perfidy

The Onion has a pretty good featurette on songs that work as stories. I don't know all their choices, but the ones I do know are top notch. A couple of my personal favorites, not on the list, are "Can You Fly" by Freedy Johnston, which is about a farmer and his son who find an angel lying bleeding in their field, "Wreck of the Old 97," which by now has transcended everything to become part of the American DNA, and "Poncho and Lefty" as written by Townes van Zandt.

That last one's just amazing. Let's look at the lyrics.

Livin' on the road my friend, was gonna keep you free and clean
And now you wear your skin like iron, and your breath is hard as kerosene
Weren't you mamma's only boy, her favorite one it seems
She began to cry when you said, goodbye, and sank into your dreams

Poncho was a bandit boy, his horse was fast as polished steel
He wore his gun outside his pants, for all the honest world to feel
Poncho met his match, you know, on the deserts down in Mexico
Nobody heard his dyin' words, but that's the way it goes

All the Federales say
They could have had him any day
They only let him slip away
Out of kindness I suppose

Lefty he can't sing the blues, all night long like he used to
The dust that Poncho bit down south, ended up in Lefty's mouth
The day they lay poor Poncho low, Lefty split for Ohio
And where he got the bread to go, there ain't nobody knows

All the Federales say
They could have had him any day
They only let him slip away
Out of kindness I suppose

The poets tell how Poncho fell, and Lefty's livin' in cheap hotels
The desert's quiet and Cleveland's cold, and so the story ends we're told
Poncho needs your prayers, it's true, but save a few for Lefty too
He only did what he had to do, and now he's growin' old

All the Federales, say
They could have had him any day
They only let him run so long
Out of kindness I suppose

A few grey Federales say
They could have had him any day
They only let him go wrong
Out of kindness I suppose

The way I see it, the narrator of this song is some middle-aged guy who's seen it all, probably missing a finger or two. He's talking to some 22 year old punk he's known since he was a kid who thinks he's hot shit and is bragging about how he's gonna knock over the mail stage or something, he and this other guy you see, this real tough son of a bitch. And our narrator sighs, kicks back, and tells him all about how bulletproof Poncho thought he was, how badass Lefty thought he was riding with Poncho, and how he was there that day when they laid Poncho low, and saw Lefty piss himself behind a rock, then crawl out as the Feds closed in, snatch the moneybag, and light out for God only knows where. And down through the years, word has gotten back to Colorado how so and so saw Lefty one December in a bar in Cleveland, looking like shit and still waiting for the hammer to fall, with the money long drunk up and all the good parts of his life behind him. And then our narrator gets up, tosses a buck on the table, and leaves the punk kid to contemplate whether any deed is worth a life spent hiding out in Cleveland.

[cue Paul Hogan....] Now that's a knife.