the golden fiddle

[Left]

..."Johnny, we need that money," Esther Jane said. "Momma's gonna die if she don't get that chemo."
"Momma's gonna die anyway, and you damn well know it!"
Johnny said." That fiddle is like nothing I've ever heard, Es!   I swear to gawd it would break my heart to melt it down for money!  Momma's already all ate up with the cancer, them docs cain't stop it."
Esther Jane teared up and her hands began to shake again.
"Gawd DAMMIT Johnny!
Her ice blue eyes sharpened and looked daggers at him.  Her face turned older and harder as she stood up, a little wobbly, but sobering in her nascent rage.

"Johnny, I cain't believe you'd be so hard-hearted to yo' momma!  You'd send her to the grave for that gawd-damn fiddle!"
   "Naw, Esther Jane, I don't want her to die, and it tain't me doin' the sendin," he said. " The Good Lord could save her if'n he wanted to. The Doctors sure cain't. You know that.  You know that, Esther Jane. You know it's just a matter of months we'd get, at best.  Why should I have to give up the best fiddle I ever had? The best THING I ever had? All for a few months for her?  She moved away, sold Daddy's house and left me behind when I was 16, Esther!"
He shook his head, looked down at steel case that held his heart's desire, and shook his head again.
"I ain't gotta do nothin for that woman, and I ain't gonna. No. No way."

While Johnny was saying this, Esther Jane's face was tightening into a fist of rage and disgust. There was a terrible pause, and then she exploded.
"Damn you!" she shrieked, the tears pouring out of her eyes. "Gawd DAMN you all to hell and gone! Gawd DAMN you Johnny! 
"You ain't no flesh and blood to me no more, you heartless sonofabitch!"
"You can jus' get the hell outta here Johnny!  Jus' go on, get the hell out!"
So saying she flung the half-empty bottle of Taylor port at him, and he ducked.  Glass shards rained down the wall, and the wine bled like Esther's heart as it dripped down the nubbly, tobacco-smoke stained plaster.  The smell of cheap wine joined the miasma of despair.
She keened in the kitchen hysterically as Johnny collected the few things he had in the house, most of which he kept packed and ready to go anyway.  He left what he didn't immediately need in his old pickup, Bessie.
Bessie had a cap on the bed that mostly didn't leak.  He had to keep shoving plastic grocery bags into the cracked spot, so it was nice and dry when he had to sleep in the back.  Since he'd won his Prize...so much had changed. 
It was as if the hand of every man and every woman were against him, once he had his golden Lady in his life and heart.
"Don't you never come back here, you Devil!" Esther Jane shouted from the porch.
Johnny shouted back "Don't worry, I ain't gonna!"
Then he stomped on the worn pedal of Bessie, and the old chevy dutifully complied.
  A skinny hound startled away from Bessie's wheels as they spit gravel...
And there was the last of his kinfolk in the rear view mirror.
The very last.
A tear rolled down Johnny's face, but his heart hardened to stone.


Other than the fiddle, there wasn't much he cared about.  Well, really anything.
  After all, wherever he went, they wanted that fiddle.  Even family, they wanted to use the very body of Sweetheart.  He could not believe they would harm such a lovely thing.

He had to keep it hid, even though throughout the day he'd be thinking about holding her. It was, in truth, his lover, his ecstasy, his one remaining source of joy, his Glory.
**********************************

He knew his pretty lady was gonna be trouble the first time he played out, playing a dive bar, an open mic.  Oh Lord have mercy! the bluegrass was sweet that night, the audience was in a waking dream, while he played like a man possessed, for hour upon hour, while other musicians dropped out in exhaustion. The proprietor had to stop him in the end. Playing that lovely golden fiddle was as if he were drunk on the purest firey moonshine, like he was loved deeply and truly, like he was going home, like his life and everyone in it was beyond beautiful.

And after he'd locked the fiddle up in its' protective case and started to walk to his old truck, he'd had to put a man down. 
The stranger had a knife, but Johnny had a bigger one and knew how to use it better.

The next day Johnny was in another town, and he learned the guy lived from the radio while he was getting his long hair buzzed off.  Johnny didn't trust the police, so going back to clear his name? that didn't seem such a good idea.  After all, it was just him and the other guy, word against word, and he'd merely got his single coat sliced open...He had family in the state pen, he wasn't going back.
Besides, how could he protect the fiddle?  It was obvious everyone had wanted the thing, the police would say he had to have stolen it.
No dumb hillbilly had enough money to own such a priceless thing.

**************************************************

Suggestions on where to take this totally welcomed, but I figure this is part 1 of 4 or so....I guess.  I actually think I know where I'm going, for once!
It just occurred to me...what happened after Johnny won the golden fiddle from the Devil, you know?

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

this is awesome!

[Left]

this is awesome!

Thankya 

[Left]

Part 2:

Well, after the knife fight behind the bar, Johnny'd run back to his kinfolk in Kentucky.  He knew they'd take him in, of course, they all loved him something fierce...and he'd see about working some job for a bit, keep quiet, hope the Georgia police didn't want him real bad.

He moved in with his brother Petey and his wife Maureen in their little rent house. He stayed on the couch over the winter.  But there wasn't much work to be had, of course, there never was.  Johnny managed to pick up a little house painting and fixing work, but then that dried up, and right as spring was hitting Petey got laid off.
...Of course he and Maureen had two little ones, a third in Maureen's bulging belly...and so it started.
They could all be rich.
Yeah, Johnny played that fiddle every night, strong as steel, sweet as honey...and it sure did sound fine, the most lovely thing Maureen and Petey had ever heard, moved them to tears.
...Even the babies didn't cry when Johnny played that fiddle, they sat in rapt attention like two little blonde, grubby-faced angels.
But surely Johnny must see that they'd been kind enough to put him up, so he really ought to give that fiddle to be melted down.
Because no matter how fine it was, the rent was looming this month, and the next month, and there could be a house, just a nice little place for Maureen and Petey and the kids...
So they asked.  Then they pleaded.  Then one night they demanded. And that was that.  Blood's thicker than water and all, but no way in HELL was Johnny going to give up that feeling of peace and rapture that coursed in his blood when he played that fiddle. It was the best thing he'd ever had.

Johnny snuck out the window that night, and let Bessie coast down the driveway, cranking her at the bottom of the hill.  Johnny knew Petey and Maureen were in a hard place...He didn't think they meant any harm, really, but he knew Petey had his mind set, and he was an ace shot with his rifle...better safe than sorry.

He slept in the Wal-mart parking lot that night, and in the morning it was bleak and icy.
His money was slim, he was gonna have a damned hard time making it all the way to Jeana and Wayne's place in West Virginia...He'd bought a box of Ramen.  Surely not cigarettes, and that was gonna annoy him no end...but it was a bad habit anyway...so he told himself...best to make the best of what was what.
So he sat in the bed, legs akimbo. He opened up his case and rosined his bow...his fiddle gleamed in the cold gray as his fingers made her sing.  His lovely lady.  His angel, wrested from the Devil himself, his love.
He could not imagine life without her.  The cold no longer mattered, in his heart he was warm, so warm.  His fingers sang a summer's day in that winter's chill...and he played until he felt a presence... he looked up...
Outside, in the cold air, a mesmerized little crowd of Wal-mart shoppers woke up from a dream, and realized they were very cold and wet.  Johnny put his fiddle up rapidly, and wedged himself through the slide-window into the cab, not daring to go outside as the crowd grumbled and shifted, the dream broken, the magic gone...
Johnny was beginning to realize the power that fiddle had.

That was the last time he pulled up for very long anywhere with lots of people.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I really like this.

[Left]

Part 3

Well, Johnny got a warm welcome at Jeana and Wayne's...well, he did at first.  At first.
Johnny'd gotten sharper now.  He knew that he had something, something people would damn well  stop at very little to get.
He left his Sweetheart locked in the cab, behind the seat now...and he slept in the truck, only going indoors to eat and use the facilities.  He told Jeana and Wayne that, well, he knew he was asking a lot of them to put him up, and since the weather was so fine, he'd give them their privacy, and thank you very much and all, he'd just stay in the truck.
He got a job as a dishwasher then too, and it was a stroke of luck.
...On the way home late at night, he'd pull off into the woods,after his day of longing, craving, thinking of nothing but the fiddle's fire.  Alone, he'd play, and play, and play, the beauty so sweet that his eyes would weep like the blisters on his fingers, wept, wept, wept and he barely noticed.
Jeana and Wayne were teasing him about dragging in about the time they was getting up, giving him ribald winks and chuckles at his haggard appearance, his loss of weight, the bags under his eyes.
Surely there was a girl, and wasn't Johnny being so closemouthed?  They chuckled.
They couldn't have known of his solitary lusting to make that sound, that feeling, sweet as waking up on a lovely Sunday morning, that only the gold fiddle could give, only when played.  Johnny's sole comfort in a world gone cold even as summer waxed, hot and fragrant with the clean vanilla smell of pine sap and woodfire smoke.  Day by day, he grew to love the fiddle so much more, his love.  His Sweetheart.   He'd play until his aching body forced him to rest, and still in rest he longed for the music. He'd lie with the fiddle in its' case, his arm draped across like a lover's.

And of course then, back in Kentucky, Maureen had a healthy little infant son, this one a redhead, the old family looks come to light, and Mamma said little Billy looked just like great-grandpa Horace, and surely they must come see?
So Jeana and Wayne drove over on a Friday.  Johnny used his dishwashing gig as an excuse not to go, of course, didn't want to lose a lucky break like that!  Be sure and take some polaroids, so Johnny could see the little guy, of course...
Because of his Sunday night he pulled into the drive right before dawn...and suddenly he realized, Petey's truck was parked in the driveway along with Wayne's and Jeane's...

  Johnny's eyes zoomed in to the rifle in Petey's hands as Petey tossed his cigarette out the car window, a glowing bit of cherry light arcing in the dark...Petey brought the rifle around and the lights of Bessie gleamed off of the wood stock of that bolt action deer rifle as Johnny slammed old Bessie into reverse as the transmission protested the slamming of gears the gun barrel's lone eye stared upon him like the voice of doom as the rifle rang out, cold and sharp, the bullet passing over the truck and the wheels slid as Johnny gassed it for all it was worth, fishtailing wildly back down the driveway, the dust flying, Johnny screaming in terror and didn't stop until his tires hit asphalt...

He roared down the road saying "Shit, Shit..."in stunned, terrified disbelief, and then realized he'd urinated on himself, he was shaking, shaking, shaking and yes...his own goddamn brother had just tried to fucking kill him.
His brother.  They'd grown up together, gotten into trouble together, been tight as two coats of paint.
His brother was willing to kill him for gold.  For money.
Holy shit.

...Petey didn't follow him as he roared into town, praise Jesus.
Johnny drove and drove until his breathing slowed.  He got to a closed-up gas station.  Pulled up behind it, he swapped his urine-damp pants for one of the three clean pairs he had in the truck.  And he mentally collected himself.
He had no idea if Wayne and Jeane were in on the whole thing. And he couldn't go back to the diner the next day, nohow.  Fortunately, he'd been keeping his money in the truck along with everything else, really...
Along with his sweetheart. Everybody wants to kill my Sweetheart, he thought to himself.  Everyone wants a bit of my Sweetie.
They can't have her.

Well, since his youngest brother Billy had been killed ten years ago in a wreck, Johnny had one brother, and two sisters...and now Jeane was out along with his brother Petey.
The cousins would have heard Something through the grapevine...maybe not the truth, but something...and that was a scary thought.  Anyone who knew about Sweetheart couldn't be entirely safe, could they?
That left Esther Jane. 
Esther was Mamma's oldest, born out of wedlock, and why Mamma had dropped out of school.  Also why Mamma had married a much older man, one who'd have her with a bastard child in tow. Also why Mamma'd started drinking.  Esther Jane had picked up the bottle early, at Mamma's knee.
She'd earned the wrath of everyone else for killing Billy in a drunk-driving accident.  She was pretty-near-much cut off from everyone except Mamma, really, and even that was kinda distant.
Mamma had gotten Daddy's insurance when he passed after a long, vigorous life.  She'd moved to South Florida on it; she lived in a trailer she'd bought down there, eating junk food, blowing up squat and round, becoming diabetic, chain-smoking and getting hammered on sloe gin fizzies every night. Collecting Daddy's social security and the interest off of his insurance money, invested...and bitching about wetbacks in a voice that sounded like rocks grinding together.

So...Esther Jane would not have been told about Sweetheart.
  Maybe Esther Jane would take him in...
I mean, it's not like Mamma would, she'd made that damned clear a long time ago.
He got himself collected and pointed Bessie's nose south.  He'd managed to collect enough for food and gas this time to make Tallahassee, no sweat.
He reassured himself...He was gonna be ok.
He was gonna be ok.
He kept telling himself this, hoping it would be true.

[Left]

...Damn, I usually can't write worth a shit.

[Left]

Part 4

Johnny was taken into Esther Jane's boozy bosom when he got there.  She'd been so used to being the pariah, then here her baby brother shows up, out of the blue, and down on his luck!
...At least EJ didn't take after Mamma, EJ didn't have a stingy bone in her whole body.  EJ, as she asked to be called now, was looking pretty haggard these days. She spent a lot of time at the bar when she wasn't working as a file clerk, and sometimes brought the occasional guy home.
...Johnny fought the urge to bristle protectively at the trashy guys she brought home, but he also figured, he'd blamed EJ for killing Billy too, and she was still big-hearted enough to take him in.
EJ would cry, and drink, and cry and drink, because those guys never stayed,
She took in a bunch of cats...EJ must have been used to the smell of cat pee, so Johnny tried his best to get the place cleaner and less odiferous.
And it's not like she ought to be blamed for her boozing, not totally.Not when Mamma gave her rum in her milk as a little girl, so she'd be less of a nuisance, then made her raise up the other three kids.
...In fact, Johnny grew to care about his sister again genuinely, much to his surprise.  He thought he'd never forgive her after Billy's closed-casket funeral.
Johnny got a job barbacking, too, started to help out with the bills and to save up some more.  He had a feeling it wouldn't last, not with his lovely Sweetheart around, no.

Then there were the phonecalls.
Mamma had lung cancer.
...It was bad.
...It was spreading.
...Her insurance was fighting paying for treatment that might help her live longer.
...And then Maureen got aholt of Esther Jane, and spilled the beans.

*************************

[Left]

The fact that I never finished this has been bugging me for a while.

[Left]

Part 5

...For the next two years, Johnny wandered around the south, never staying anywhere too long, keeping hid, staying off the interstates and out of Georgia. After he left Esther Jane, he had no other refuge from the storm.  Only the fiddle sustained his hardened heart for him. He lived only to play...and play, and play.  He'd put it down when the stabbing pain began between is shoulderblades every night, and get up to work odd jobs when he had them, and weep quietly, and long for his fiddle.

The love he felt for the unearthly and beautiful instrument set daggers in his heart and became a kind of hate.He played his fiddle every night, and while it still enraptured him...He began to realize what it had cost.
No sweet nights of cool beer and warm song, no pretty girls to charm, no warm bed at night, no safe place to lay his head. No more family...And while he was able to make enough money doing odd jobs and drifting? It just wasn't much of a life. Not much but Sweetheart and the music. Not much but survival and fear, like a wild animal.   Inside he was cold and empty.

  Getting near Christmas time on the second year...he was sitting outside in the truck cab, running the heater to keep warm in some podunk town he'd never heard of....and he saw it. 
It was the end.
You wouldn't have thought it was much, it was just a family sitting down to a nice dinner, tucking into fried chicken in a little local place.  The dad was drinking his coffee black, Mama dressed pretty, the kids all smiling and clean, drinking their soda pop....
There was a nice warm, cosy familiar love there.  It was right there, where you could see it..

Johnny's heart began to gnaw itself from the inside out, burning like fire in his chest.  He started to tremble in agony and sadness and rage.
He cranked up the truck.  He drove to the edge of town.  He pulled up in front of an old gas station that had become a used car lot for a brief time and then closed doors for good. He took the fiddle out of the back, took her out of her case, and laid her on the ground. Gently though, despite what he had it in his heart to do.  So gently.
He went and fetched his tire iron from where it was stowed.
Someone else melt her down?  No.  Johnny was going to melt down the beautiful, alluring, poisonous thing himself!  He'd get his own back!  He deserved it, after all the misery this seductive bitch had caused!
He roared in rage and brought the iron down on the bridge. *Clink!*  The tire iron clattered on the old and gator-skinned blacktop, striking a spark, jarring the hell out of Johnny's arm, stinging his hand.

Johnny blinked.  Had the thing moved?  No.  No, it lay gleaming, seductively as always, on the very same stretch of pavement that he'd laid its' loveliness down on.  He swung again, this time not as hard.  His tire iron again smote the pavement.
How did that happen?  HOW???
Johnny frantically swung and swung, screaming, and each time, he hit to the side of the fiddle.  He could not strike it. Furious and desperate, he dropped the tire iron with a clatter.  He picked the fiddle up by the head with both hands.  He swung the fiddle itself at the ground; only to find, like a magician's trick, he was cradling it instead.  As he cradled it he could not help but notice its' loveliness...an unutterably beautiful and mocking thing.
He tried to throw it, and found  it was tucked under his arm instead.  He tried again, and found it tucked under his chin, tempting him to play, and play, and play, until his hands were wore to the bone, until he was not but a skeleton.
Play, play, play!
He could will himself to harm it, but he couldn't carry through. 
He could not.

SO he set the thing down.  He picked up the iron, chucked it in the back.  Shut the tailgate.
He'd leave it.
He'd just leave the cursed thing.
So he got back in Bessie's cab, cranked her up, started to pull out.
A gleam caught his right eye, and he looked over.
Sweetheart was there, cupped in the divot of the old bench seat.  Johnny screamed aloud.
But there it was, sitting there, calling to him...
He reached across, pushed the passenger side door open, pushed her out.  The sound she made on the pavement made him cringe.  He hit the gas, hauled ass...
A moment later he wasn't surprised to see her golden length sprawled out like a lazy cat.
...He pulled over and cried.  Tears of sorrow and desperation, that gradually dried into realization.

He knew what he had to do. 

Part 6

How does one go about finding the Devil?  Well...tradition has it you go down to the crossroads at the stroke of Midnight. It doesn't say WHAT crossroads. You might take some tobacco and something strong to drink, as the Devil's known to like the liquor.
And  then you wait.  He ain't gonna just show up the first night.

...Johnny started driving until he found what felt like just the right place. It took him a couple of days...Down by the river.He was driving along and when he passed the place where the rough gravel ways passed, the hair stood up on the back of his neck, and he knew.  It felt right.
It was swampland, untenanted, obviously flooded often, now left alone.  Not a house for a ways. Cypresses loomed like troubled souls off the sides of the old county gravel way that was crowned at the top and sloped downward like giving way...a man-made thing through the kind of place where the moccasin makes you watch your step, where the gators would look out of the filthy water with wary eyes.  But it was too cold for that now.
Not an icy cold, but a dank painful gnawing cold, and the sky was overcast, dark, ominous.  Like it might want to murder you but was content to sit off and wait a spell. 
Johnny found a little spot right handy to camp out in the truck.  There was a house there, covered in weeds.  The roof caved to abandonment, the old windows like empty eyes.

That first night he walked the little ways down to the crossroads.  He sat and waited, smoking some, with the fiddle on his lap.  There was nothing, nothing.
The second day turned colder, with a howling wind that rattled the rusted-out roof of the dead house, and a damp driving drizzle.  Damn, but it was cold.
He mostly stayed in his sleeping bag
He cooked food over a sterno can in the back of the truck with the cap vents open, and waited.
When it was midnight he dutifully returned to the crossroads; despite the rain, but no luck.

The third day, the overcast lightened a little, and the weather got a bit warmer.  The rain stopped.  Johnny was getting mighty sick of ramen and canned beans, but he knew he had to set it out.
...This time he showed up to the crossroads early with his good whiskey and his tobacco...and he was able to play.  His fingers, stiff from the cold, soon warmed up and he felt that familiar golden glow.
And then a presence.
Something stood there, blacker than blackest night.
Someone he'd met before.
********************************************************
Johnny poured the Devil a shot, pouring himself one too.
...A hand too dark to see took the Jack and the figure knocked it back.  He handed over a cigarette.  The figure managed to light the smoke on his own, and the cherry glowed.

"Well there, Johnny, and well-met again."  Said a man's voice sweet as honey."I see you've need to talk to me again."
"Devil-man," Johnny said,"I may be the best that's ever been, but some things just ain't meant for men.  This is one'a them."
"I know, my friend, I know."  A head nodded, indecipherably in the flowing dark."But I was under orders, as always."
The Devil took a good pull on his smoke, and then sighed.
"I trust you've been taking care of her?" He asked.
"Yessir, yessir,." Johnny replied. "Though I tried to harm her at the end.  Couldn't do it."
"That's because it wasn't made by a maker who wanted it harmed," the Devil said mildly. 
"Huh," Johnny said. 
Then, after a minute's thought, "You knew it was gonna wreck me, din't you."
"The lovely thing has wrecked before." The being replied."She's wrecked in many guises.  I knew she would do so." He paused. "I'm quite sorry," the Devil said.
The Devil took his smoke in one hand, poured himself another whiskey shot, knocked it back, then replaced the cigarette in an unseen mouth.
A hand extended. "Let me see that fiddle, my friend.  Let me see her."
Johnny handed over the fiddle, as a hand reached out to take it.  As the Devil touched the lovely, shining thing the shadows went away like they'd never been, and revealed was a many winged being of blinding glory, such that Johnny's eyes watered, but he could not look away, he could not...
A bow was extended of fire, and the being began to play...it was unearthly.  The watering of his eyes mixed with tears of joy at the music. It was music that wounded and healed all at once. It was like nothing Johnny had ever heard, or ever would again, and it was nothing...NOTHING that he could ever hope to play as good as.
Johnny was listening to the best that had ever been.

The being played the song to its' finish, and bowed a head made of fire.
"Thus I have played in my Father's house...long ago."  The being said.  The shadow covered over the light again...and the devil was gone, gone as if he'd never been...except for the cherry of the cigarette, winking like a little eye in the dark as it too disappeared.

[Left]

The finish by the end of the weekend, dammit.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

How'd I manage to miss this? Good stuff.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Nice to see you working on this again!

[Left]

part 7

The fiddle was gone...and Johnny had to sweat it out.
For a little while he still lived in his truck, and he'd wake up at night to find an invisible golden fiddle in his arms, tears streaming down his face.
It had been his life for the past three or so years, his love.  He felt desolate and hopeless at first from loss of it, like he'd never feel joy again.  Besides that, he'd never not had family before.  He had no family; no family he ever wanted to see again anyway.  He was a lone man, and lonely.

Times there were when he thought of going back to the crossroads, to beg the Devil for the return of the lovely thing.  Then sanity prevailed, and he knew the fiddle was gone.  Best it was so.

After what was a long month of empty wandering, Johnny managed to snag a construction gig outside of Nashville...It was for a small apartment building. 
By the time he'd finished, he'd saved enough to find himself a crappy month-to-month apartment of his own.
...And the jobs kept coming.
Johnny's luck had shifted.
He saved up.  He found himself a half-decent fiddle in a pawnshop.  He played out at some open mic nights... one night at The Bluebird.  A fella who'd just happened to be there talked to Johnny after his set.  It seemed the man needed a fill-in fiddler, their regular guy had a broke arm, and they had a few gigs booked.
Johnny was more than willing.  The exposure did him good; the pay didn't hurt either.  He began to be a sought-after player in Nashville....But he was hungry, and looking.

Amy was a lovely little readheaded sprite who could sing, and who loved him, and he loved her from when first he locked eyes with hers in that country bar...Amy drew many eyes, but had eyes for only Johnny...and Johnny was entranced, bought her a beer, was the perfect gentleman when he drove her home that night.
Not that he remained a gentleman for too long now...Amy became pregnant rather quickly. This was soon followed by Johnny doing the right thing and marrying her.  Not that he had to be coaxed.   Life alone was too hard  Amy had a good and giving heart. 
About six months after the wedding, Amy had a little girl with Amy's hair and Johnny's eyes...and when Johnny took that tiny little girl in his arms, his heart just melted. 
He stood there with Amy looking relieved in the hospital bed, and knew he was home.
He was home, now, and that home was a far, far finer  home than any money could have bought.


***********
Like Job, after his time of testing he was given in abundance.
In fact, Johnny became a church going man, getting up after a couple hours sleep to give praise, always tithing a tenth, like a Good Christian.  Eventually Amy and his wee Laura joined him in his devotions.
He never did say why he went, though, just did.
It might have been out of gratitude.
But  maybe he remembered that one thing Lucifer said?
" I was under orders, as always ."
Maybe it was a lie from the Father Of Lies.  Maybe it was the truth.

It's usually better to be safe than sorry in things.

[Left]

Next weekend, I get to start polishing and polishing and such...and the ending seems a tad lame, it may get rewrit.