Tom: G
G
Rainey Williams playground was the Mott Haven streets
C G
Where he ran past melted candles and flower wreaths
C G
Names and photos of young black faces
D G
Whose death and blood consecrated these places
G
Raineys mother said Rainey stay at my side
C G
For you are my blessing, you are my pride
C G
Its your love here that keeps my soul alive
D G
I want you to come home from school and stay inside
G
Rainey'd do his work and put his books away
C G
There was a channel showed a Western movie everyday
C G
Lynette brought him home books on the black cowboys of the Oklahoma range
D G
The Seminole scouts that fought the tribes of the Great Plains
C G
Summer come and the days grew long
C G
Rainey always had his mother's smile to depend on
C G
Along the street of stray bullets he made his way
C G C G
To the warmth of her arms at the end of each day
G
Come the fall, the rain flooded these homes
C G
Here in Ezekiel's valley of dry bones
C G
It fell hard and dark to the ground
D G
It fell without a sound
G
Lynette took up with a man whose business was the boulevard
C G
Whose smile was fixed in a face that was never off guard
C G
In the pipes 'neath the kitchen sink his secrets he kept
D G
In the day, behind drawn curtains in Lynette's bedroom he slept
C G
Then she got lost in the days
C G
The smile Raney depended on dusted away
C G
The arms that held him were no more his home
D G C
He lay at night his head pressed to her chest listening to the ghost in her
G
Bones
G
In the kitchen Rainey slipped his hand between the pipes
C
From a brown bag pulled five hundred dollar bills
G
And stuck it in his coat side
C G
Stood in the dark at his mother's bed
D G
Brushed her hair and kissed her eyes
G
In the twilight Rainey walked to the station on streets of stone
C G
Through Pennsylvania and Ohio his train drifted on
C G
Through the small towns of Indiana the big train crept
D G
As he lay his head back on the seat and slept
G
He awoke and the towns gave way to muddy fields of green
C G
Corn and cotton and endless nothin' in between
C G
Over the rutted hills of Oklahoma the red sun slipped and was gone
D G
The moon rose and stripped the earth to its bone
