Jeremiah woke in a pool of his own sweat, staring at the peeling vinyl ceiling above his bed. He was still good and whiskey-drunk, but he had to pee so badly that it hurt. Snoring softly on his left arm lay a mane of red curls and like the desert hills made flesh, the luminescent pale skin of his sometime lover. He kissed her shoulder to remove his arm. Although she stirred slightly, she did not wake. He marveled momentarily at the freckled flesh of her moonlit back; how could a girl who was born and raised in the desert remain so entirely pale?
The leftover beer on the nightstand was almost full but had gone warm in the hours since they’d passed out. Even in the middle of the night, with the windows wide open, the heat in the trailer was intolerable and he took a long pull from the beer, just to wet his tongue. He found his jeans crumpled at the end of the bed where he had drunkenly kicked them off and smiled to see Megan’s panties still hanging from her ankle.
Pulling his jeans on as he stepped out to the porch, Jeremiah walked around the back of the trailer to piss on the wheel of an old burgundy Volvo. Even in the weak light of a half-moon, the impound lot was bright enough, car roofs lined up like a collection of tortoise shells all the way to the back fence, and the pale glow of the moonlit salt flats beyond. Just a few hours until dawn, and the valley was nearly silent. The sky had just shifted from the depths of night to a soft luminescence in the east. This was his favorite time in the desert when it was all his, and the rest of the world slept. He listened to the solid thrum of urine hitting the logo on the old Volvo tire and watched it pool and run off. The asphalt was warm enough that the spot would be dry in an hour, even before the sun had cleared the hills.
A light breeze swept over the valley, like the tide washing in. He heard it whistle through the sharp edges of the rusted-out wrecks in the backlot and ruffle the edges of the dusty canvas tarp still covering Austin’s hunk of salvage. He glanced over to see the edges of the tarp ripple upwards like a skirt, uncovering a bit of the dull metal and he watched the oxidized metal like waiting to sneak a peek at a woman’s thigh.
He finished pissing out last night’s beer, shook it, and tucked it back into his fly. The early morning breeze picked up again, kicking up the corner of the tarp and tossing it over the piece. More than the soft thigh of a lifted skirt, the tarp revealed the rounded curve of something sexier. Jeremiah walked back to the porch to find a pack of smokes and a cold beer. He had the desert to himself for a few minutes at least.
The dawn winds kept whipping at the tarp, and he glimpsed again the smooth, rounded edge of the salvage piece. In the moonlight, it was strangely luminescent, like Megan’s shoulder, pale and glowing. He flicked his Zippo and lit the Camel Wide, clenched in his teeth. Middle of the fuckin’ night and he was awake, watching a strange hunk of metal lift her skirts for him and he was turned on.
Sliding on his work boots to cross the lot and get a better look, he lifted the edge of the tarp and ran his hand down the curved edge. The dust clung like alkaline talcum powder on a naked thigh. The oxidation wasn’t too bad. If it was aluminum, it couldn’t have been in the wash nearly as long as Austin had implied. The desert was full of meth addicts who had taken up scrapping to make a few bucks, and Jeremiah was sure that it should have been noticed sooner. Maybe Austin just got lucky.
Jeremiah walked around the thing, lifting the tarp to check the metal and appraising it as he went. It was more an excuse to finish his beer and smoke than it was a legitimate evaluation, but he checked the scars where the metal was shredded. It had certainly come down hard and across a decent distance. He could easily imagine that it had skipped across most of the desert before coming to rest at the bottom of the foothills. In one portion, there were a few large holes which might have been gunfire. They were perfectly circular, jagged edges of the metal skin bent inwards. He wasn’t exactly an expert, but whatever sort of gun had shot that thing down, it fired some big ass rounds.
“If it can be broken, it can be fixed,” Jeremiah said as he lugged the saucer onto the rolling dolly. It was light enough to wheel around on the cart, even if the ass end dragged on the pitted asphalt a little bit, bumping and scraping as he tugged it towards the back of the shop. He honestly didn't care what it was. It was big and made out of metal and Jynx gave him explicit permission to fuck with it.
He rolled out the edges of the panel on the English wheel, mimicking, as best he could, the subtle curves of the hull and tweaking it lightly with a hammer and shot bag to get the edges to line up smoothly. He tapped the metal, tried to stick a magnet to it, and hit it with a wire wheel and the angle grinder. He watched it spark cool as it ran through a whole 60 grit 3M flap disk and the stainless-steel wire disk. The masonry stone ran some cool sparks, but the metal was cool and unyielding. He pulled on his helmet and tossed his gloves over the hull of the ship, adjusting the voltage on the welder, clamping his piece into place as best he could. The soft curve of the hull made welding the patch into place difficult. He clamped the negative lead for the welder into one of the smaller holes. Holding the piece in place with a leather-gloved hand, he applied the electrode to the leading edge of the patch and hit the trigger.
Through the visor, the arc cut into the aluminum patch as expected, but it wouldn’t stick to the saucer. It bounced and spread like sheet lightning across the surface of the hull, reminding Jeremiah of one of those Tesla coil glass globes that they sold in the mall. He ran a short tack to pin the piece into place. The flux stuck to the edge of the aluminum as he worked it into tight little spirals, forming tiny little seashells like the scalloped edge of a metal doily. He released the trigger and flipped his visor up to inspect the lightly smoking edge of the new piece. The weld scar was about an inch long, a series of perfect little seashells all lined up; the sort of clean, low-profile weld that should be fairly easy to clean up with an abrasive flap disk and a little bit of polishing with a green 3M pad, if the weld had stuck to the surface of the saucer at all.
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
Jeremiah pulled the patch away to inspect the edge of his attempted weld. Except for a slight discoloration along the edge of where it should have been tacked, a sort of leftover smoke stain residue, the surface of the saucer was entirely unaffected. He wiped away the gray stain with a greasy shop rag. Whatever type of metal it was, it wasn’t taking an aluminum weld. He cranked up the voltage on the welder and used a pair of needle nose pliers to pull the melted tip of flux from the welding gun a few inches, snipping off the excess and adjusting the feed rate slightly. He lined up the patch piece again, holding it in place by hand. As he set his welding gun near the surface, a quick nod flipped his visor down. He flicked the trigger on the welding gun. This time the crackling sheet of lightning was brighter, pouring over the surface, flowing like a luminescent electric river towards the negative lead in the smaller hole below. The flux bubbled and boiled, and the aluminum melted with it, crackling and smoking slightly. Jeremiah worked the spark of the welding gun in neat little spirals again, following the muscle memory in his wrist, accustomed to the practiced action. He released the trigger, flipped his visor back, and blew on the weld to clear the flux smoke. The smoke stain was slightly darker, but the weld still wouldn’t stick to the surface. It was like trying to tack a piece of crappy cast aluminum to a smooth hunk of titanium, except that the whole saucer itself was ridiculously, impossibly light.
Jeremiah got up from his stool and tossed his gloves over the top of the saucer. He dropped his visor onto the workbench. He pulled a smoke from his shirt pocket and lit it as he crossed the yard to the mini fridge and a cold beer. Squinting up at the mid-afternoon sun, he stood in the middle of the lot, glaring at the saucer, jammed crooked into one of the mechanics bays like a big metal almond sticking out of a video game coin slot. Whatever it was, it wasn’t made of aluminum.
He guzzled most of his beer and pulled another from the fridge. Sometimes all he needed to do was take a step back, drink a beer, and stare at the problem. He finished that beer quickly and cracked another, still glaring at the big unweldable back end of whatever the hell that thing was. He lit another cigarette. The thing is, if it was plastic or fiberglass, the angle grinder would have chewed through it, or the welding arc would have melted it down to a hunk of molten burnt black slime. The flux and aluminum slag should melt through it. It shouldn’t pool up and scrape off like melted Kraft cheese on a Teflon frying pan.
He strolled back across the lot casually, surveying the unfinished projects, the chain link fence, and the backdoor of the office, as if he could sneak up on the thing somehow. Finishing his beer, he tossed the bottle in the recycling bin with a crash, his back to the saucer, stretching out his shoulders and finishing the last few drags of his cigarette before he turned back to the impossible object as if he had just discovered it sitting there, negative lead still trailing from the little blast hole. With a fresh buzz developing, he turned up the volume on the amplifier above the workbench, pulled on his welding mask, and grabbed the gloves from where they lay draped over the hull. Cranking the voltage to full, he pulled, snipped, and cleaned the flux wire, adjusted the feed, and set the patch panel back over the hole. He nodded once, quickly, to drop the visor into place, flicked the trigger on the welding gun, and watched as the sheet lightning crackled across the surface of the saucer, finding a meandering liquid path to the ground cable. Though his hand continued the tiny seashell spirals as always, he watched the electric current flowing down to the smaller hole.
With a welding mask on, most of the details of the weld point were lost. He saw only the crackling blue light and the path it took. He saw the hot metal of the tiny seashells, the river of current flowing to the ground lead, and the occasional electric tendril arcing off over the invisible surface as if the current were growing roots.
Curving down along the bottom edge of the patch, he noticed the dim glow coming from the smaller hole, a tiny dendritic static haze sparkling around the jagged edge. Without a small patch, without even applying the welding gun to the smaller hole, the current seemed to be closing the gap. Jeremiah’s fingers continued to follow the tiny spirals although he was entirely focused on the ground lead, watching as the shredded edges shrank from eight inches wide to seven, to six, to five. He let the trigger go, flipped back his visor, and let the patch drop to the shop floor with a dull clatter. He pulled a small steel ruler from the workbench and measured the jagged hole at four and a half inches. Nodding his visor down, he flicked the trigger on the welding gun. Flux slag dribbled off the surface of the saucer-like wax dripping from a candle to pool on the concrete. He let the trigger go, flipped up his visor, and set the little steel ruler against the hole. Three and five eighths’ inches. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, gently placing the ruler back on the workbench without taking his eyes off the hole. He pulled the ground lead from the hole before it closed entirely. This was not his usual patch gig.
Austin and Jynx’s hunk of scrap had none of the subtleties of a classic piece of American steel. It lacked the details, the bumpers, rims, and dual exhaust. There were no headlights to give it character, no taillights to accentuate a perfect rear end. When he first saw it, he had no lust for it because it was just a big chunk of busted ass metal that took up too much space to park in line with the rest of the rusted-out wrecks in the lot. He didn’t like it because he didn’t understand how it worked and thought it was an eyesore.
Complete, however, the saucer had become nothing but curve, and running his hand along the side of the newly restored hull, he felt perfection. The saucer was smooth, its surface almost soft to the touch. He let his fingers rest on it as reverently as he might a Shelby Cobra, inspecting the hull for tiny dents or dings, but after her restoration, she had none. She was impossibly perfect but somehow incomplete. The color of the ship was a monotone sort of aluminum, like wet metal waiting on an assembly line for a finishing paint job. The more he stared at her, the more she needed a coat of something.