Starlight and the Cotton

A one horse town on a dead-end road down the Georgia line.
Living was a struggle back in nineteen thirty-nine.
A cruel man and his pretty wife barely getting by.
Whisky as his only friend, won’t the misery ever end and wishing he could die.

As an angry man is wont to do, his violence was a stirring.
His young bride would take the brunt of all that was occurring.
Bruises and a broken heart were all she had to show.
But that gal won’t take no guff and as her man was getting rough she knew he had to go.

Chorus:
His body lays there in the ground, cold and near forgotten.
No one knows what became of him but the starlight and the cotton.

Her brother was a preacher man of gentle disposition.
Working with the poor at the local gospel mission.
At her word he saw red and fell in with the Devil.
Mercy then could not be found, he’d put that rascal in the ground and do what he was able.

On a moonless night, though the stars were bright in a field a-sway with cotton.
The preacher came upon the man he was set to killin’.
As he went to strike him down and take his sorry life.
He found the man already dead, his sister struck him in the head and killed him with her knife.

Chorus