Well I met Jake and Jesse way up on the north-west coast,
they took me in and sheltered me when I was journeying in a small boat.
He was a tiny wiry weasel, and she was tall as a stork,
with watchful owl’s eyes, seen too many ghosts.

We were kin for an inning ‘cause we understood and chose isolation,
she to be with him, he to run from his addictions, me just to listen.
“She ain’t so pretty”, he’d say, “but none treat me so well”,
and it’s true that she carried him through while he waited for the codeine to kick in,
and it’s true that she carried him through.

He was a runner drummer, rodeo rider, broken matador of life,
a vet SAS, sent down holes with a knife,
bone crushing riding, rock & roll, and subterranean rivers of blood,
out here he licked his shell-shocked wounds and held on to his wife.

I drove Jesse to Vancouver to move the rest of their things,
and while I was loading up Jesse answered the telephone ringing.
She sat down, waved me to stop, her face as vacant as a mask,
“Jake is dead,” she said, “a bad batch of wine poisoned him.”

We moved the bed back in, had a drink, and lay on it side-by-side,
and while Jesse was a quiet woman, she spoke long that night.
Her mother tried to knife her in bed when she was only a child
and this was her third husband, the other two had died.

Jesse was a survivor, through fear, violence, thick and thin,
her only weapons her eyes, her silence, and her waiting,
but when I lay down to sleep that night a cold ghost slipped under my skin,
‘cause what she’d said wasn’t revelation, but confession,
what she’d said wasn’t revelation, but confession.
You see I lay wide awake all night, ‘cause I think she killed him.