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