Intro
Grandfather kept a ledger bound in cracked deer hide
Wrote debts in teeth and scar tissue, never one line lied
Said the coal camp paid in coughs before it paid in coin
Every name that owed him breath, he'd mark it and rejoin
Verse
He set bones for miners when the shaft roof caved in twice
Splint from a rail tie, whiskey standing in for ice
Paid in chickens, paid in silence, paid in a debt he'd keep
Wrote the sum in soot across the ledger while men'd sleep
Nineteen-forty, black lung took the man who owed him most
Grandfather crossed the debt out, said the dead don't need a ghost
Kept his tools in oilcloth, kept his patience in his palm
Set my father's collarbone the night the dam broke calm
Taught him early, every wound's a currency that's real
Pain's the only interest rate a poor man learns to feel
Mining company burned the records when the seam went dry
Grandfather kept his own, said paper outlives a lie
Thirty years of splints and stitches, thirty years of debt
Died with forty names uncrossed, the balance not been met
Left the ledger to my father, wrapped in tar and twine
Said the book don't close on us, it just moves down the line
Chorus
Everything gets paid in the bone ledger
Every scar's a receipt, every ache remembers
Write it in the marrow, sign it in the ash
Nobody leaves this life without they settling the tab
Everything gets paid in the bone ledger
Verse
Now the corner's my clinic, block's the only shaft I know
Same debts different currency, same interest when it's owed
Fronted product to a cousin, wrote it down inside my head
Ledger's in my memory now, no ink, no page instead
Watched a young boy learn the weight a favor comes to cost
Paid it back in loyalty the winter that his mama's lost
I collect on old accounts my grandfather never closed
Some debts skip a generation, land wherever blood still flows
Kept a scar above my eyebrow like a comma in the sum
Every stitch a punctuation mark for what's still owed and won
Never lent what I couldn't lose, never asked for what ain't fair
Learned that mercy's just a discount that the strong alone can spare
Watched the block turn ledger too, names crossed out too soon
W
