[SFX: play sound of distant train whistle]
(Intro) (softly sung)
"Grandma used to pull me up on her lap when the fireflies came out,
rock me slow and paint me pictures of the girl she used to be—
laughing in a garden, ribbons in her hair, waiting for a kiss—
then her eyes would dim: 'But there's another story, child,
the one about Bostyaan's Bridge, when the train don't come home...'"
(Verse 1)
'Twas the twenty-seventh of August, eighteen ninety-one,
supper still warm, waiting by the door.
Grandpa kissed me goodbye in the August sun,
said, "I'll be home before dark, my beautiful rose."
He boarded Old Number Nine with a wave and a smile,
never knowing the trestle would give,
never knowing the river ran hungry and wild—
twenty-three souls with so much left to live.
(Verse 2)
He'd bring me a ribbon from every town he'd see,
tie it in my hair like summer lace.
I've kept every one in a cedar box by me,
red ones, blue ones, faded to no color at all.
When the nights got too heavy I'd open it and cry,
let the colors fall across my quilt,
pretending he was coming home one more time,
pretending love could fill what the river had spilled.
(Chorus)
Oh, the scream of the whistle still wakes me at night,
though it's been more summers than I can count.
I still reach for a hand that's long gone from sight
and whisper his name like he's opening a door.
Twenty-three souls went down with Old Number Nine,
but only one ever came home in my dreams every time.
(Bridge) (soft, almost spoken over a single trembling chord)
She told me, "Child, love ain't the loud thing they sing about;
it's the quiet that stays when the singing is done.
It's a porch swing still rocking though nobody's in it now,
and a ribbon you can't bear to give anyone."
(Last Verse) (barely above a whisper, voice cracking)
So I sing for my grandma who sang for her man,
for the train that still falls in the dark of her mind.
Now I'm the one rocking where she once sat,
telling my babies what love leaves behind.
(Outro) (whispered, breaking)
I opened her cedar box yesterday—
saw the prettiest ribbon I'd ever known.
With a note from 27 August 1891,
that read, "You'll always be my one and only... my beautiful Rose."
(A single tear-stained guitar note)
(Distant train whistle fades into silence)
