Confederate Notes (Wallpaper)

Lyrics

The news came up the road with the mud of early spring.
April, eighteen sixty-five.
Didn't hear no bells ring.
Just a rider on a tired horse, said Appomattox was the name.
And a stack of Richmond treasury notes would never be the same.
Sat on the porch, thumbed the edges.
Felt the weight change in my hand.
From a down payment on a piece of bottom land...
To just paper.
Faded green and brown.
The sound of a whole world burning down.

And what do you do with a dead man's promise?
What do you do with a paper ghost?
Some folks made it wallpaper, a bitter kind of boast.
Some folks locked it in the attic, for the dust to love the most.
Yeah, some folks made it wallpaper.
And some folks just gave up the ghost.

There's Ceres on the ten-dollar bill, goddess of the grain.
Staring out with dead stone eyes in the acid-smelling rain.
And there's Jefferson Davis, looking proud and grim.
Printed on the cheapest paper, right out to the ragged rim.
"Payable to the bearer..." six months after the peace.
Well, the peace has come like a thief, my friend.
And all the value's ceased.

So what do you do with a dead man's promise?
What do you do with a paper ghost?
Some folks made it wallpaper, a bitter kind of boast.
Some folks locked it in the attic, for the dust to love the most.
Yeah, some folks made it wallpaper.
And some folks just gave up the ghost.

I knew a man, he mixed the flour and water in a pail.
Said it was cheaper than whitewash, this story of a fail.
He smoothed the bills over the cracks, one by one by one.
Covered up the whole damn wall before the day was done.
And his wife, she took her share, tied it up with a piece of twine.
Put it in a cedar box, said "This was yours and mine."
And she climbed the ladder to the dark.
And left it up there with the heat.
The silent rustle of a long defeat.

A room papered in surrender.
A box full of belief.
Just the smell of old paper.
And the quiet of the grief.