testament

He made his will this morning. The chief chattel – an aged violin. The children had been fighting over the worn out piece of wood since the winter his lungs closed up. When he thought he was gonna die and just about said so.

“I don’t want nothin else but daddy’s fiddle.” His daughter was a bossy, blue-eyed woman who liked to rest her chin on her chest when she spoke. “You can have all what’s left. But I want that fiddle!” She had a habit of sucking all the air from a room… just so she could blow it back out again.

“Now Lynnie, you know I’m the son.” His boy was blond before he was bald. Before he had two boys and a will of his own. “Go on and ask your preacher if it ain’t the sons who get the ‘heritance.” A loud laughing man who smiled and talked a lot and was just as light hearted as his sister wasn’t. “I’ll tell you what…if you’re real nice I might rent you some garden space for your beetroot.”

Neither of them were getting the fiddle.

He’d spent most his life staying out from between people and their arguing and he didn’t see why dying had to change it any. Nope. They’d both just have to do without. They wouldn’t like it. Not one bit. But the body who brought the stringed thing home from the Goodwill would.