Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (3 page)

    
Anubis nodded his lupine head.  He knew what must be done
.

     I flexed my right arm and, as expected, the bolt broke off in the engine block. 
God damn it!

     Bobby-the-idiot-boy, my Service Advisor, stood right there, too.  I heard him suck air through his teeth.  I shook my head and put the 12-mm Crescent wrench back in the toolbox, using my left. 

    
Naval Nuclear Power had taught me to put my tools back.  Being ambidextrous let me use both hands.  I was standing under the Chevy on the lift, smelling the good grease smell that comes with an engine.

    
“Can you fix it?” Bobby asked.

    
No, dumbass, we’ll have to buy this car from the owner now
.  What Bobby meant was, “Can you fix it in such a way that I can get out of telling the customer that there is a bolt broken off in his car.” 

    
“It’s in the block.  Maybe I can drill it out, but odds are we’ll have to tap a helical.  It’s a water pump bolt.  If we can’t make it tight the water pump will leak.”

    
Too much information for Bobby to process. I looked into his vacant green eyes and re-explained that there was a chance I could get the bolt out, but if not we would have to rethread a bigger hole into the engine’s block.  Otherwise the water pump, which needs to make a good seal against the head, would leak.  He waddled off to tell the customer what had happened and that we should be able to fix it.

    
I shook my head and got an air drill out.  A lot of people don’t realize it but a drill with a burring-bit, put in reverse, will often pull a broken bolt far enough out of the engine that you can put a vice-grip to it and get it out the rest of the way without damaging the threads.  If that doesn’t work, with a steady hand you can drill a bit into the bolt, heat it and put a wrench to
that
, and loosen it enough so that you can back-drill the bolt out.  With welding equipment available you could also weld a washer to the end of the broken stud and then weld a nut to the washer to achieve the same goal without the risk, but then you have to go
get
the welding equipment, and that’s a pain in the ass. 

    
Only a Navy guy used to being a few hundred miles away from the nearest hardware store would think this way.  The ship isn’t going to swing into a floating Ace Hardware if you can’t save a part.

    
I could have shared all of this with Bobby, but he wouldn’t have understood it.  Dealerships don’t like to hire mechanics to be Service Advisors - they tell the customers too much.  That problem didn’t weigh too heavily on Bobby.

    
“Randy come to the Service Manager’s office,”
the loudspeaker announced.  I put the drill back and swore under my breath, heading across the long, open garage to Wayne the Service Manager’s corner office.  Freaking narc Bobby –he had covered his ass at my expense before. I had only been here six months and this made seven times that he hadn’t understood what he saw and told the Service Manager on me.

    
Truth is: I’m a pretty good mechanic.  Naval Nuclear Power School and Mechanic’s Apprenticeship School do a lot to teach the skills you need to fix machines.  Most dealership mechanics, however, are really just parts-changers.  I’m different and Bobby doesn’t like it because I take too long on the cars.  They never come back with the same problem, though, so the Manager cut me slack.

    
Until now.

    
“We have to talk, Randy,” Wayne said as he closed his office door.  Bobby watched nervously outside through the huge glass window that Wayne cleaned every day.  Bright sunshine shone through it now, hot on my skin and my red polo shirt.  I could smell the ammonia cleaner.

    
“About a broken bolt?” I asked him.  Wayne was a former mechanic himself.  He was a smaller, darker version of me, with one of those moustaches that are common among old-style Italians.  He had a temper but he usually didn’t flip out over stuff like this.  Bolts break, there isn’t a lot you can do but fix them.  It’s part of the job.  If Bobby were better he could have sold this to the owner.

    
“No, not about the bolt,” he said.  I looked into his eyes and knew right then where this would go, and that I was fired.  He said, “Sit down,” and I sat.

    
I sighed.  Freaking Navy catching up with me again.  Never stops, ever.

    
“Randy Morden, 22, former Navy Nuclear Technician, Machinist Mate Second Class, Enlisted Surface Warfare Specialist,” he read to me from my personnel file, as if I didn’t already know it. “Dishonorably discharged, U.S. Navy, for assault on an officer.”

    
He looked up from the page he held, his brown eyes meeting mine.

    
“You didn’t mention your Navy career, Randy,” he said.

    
“So you ran my social,” I countered.

    
Wayne slapped my personnel folder down on his desk.  “Hell, yeah, we ran it,
we have to run it
!  You think we don’t run a criminal check on everyone here?  You could be a car thief, Randy.”

    
“I’m no thief.”

    
“No, but you were dishonorably discharged from the Navy last year.”

    
“Not for stealing.”

    
“It doesn’t matter, Randy – the company has a policy.  No dishonorable discharges."

“That is
such
bullshit, Wayne.  I am one of the best mechanics in here – “

    
“No, Randy, you aren’t,” Wayne looked me right in the eye. “You’re slow and you care too much.  I kept you because you work a full day and don’t have any come-backs, but you’ll never do better than $2,000 a month in here.”

    
“Not now, anyway.”

    
“No, not now,” Wayne agreed.  “Effective immediately, you are terminated, Randy.  You can pick up your paycheck in two weeks – “
     “Two
weeks
?  Payday is Friday, in two
days
.”

    
Wayne shook his head. “Policy – we hold the paycheck against any of your work that comes back – the state says we can hold it for two weeks and we do.”

    
I stood.  I wanted to hit him so bad I could taste it, but it wasn’t his fault.  Besides, my temper is what put me in this mess.

    
I am six foot, two inches tall, weigh two hundred forty pounds and can bench my weight.  I have blond hair past my ears and blue eyes.  In the Navy they called me “The Viking.”  I have a bad temper, and everyone who knows me knows that.  I am not proud of it but I’m not afraid of it, either.  A man has to stand up for himself in this world.

    
So when a Nuclear-unqualified ensign tried to operate a set of valves on my watch, I yelled at him.  I shouldn’t have done that, but if he had operated the valves, he would have released radioactive liquid waste into San Diego harbor.  He didn’t know that, but he
did
know better than to operate a valve on someone else’s watch.

    
But I yelled at him, and ensigns are very self-conscious, especially when they are really new.  He wanted to set a precedent, so he ignored me, and I smacked his hand away from the valve.

    
No one would have said a damn thing about that.  Part of my job is to guard my watch – in fact, he got a record entry into his fitness evaluation for trying to operate the valves.  However, he didn’t like having his hand smacked, so he shoved me.

    
I flattened him.  With an eighty-pound weight advantage one punch broke his jaw.  Coincidentally he cracked his skull and got a concussion when his head hit the metal decking.  He had to wear a head brace for two months, I’m told.

    
I wasn’t around to see it – I went to court martial.  There is a thing called “non-judicial punishment,” or “Captain’s Mast,” where the Captain can just hand out punishment.  He would have taken some of my pay for a couple months and dropped me down a pay grade that I could have gotten back in a year.  But all I could hear in my mind was “stand up and fight for yourself,” so I insisted on court martial.

    
In court martial the ensign swore that he never touched me.  The idea that he would straight-out lie had never crossed my mind.  He said that he had operated the valve and I hit him.  They found me guilty and dishonorably discharged me from the Navy for assault on an officer.  Busted to E-1 so that I could only get a couple bucks a week from unemployment.

    
And the day I left the ship, with my chief and my division officer walking me off, I saw the Captain, and I looked him right in the eye and said, “You know I didn’t hit him like he said.  You know that I don’t deserve what I got.”

    
And he looked me right back in the eye, and he said, “Yes, I do – and I know for a fact that candy-ass lied.  But you had to take on the whole Navy over it, and guess what?  The whole Navy won.  Big surprise, Morden – now go live the rest of the life you just screwed up.”

    
I didn’t hit the Captain because he was right and I was wrong.  I didn’t hit Wayne for the same reason.  If it were up to him, he would have given me cash on the spot.  But he had a job to do, and now I didn’t.

    
I wouldn’t let that sort of thing beat me.  If I knew nothing else, I knew that.  There is always something bad out there about to happen.  A man can run and hide or he can face it with only himself to blame.

    
I went behind the garage and got my beat-to-hell pickup truck.  Only my working here had kept it alive.  It occurred to me that I had almost put a new manifold gasket on it during lunch.  Good thing I didn’t, I would be pushing it home now.  I brought the truck to my workspace and started loading my tools into the bed.

    
Brad, the shop senior mechanic, walked over, wiping his hands with a pink rag.  He was about 32, tall and angular with a short beard and curly, red hair – kind of like a rusty, wire brush with glasses.  He had tried to get close to me here, inviting me out after work for a beer or to his house for a barbecue.  I think I had been waiting for this day and I had kept him at arm’s length.

    
“He canned ya, huh?” 

    
I just kept loading my tools.  Someone already had a drill to that bolt in the engine block.  It wasn’t my job anymore so I didn’t say anything.

    
“Yeah,” I said when he didn’t walk away.

    
“Not over that?” he asked, pointing out the engine with his jaw.

    “Nah,” I said.  “Past history catching up with me.”

    
“Oh?  You get busted or something?”

    
“Dishonorable discharge.”

    
“I didn’t know you were in.  What branch?”

    
“Fucking Navy.”

    
“Ah – where are you going to go now?”

    
“Dunno – they won’t pay me.”

    
“Not for two weeks – you won’t get all of it, either.”

    
I looked at him. “No?”

    
“Nah.  They will pay
him
out of your pay to tap that helical, plus anything else you didn’t finish – if you’re lucky you’ll get half.”