Ledger of the Longships

Intro

Ledger's kept in callus, every entry's red and old

Grandfather's grandfather's name carved in the cold

They don't print it in no book, but the debt gets passed along

Survival's just arithmetic, endurance is the song

Verse 1

Started on the third shift when the factory ran all night

Twelve-hour stretches, sweat pooling under light

Quota written on the wall in numbers nobody can miss

Miss one and the line stops, and the line don't forgive a skip

Rent was due on Tuesday, baby coming Thursday week

So he doubled up the hours till his vision went weak

Machine took three fingers on a Friday afternoon

Doctor said come back in six weeks, he was back in four

Floor supervisor asked him how he planned to work the press

One hand tied behind him, he just nodded at his chest

Said I got two palms left and a reason that runs deep

Every number on that wall's a number that I keep

Chorus

This is the ledger of the longships, debt paid in blood and time

Every scar's a line item, every night a reason why

This is the ledger of the longships, don't forget the price

What they owe us, what we carry, what we leave behind

Verse 2

Twenty years that way, the fingers never grew back straight

Thumb like a question mark, but he never missed a gate

Got promoted to the floor, started training up the young

Showed them how to read the rhythm, how to move before it sung

Showed them how to keep their heads when the quota's climbing up

How to swallow down the panic, how to drink from an empty cup

Then the plant shut down on a Tuesday, just a memo on the door

Thirty years of perfect attendance, still they pushed him to the floor

No pension, no severance, no ceremony, no goodbye

Just a handshake from a man who couldn't look him in the eye

He walked out through the parking lot at fifty-three years old

Body made of profit, but the profit wasn't gold

Chorus

This is the ledger of the longships, debt paid in blood and time

Every scar's a line item, every night a reason why

This is the ledger of the longships, don't forget the price

What they owe us, what we carry, what we leave behind

Verse 3

Now he sits and teaches kids what no school's gonna say

How to count in sacrifice, how to measure what you pay

How to know the difference between broken and between bent

How to read the ledger written in the money that you spent

Got two grandkids coming up, they ask about his hand

Why it moves like rhythm when he tries to make a stand

He says this is the letter that the old men send ahead

This is how we tell them that we survived instead

The factory's a apartment complex, got a Starbucks on the ground

Where the furnace used to echo with the most beautiful sound

Progress look like erasing, but the debt remain the same

Someone's gotta carry it, someone's gotta say their name

Outro

Ledger's kept in callus, every entry's red and old

What we paid with, what we're owed, the story that gets told

This is the ledger of the longships, written in the bone