He turned the camera on before he had finished being amazed. It was a Monday in March, the light coming through the window beside the cab, and rswfire stood in the interior of the RV with the curtains already hung — the work behind him, the proof in front of him. The first thing out of his mouth was pride, stated plainly and without hedging: he had just done this for the very first time in his whole life.
The words came faster than the arithmetic. He reached for his age mid-sentence and it came out wrong twice — fifty-four, then fifty-six, then forty-six — the number sliding around while the thing he actually wanted to say kept pushing forward. He let it go with a laugh and moved on. What he wanted to say was that he had installed the curtains. All by himself. The sentence was small and he said it like it was not.
Then the tour. He showed the frame — there they are — and then he showed the part he was pleased with beyond the obvious: behind the primary curtains, a second layer, lighter, made to pass daylight through. Light coming in and privacy holding at the same time. He offered it to the camera as a secret worth having. Alongside it he offered the flaw without flinching — the latch things, he thought, needed to move further over, he wasn't sure how far, but he could see it. Not perfect. He said it in the same breath as the pride, neither one canceling the other.
He named the split then, the one he had carried as a fact about himself. He had never done anything mechanical in his whole life. He was the computer guy; his brother was the one who could fix cars and build sheds and houses. He said he had never tried. He said he thought he really should have, and he called that a regret. And having named it, he turned outward — to anyone young watching who recognized themselves in that description — and told them to try the stuff, because there's achievement in it. Just do it. It's worth it, I think. The instruction was delivered in the same room, on the same afternoon, as the thing that had earned him the right to give it.
Then he went back to the work, because the work had a test still to pass. The slide-out. He traced the path with his hand, checking where the mechanism stopped, watching for interference — you know the slide's right there — and worked out that the curtains would need to be pulled up before bringing it in, probably all the way. He confirmed it out loud for himself and for the camera: not going to be in the way, not a problem.
The last thing he named was the one that hadn't happened yet. The curtains were also thermal — a barrier meant to hold the cold air from the cab out of the living space — and that result would not arrive until night. He said he would report back on how it went. Then he wished everyone a good Monday and thanked them for listening, standing in a dwelling that regulated its own light, its own privacy, and possibly its own temperature, by his hands, to his standard, with one latch still to move.