Every Outlaw Saw a Stranger (Bass Reeves)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Born into slavery
in Crawford County, Arkansas —
the property of a man
whose name history
has not bothered to preserve
because history finally learned
which name in this sentence
was worth keeping
You escaped during the Civil War
and lived with the Creek
and the Seminole
in Indian Territory
where you learned Cherokee
and Muskogee
and the particular grammar
of a landscape
that punishes anyone
who doesn't read it fluently

[Verse 2]
Judge Isaac Parker —
the Hanging Judge of Fort Smith —
gave you a badge in 1875
and the badge
weighed less than the pistol
but authorized more
You rode the territories
for thirty-two years
and arrested over three thousand people
and killed fourteen
and were never wounded once
which is a statistic
that tastes like the powder residue
on the inside of a saddle holster
worn so long
the sweat has seasoned the grain
into something
between lumber and skin

[Chorus]
You were a master of disguise —
you dressed as a farmer,
a preacher, a drifter,
a cowboy, a beggar,
an old man in a cart
with his hat pulled low
You changed the body's silhouette
the way a cuttlefish
changes its pigment:
not by adding
but by persuading
the surface to forget
what it looked like before
Two thousand arrests —
more than any
U.S. marshal in history —
and the outlaws
never described the same man twice
because you never
were the same man twice
and the hat
was always different

[Verse 3]
You arrested your own son
for murder in 1902 —
rode out with the warrant
the way you rode out
with every other warrant:
on a horse,
with the badge,
without hesitation
The newspapers
expected you to refuse
but refusing
was not a structure
your vertebral column
had ever been asked to support
You said:
the law is the law
which sounds simple
until you are
the one saying it
about the one
you made

[Outro]
You died in 1910
and they buried you in Muskogee
and for a hundred years
nobody outside the territory
knew your name
The Lone Ranger
borrowed your story
and painted it white
and the painted version
rode through the century
while the original
sat in an unmarked plot
in Oklahoma
Not anymore —
the name is coming back
the way you used to come back
from the territories:
slowly, carrying everyone
who thought
they could outrun it