This Is How You Pay

You watching, Jack?

This is your son
Hooked up to a respirator
Sitting in a nursing home
I wouldn't be a dog in

Nobody visits him
Nobody cares
Nobody drives to see him
Even though the whole family
Lives less than three miles away

He's going to die here, Jack
Old and alone
Just like you

Just like you died

But if one nurse
Or one doctor
Or anybody
Happens to walk by his door
And see him in here

He'll have one more person with him
When he dies
Than that boy had
That night by the lake

Hard to hold a memory here, isn't it Jack?
Hard to hold onto anything

But keep watching

This is your grandson, Jack

He's sitting in a recliner
Having his last drink of the evening
Waiting for his wife to come home
So he can berate her for forgetting
To get the oil changed

He's a pretty lousy drunk
And an even lousier husband
But that's okay, Jack
Because his wife isn't coming home
She finally got her guts
And hopped on a bus
And she didn't buy a round-trip ticket

He pops the tab on another beer
And the sound sends you back
To the snap of the bat on the skin
And the splash of the beer down his throat
Makes you think of that water
How calm it was
Right before the body hit the lake

You still watching, Jack?

Don't stop now

Can't hide back in the past
There aren't any corners back there anymore
All the dark spots are lighting up

Gotta step to the head of the line, Jack
Up here plain sight is just plain sight

And the sight is something, isn't it?

This is your great-grandson
Sitting in juvie
Waiting to hear about that car
That he stole

And the girl whose face he bashed in
When she didn't want to give up the car
That her daddy bought her

Guess that sort of thing runs in the family
Doesn't it Jack?

Oh, here's your great-granddaughter
Pregnant again, at seventeen
Isn't that something?

Think that kid might have a chance, Jack?
The first one was born with learning deficiencies
And will wind up in a special home
By the time he's three
Because your great-granddaughter just can't handle him

But maybe the kid inside her will do better
He'll have more of a chance than that boy
The one you saw kissing a white girl
Out by the depot

The one you thought had to pay

Well he paid, Jack
Didn't he?

And all this, Jack

The isolation
The infirmity
The ignorance

It trickles, Jack
It trickles right on down

Down to the last hair
On your great-great grandson's head

This, Jack

This is how you pay