O, Fortuna

Chapter 4

Liam Phelps had always been a little on the blunt side and though his family did not always appreciate this candour and that particular trait had made for interesting times during his nine years in the Air Force as an enlisted man, at least people knew where they stood with him. He could be professionally civil but he had always failed to see why that ought to extend to any pretence of friendship for the sake of appearances, why he should pretend to be anyone but himself.

Which was why he preferred working on cars, trucks, bikes, tractors, aircraft. Whatever marvel of mechanical engineering that was set before him, Liam was more than capable of becoming master of. They were simple to understand even when they were complex in design, served useful functions and if they failed or acted contrary to that which they were intended, the causes were identifiable and remediable. Life and the people that had filled his did not come with instruction manuals or blueprints. More was the pity, in Liam's opinion, for there were many he would have chosen to rebuild from scratch.

Life on the property had suited him as he grew up, tinkering in the garage on the cars and farm equipment alongside his grandfather, absorbing the details of workshop manuals and technical specifications rather than comics and nudie mags. When those challenges at home ceased, Liam left to join the RAAF, training to repair and maintain the workhorse Hercules transport planes, and then the newer Globemasters. He had been across the world on deployments, during war and as part of peace-keeping and humanitarian efforts - East Timor, Iraq, Sudan, The Solomon Islands, Bali, Afghanistan - the best years of his life and Liam had been proud to serve and represent his country, even happier working hard.

Being discharged on medical grounds had never occurred to him, even if the possibility of being killed or wounded in the line of duty had. Improvised explosive devices accounted for a huge percentage of Coalition casualties in Afghanistan and while Liam appreciated that he had far been luckier than everyone else who had been travelling with him that morning, 18 months earlier, in the armoured personnel transport, his subsequent injuries had left him unfit to serve. Coming home, after only nine years service, Liam felt cheated out of the life he had loved but the boundaries of introspection were to dive deeper and eat at him further.

Late one night out in the garage, not long after his return and trying to understand how it was his father ever managed to find anything in the mess he always left the tools in, Liam came to the realisation that Fate did not deal cards fairly and it royally pissed him off. His father and sister could easily have gone on with their lives without him but three other families had lost a husband and father that day in Afghanistan, three men sitting within two metres of him that were killed instantly. Two others had survived only long enough to be removed from the carrier, four more had been taken to hospital with the most horrendous injuries, two of them were still in rehabilitation, one of them would never leave hospital alive much less comprehend they had a family praying for their recovery.

Till that night in the garage a year earlier, Liam had never thrown any object in anger, he had considered himself above that sort of "emotional shit" he vaguely remembered his mother being fond of. But throw the adjustable pipe wrench he did, unable to understand why it was he should be alive, on his own two feet, at home. As if the whims of Fate had not done enough already to raise Liam's ire, the rubber-coated head of the wrench bounced heavily down onto the concrete floor and with renewed momentum, ricocheted upward and in the direction of the right front windscreen of June's 1954 Jaguar XK120 Roadster.

Having turned away in his fit of pique to storm out of the garage, Liam had come to a pause at the crunching sound of metal hitting glass. Then there was a thud and clatter of metal finding metal as the wrench slid down and off the bonnet of the car before a metallic ring that heralded the wrench finally finding its rest on the concrete floor. Only then could Liam look over to see what it was that he had done. Broken driver's side window, the top of the bonnet beneath it dented and the quarter panel scratched. He had turned off the garage light then and stalked home to the caretaker's house. Liam could fix those things easily enough but he had not been so sure about himself that night.