just resellers, it’s not like a militia or something.”
“I can’t believe you’re involved in this.” He sticks his hand into the pile of rifles and handguns, puckering his face, as if it were a pile of dead snakes. “Where are these from?”
“I don’t know, I told you I’m just providing a service.”
They stand with no words. A full exchange of unfinished, unspoken sentences. They set to work. One man hands the guns to the other, who tenderly shaves away official numbers, through the late hours of the night. As with any work the man does, he is careful and neat. The numbers are ground out and polished down, appearing never to have existed. The guns are not ordinary. They are assault weapons, never used, well stored. “Please tell me where these are from,” he asks.
“Okay, don’t freak out or anything, but I think they’re from the state armory.” The knot in the other man’s stomach, which had calmed from long repetitive work, retightened. “I think one of them worked there. Turns out it’s not that well guarded. But listen, what difference does it make who grinded these numbers? If anything came down, it would come down on them, you know. I’m wiping off fingerprints. I’m not stupid.” No arguement is made against this weak logic.
A thin sliver of the winter night remains as they lie in bed. “How did things get so bad for you?”
“How did things get so bad for you,” is the visitor’s response. “It’s so alone here, so empty of love.” This man is indicating his own new history of lovers, elations, heartbreaks, laughing while driving in cars late at night.
Nothing else is said, and the visitor drifts off to sleep. The man remembers descending into the town where they went to school on freeways, too high up in the bus to see the road. Waking up to this sight in the wee hours was the most beautiful thing in his life, this feeling of flying slowly into a sleeping city. He thinks about the night that has just passed. How strange, that such a small pile of metal shavings could undo everything he had built. He becomes hardened against guilt. How could he want part of a world that would reject him for such a minor transgression? With his old lover sleeping beside him, the feeling that most people take for granted floods over him. A big fuck you to the world; a smaller universe, revolving privately. The guns will be another thing to bury in time, to take to the woods and wait in town, wait for it to forget itself. He wonders when the man sleeping beside him will come around again. He wonders if he will survive.