Shovel and a Forty-Five

[good4somethingbum]

Shovel and a Forty-Five ©2014 Robert George BMI

Well, I’d spent a few days with my uncle down in White Plains
Then I hopped a morning bus and transferred to a night train
I was picked up at the station by my younger brother
And he said that something bad’d happened to our mother
And the mountain lightning bit the full moon to the marrow
And a black glove pulled a small spade from an old wheelbarrow

Fruit bats swarmed an old tree in a meadow
Like a cloud of bees around a hive
Then they took a limb above a shadow
With a shovel and a forty-five

Sheriff Tupper ate a plate of noodles mixed with meat sauce
His yard was a myst’ry world of fireflies and peat moss
And he gulped a Coke and gargled down those damn leftovers
Thankful that his wife still wasn’t back yet from Andover
Cos he’d heard my brother met me at the Amtrak station
And he thought there might an explosive confrontation

There’s a big hole in a lonely meadow
Waiting for cold vengeance to arrive
Winston smoke was curling from a shadow
With a shovel and a forty-five

Well, I’d grabbed a table at the tavern near the town square
It was dark n smoky as a demon’s underground lair
I was sittin’, plannin’…nursin’ on a Henry Weinhard’s
When that Sheriff busted in and threw my ass behind bars
And a wicked flock of nightbirds fled the old clock tower
When the hands found midnight and began to toll the hour

Then a figure left the foggy meadow
And it dropped a king-cab into drive
On the front seat right beside the shadow
Was a shovel and a forty-five

Sheriff Tupper knew he never shoulda touched our mother
He was always way more scared of me than my kid brother
So his charges were a buncha BS legal jargon
And he said if I left town then we could strike a bargain
But when he got home his sins became as clear as crystal
Cos his wife was waitin’ by the front gate with a pistol

And she took him to that ghostly meadow
And he wept and pleaded for his life
But he shed no light upon the shadow
With a shovel and a forty-five

As the pale moon rested on a dead oak
Like a skull up on a pike
She said she knew all about the kinda bargains he would strike

He’d got shit-faced and got tit-faced at some roadhouse nudie bar
And then he’d paid extra just to see her secret beauty mark
But the town’s too chicken shit to close that chicken shack
Cos there’s back room kick backs where the Sheriff’s kickin’ back

All his alibis and begging met with cheap sarcasm
And that hole before him hungered like a deep, dark chasm
Then the sour smell of week old meat sauce rode the night wind
Fruit bats filled the heavens and her boot heel rolled him right in
He was bound for Hades and the night above was fright’ning
When it snared his black soul in a dragnet of dry lightning

There’s a mound of cold dirt in the meadow
Patted solid by a sinner’s wife
None but eyes of midnight saw the shadow
With a shovel and a forty-five

Life and chance has taught me that in time
An unjust lock is its own key
And the morning deputy was glad to set me free

I went home and hugged my mom and thought of dark humanity
Talked with my kid brother of betrayal and insanity
Came back from the kitchen and I tossed him his first can of beer
And we toasted to a full life in our narrow span of years

But there’s nameless bones beneath a meadow
And a lawman’s widow’s set for life
O but in her nightmares there’s a shadow
With a shovel and a forty-five