Got out of prison back in '86 and I found a wife
Walked the clean and narrow
Just trying to stay out and stay alive
Got a job at the rendering plant,
it isn't going to make me rich
In the darkness before dinner comes
Sometimes I can feel the itch
Chorus:
I got a cold mind to go tripping across
that thin line
I'm sick of doing straight time
My uncle's at the evening table
Makes his living running hot cars
Slips me a hundred-dollar bill says
"Charlie, you best remember who your friends are"
chorus
Eight years in it feels like you're going to die
You get used to anything
Sooner or later it just becomes your life
Kitchen floor in the evening, tossing my
little babies high
Mary's smiling, but she's watching me out
of the corner of her eye
Seems you can't get any more than half free
Step out onto the front porch and suck
the cold air deep inside of me
chorus
In the basement, hunting gun and a hacksaw
Sip a beer and thirteen inches of barrel drop
to the floor
Come home in the evening, can't get the smell
from my hands
Lay my head down on the pillow and go drifting
off into foreign lands