I.

The welding torch made a sound like a angry bee, and sparks fell onto the rusted concrete floor where they died in small flashes of orange and blue. Frank Donovan held the torch with both hands, the way he held everything: with attention. His left hand steadied the steel pipe against the frame, his right hand moved the torch along the seam with the steady rhythm of thirty-five years at the steel mill.

The garage was eighteen by twenty feet, cinderblock walls painted a color that had once been green and was now something closer to mud. Tools hung on the walls in the arrangement Frank had developed over seven years: hammers to the left, wrenches to the right, the welding equipment in the center where he could reach them without looking. The floor was covered in metal shavings and small pieces of scrap that he had saved because they might be useful and he couldn't throw them away.

The rocket was in the center of the garage. It was not a model. It was one-fiftieth scale, which meant it was approximately eight feet tall and weighed three hundred pounds. Frank had built the propulsion section first, which was what he was working on now, and when it was finished he would move on to the payload bay and then the nose cone and then the fins. He estimated another three years to completion.

II.

Mike Sullivan came on Thursday afternoons, which was his day off from teaching. He was a retired history teacher, sixty-two years old, thin and straight-backed, and he stood in the doorway of the garage and watched Frank weld for twenty minutes without saying anything.

Finally he said, "How's it going?"

"It's going," Frank said, and lowered the torch.

Mike stepped inside and walked around the rocket, looking at it from different angles the way a person looks at a building they're considering buying. He stopped in front of the propulsion section and read the metal plate Frank had bolted to the side. It read: US SPACE FORCE, and below that: LAUNCH VEHICLE MARK VII, and below that, in letters that were slightly smaller and slightly less careful: BUILT BY FRANK DONOVAN, YOUNGSTOWN OHIO, 2018-2025.

"Who's it for?" Mike asked.

Frank wiped the welding gloves on his pants and thought about the question. "I don't know. Someone."

"People who go to space."

"Yeah."

Mike nodded. He didn't ask why. He'd been asking why for three years and Frank had given him four different answers and none of them were lies and none of them were the answer.

"You want some coffee?" Frank asked.

"I want some coffee," Mike said, and they sat at the workbench with two mugs and the afternoon light coming through the single window, and for a while neither of them said anything, which is the way Frank and Mike did most of their talking.

III.

Sean Donovan arrived on a Saturday without calling, which was unusual because Sean usually called. He was thirty-one years old and he worked as an accountant in Chicago and he wore shoes that cost more than Frank's car and he carried himself the way a person carries something heavy that he's been carrying for a long time and hasn't set down.

He pulled into the driveway and got out of the car and looked at the garage and saw the rocket and stopped standing in the driveway and walked closer.

"What is this," he said. He didn't say hello. He didn't ask how his father was. He looked at the rocket and said what is this.

Frank was sanding a seam on the propulsion section. He set down the sandpaper and looked at his son the way a person looks at someone who has spoken a language they don't recognize.

"It's a rocket," Frank said.

Sean looked at the rocket for a long time. Then he looked at the metal plate. BUILT BY FRANK DONOVAN. He read it three times.

"You built this," he said. It wasn't a question.

"Half built. It's not done."

Sean walked around the rocket slowly, the way Mike had, but where Mike had looked at it with curiosity, Sean looked at it with something that was harder to name. Anger? Pride? Confusion? All three?

"Why," he said. Just why. No what is this this time. Just why.

Frank set down the sandpaper and sat on a stool by the workbench. He thought about saying something and decided against it. He thought about saying nothing and decided that was the wrong answer too.

"Those stars," he said. "They should have someone go see them."

Sean stood in front of the rocket and didn't say anything for a full minute. Then he said, "I'm going to the store. You want anything?"

"No," Frank said. But he knew Sean would come back.

IV.

Sean came back with two coffees from the diner on Main Street, and he stood in the doorway of the garage and held his coffee and looked at the rocket and then looked at his father and then looked at the rocket again.

He set down the coffee and walked inside and put his hand on the propulsion section, the way Frank had put his hand on it a thousand times, and felt the smoothness of the welds, the care that had gone into every seam and every bolt.

"This is good," Sean said. He didn't look at his father when he said it. He looked at the rocket. "This is really good."

Frank didn't say anything. He picked up the sandpaper and went back to work.

Sean stood there for a while. Then he went to the car and got another coffee and came back and stood in the doorway and watched his father work.

The next Saturday, Sean came back with a box of sanding discs. The Saturday after that, he brought a angle grinder. He didn't say he was going to help. He just showed up on Saturday morning and stood in the garage and watched his father work and then, on the third Saturday, picked up a piece of sandpaper and started working on a seam that Frank had left unfinished.

They didn't talk about the rocket. They didn't talk about the factory that had closed or the job Sean had in Chicago or the phone calls Frank made every Sunday to a number he didn't save because he knew it by heart. They didn't talk about anything except the rocket, which was the only thing either of them had ever agreed on.

Frank sanded. Sean sanded. The welding torch made its angry bee sound. And outside, the sky was the color of steel, and the stars were not visible because it was daytime, but they were there, and someone would go see them.