Let yer papaw tell ye a story.
Let me tell ya what I done.
I ain’t never told nobody,
but my ending has begun.
And if someone had a knowd it,
they’d a put me in the jail,
but the derned ol cancer’s got me.
Ain’t no reason I cain’t tell.

I was right about your age.
I was put near 12 years old.
And yer mamaw she was too,
and there was this old boy we knowed.
I reckon he was probably 16,
and he done a real bad thing
to your mamaw, and she told me,
and the memory still stings.
I won’t go into no details,
but I tell you it was bad,
and I knew he’d just keep on,
cause the mayor was his dad.
And the mayor and the sheriff,
they was kin some way or how.
So I knew I had to stop it,
and I had to stop it now.

So I took my little rifle.
was my little .22.
Cause I knowed he had one like it,
and he hunted with it too.
And I snuck up in the woods,
well before the light of day,
and I laid down there a waiting.
I knowed he was on his way.
So I heard some sticks a crunchin,
and I raised up my gun,
and a shot rung through the holler,
by the risin of the sun.

I grabbed up the empty shell,
and I took it home with me.
And I give it to your grandma
back in 1983.
She still has it round here somewhere,
and it might be yours someday.
And the rifle, it is yours.
Please don’t never give it ‘way.

I feel fire in my belly,
burning like the fire of hell,
but I know that I ain’t going there.
I know that very well. 
For the killing that I did
was a mix of hate and love,
and the Lord is gonna grab me up
and take me up above
to be with her.