My uncle kept the phrase framed above his workbench for most of his adult life. Wyrd bið ful āræd. He translated it for me as fate is fully fixed and said he found the idea comforting. Worry became wasted effort if the destination had already been chosen. He was a careful man, which made the philosophy seem less like fatalism than permission to stop imagining every possible disaster.
The accident changed his relationship with the words.
For a week before the saw took two fingers from his left hand, the frame rattled against the wall whenever he entered the workshop. He checked the nail, leveled the frame, even replaced the wire. Nothing helped. On the morning of the accident, he glanced up just before feeding a board into the blade and saw the frame hanging perfectly still. Years later he told me that stillness frightened him more than the saw.
He never removed the phrase. He simply learned to work without looking directly at it.
I inherited the frame after his death and hung it in my own workshop because grief makes sentimental people of us. For nearly a year it did nothing. Then, last month, the glass began vibrating faintly whenever I switched on the table saw.
Since then I have noticed other warnings. A screwdriver rolls from the bench before I reach for it. The overhead bulb flickers moments before I climb the ladder. Once, a hammer fell from a hook and landed exactly where my foot would have been if I had taken another step.
I have avoided every predicted accident so far.
That should reassure me. Instead, the frame rattles harder each time.
My uncle left several notebooks among his tools, and I finally opened them last week. The final pages contain lists much like mine: avoided cuts, missed falls, machines switched off seconds before failure. His handwriting becomes increasingly cramped until one sentence appears again and again across the margins. He had come to believe fate did not mind being delayed because delay merely gave it more material to work with.
I still keep my eyes on my hands while working. I have also stopped congratulating myself whenever a warning saves me. Somewhere in the workshop, something seems to be keeping count of every outcome I refuse, and lately the frame has begun rattling even when none of the tools are running.
©2013 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys
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