In Uzbekistan I’ve got it made. I live by myself in this old train car in the desert. A caboose, I guess, or a dining car. Wallpaper on the inside and empty light fixtures. I’ve got a hole dug in the sand, in the shade, down to where there’s water. In the morning I fill a bucket, down in the hole. Sit at my table, in front of the train car, in the shade, the bucket covered with an old trashcan lid. Sure is hot, here in Uzbekistan.

They come on a ship, sailing in the sand. With masts and rigging. I watch it come out of the distance, churning up the sand. The ship leans in the sand. They climb down on ladders. Russians in tall hats and thick jackets, patches on their shoulders. Old men with goggles and scarves, Arabs with mirrored sunglasses. On the deck of the ship are their biplanes, tied down with cables. They line up, holding tin cups. I get them water out of the bucket with a ladle.

The sailors swap me everything I need for the water that I get out of the hole. Aviator sunglasses and heavy leather boots too big for my feet – I have to wrap and rewrap the laces around my ankles. Mirrors in brass frames I stack in the corner. They bring me railroad ties, a wheelbarrow, steam kettles that whistle. They bring a cardboard box full of rubber balls, all different colours; I like to sit on top of the train car at night and throw the balls out into the desert. If the moon is bright you can pick them out in the white sand.

In the desert, the sailors shoot rockets into the sky. Up a hill, where the sand is all packed and hard, we drag the rocket down off the ship on old logs, with ropes. It’s the sort of rocket that’s fat in the middle, with red stripes, and fins. You’d expect a rocket to be shiny and clean, so you could see your face in the side. But their rocket is tarnished and riveted, you can see where it’s been welded, where it’s been hammered into shape. We build the bleachers out of wood and wire, we sit there in the desert night drinking water out of tin cups.

I ask the sailors if any of them know how to build the Milk Chicken Bomb. They all shrug. None of them have even heard of it. They pull the rocket upright with ropes, grunting. They run a fuse to a plunge box. An old man in a welder’s mask stares at his watch. The rocket fires and we all cheer, hands over our ears. Bang! it fires, steam and sand and everybody coughs, the rocket off into the sky, we crane our heads and watch it shoot off into the desert, where it’ll crash, out there somewhere.