The pitch and toss of fate

Carl watches the silver coin as it is flicked into the air. His eyes trace the arc the coin makes, reaching its zenith then tumbling glintingly end over end as gravity takes hold and draws it back. He hears the metallic clatter as it hits the ground.

For those precious seconds when the coin was airborne Carl also kept one eye on the two young men who - like him - awaited its return anxiously, hoping one of its two silver faces would smile in their favour. Roger and Rafa, two warriors, resplendent in Wimbledon white, rackets at the ready, their "battlefield" lush green and demarcated.

A shiver - just two seconds' worth of it - takes hold of Carl, then it is gone. It is not a shiver of anticipation. It isn't because he's wondering whether Roger will, somehow, make it six wins in a row and raise the bar higher than Borg.

No, it is this deciding of things by the spin of a coin that unsettles him. This is why he looks away as the coin hits the turf. He doesn't want to know. He doesn't want - at the end of the match - to equate the outcome with whether Roger/Rafa should have called "heads" or "tails".

It has been two years now since he tossed a coin and he knows he will never, ever flip one into the air again. Despite it being 24 months ago, Carl remembers that day with clarity - although clarity is hardly the term to describe a pitch-dark morning. Four am sunrise still about three hours away.

He sees himself doing what he'd trained himself to do: Tumble out of bed lightly, despite his burly frame, and pad about the house like he was a kitten. Fix a steaming mug of coffee. Carry it to the porch outside. He sees all this vividly even as the umpire calls "two minutes" and light from the television bounces shadows off the dimly lit room.

Two years ago it was his friend Robert's headlights shining through the sitting room window that told him he must hurry; Robert, who wrote the rulebook on punctuality.

Carl remembers kissing his still-asleep wife and slumbering five-year-old before stealing silently out of the house, carry pack in one hand, car keys in the other. Four thirty-one. He remembers those numbers flashing up on the car clock as soon as he turned the ignition.

Splitting the work

By that time Robert's car was already 200 metres ahead and motoring further away. Both he and Robert had grown up in the same neighbourhood, studied in the same school, played footy on the same team, took up jobs in the same coal mine and married within a year of one another. That day, therefore, was just another workday. You reached the mine, signed yourself in on your worksheet, put on your safety gear, took the cage and rode it down into the bowels of the earth.

You knew beforehand what kind of work was assigned. Sometimes it wasn't very heavy. So you divided it up with your shift-mate. Robert. You tossed a coin to decide who would take first "serve". Robert called "heads", Carl remembers. Heads it was, the coin rattling hollowly in the darkness but they could see which side was smiling invitingly to the winner by the light of their headlamps.

Off went Robert whistling cheerfully. Six-ten am. Carl would have liked to win that toss. He enjoyed a bit of labour first which made him hungry. Occasionally, however, you lose the toss and win a reprieve from fate. When the earth rocked underground and the land slid, Carl was only trapped but rescued days later. Robert, sadly, was directly where the glinting "heads" had directed him. At the epicentre.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia