Gun Metal Gray - Chuck Mead

I was a buck toothed, white trash, sleepy-eyed milltown kid

Nobody ever took a note of nothing that I ever did

I was sneaking a sip from my Daddy’s corn liquor still

Hiding out by the river with the moon and the whippoorwill

The leaves started cracklin' in the woods something coming my way

I ducked behind a willow and threw that whiskey bottle away

I heard a voice cuttin' through the darkness chilled me to the bone

Like a Sunday morning sermon spitting out fire and brimstone

I never saw what happened

I never saw a thing

It went down so fast in a flash

Of gun-metal gray

For the next thirty seconds the crickets didn’t even breathe

Then I bent back the branches ‘cause I knew I had to take a peek

I saw a big black boot on a shovel break the cold hard ground

And a man on a mission making sure there wasn’t nothing found

He never saw me looking

And I never said a thing

But that one night wrong and right

Turned gun-metal gray

Maybe I should’ve run straight to the Sheriff

And sung like a bird said I know what he done

The next day everybody’s talking ‘bout the preacher’s young wife

Skipping town with the deacon’s son

Twenty years later I’m the man no one claims to know

But when they need a little something they know exactly where to go

And as for the preacher he’s still packing them in the pews

Would they be singing Hallelujah if I told them everything I knew

We all got secrets to keep

We’ll all have hell to pay

Nothing ‘bout life is black and white

It’s gun-metal gray