Sixty days or sixty dollars
My woman yells at me thought the prison bars, asking when I’m coming home, and if not soon, she won’t be there.
She’s always harping on me when I can’t
do anything about a situation.
My fists are so tight around the bars she can see what I’m thinking and for the
first time shuts her mouth, waits a minute, then more calmly says, “I just
gotta know.”
I see the fear in her eyes, as if she is picturing me with my hands around her throat instead of the bars.
I tell her I’ll be out when ever the sheriff makes up his mind to set me free.
The grim lawman holds a grudge against me because even dead drunk I whipped him, and in front of his deputies no less.
She shouts that ain’t good enough since she’s got kids to feed and I ain’t helping feed them by my lying around in jail
I tell her to get and wait for me, and if she don’t wait I’ll know where to find her.
That makes her blush. She tells me she ain’t taking up with Robert no more, something we both know is a lie, since she always preferred him to me, taking to my bend only when I showed I could provide for her better than he could, providing I stayed sober enough to actually do it.
She tells me that if I’m throwing her away like this she might as well go to Robert’s bed.
“He might not provide as much as you can,” she says, “But he don’t spend as much time in jail as you do neither.”
“You got off to him and I’ll kill you both when I get out,” I say, though we both know I’ve said as much before and never done it.
It’s all talk.
Just like the sheriff is talk in telling me I got to give him sixty dollars or serve sixty days in jail.
Even if I had sixty dollars, I wouldn’t give it to him, and would rather see my woman in another man’s arms than let that tin badge rob me.
So here I am, three square meals for sixty days, planning to kill somebody when I get out, if not her or Robert than the sheriff or one of his deputies.
Sometimes a man’s gotta do what I man’s gotta do, just to prove he ain’t just full of talk. even if folks go and hang him for it.