Robbie's Got A Gun
Words and Music: Pat Drummond
For Jessica Farmer. Dateline: Gympie,
Queensland.
Suicide, is now
emerging as a major men's issue. Recent statistics in Australia show
that men are now eight times more likely to kill themselves than
women are. In 1995, the Gympie Country Music Muster raised some
$80,000 to identify those youths most at risk from suicide in rural
areas. I left the Cedar Grove State Forest several days after most
of the fans had gone home. Wandering down into Gympie, I picked up,
as is my habit, a copy of the local paper. Imagine my shock to find
that, just a few miles from the festival site, one Jessica Farmer had
been murdered by her son, who had subsequently committed suicide.
This song is for the women and children who live in fear of the men
they love; and for those men who also live in fear of the widening
gulf between their own capacities to provide; and the impossible
expectations instilled in them by the society of women that raised
them.
Jessie's scared. You can see it in her eyes if
you go out to Robbie's place.
She won't say it to you but that look is on her
face.
She's just so damned relieved to see somebody
round the place;
Just to know you're there.
Jessie's scared.
She'll do anything at all these days to stay out
of a fight.
She won't argue with him even when she knows she's
right.
Discretion is the better part so just turn out the
light and say your prayers.
Chorus: Like a black snake in the closet, It's
peering through the lock
Sometimes he'll go for days and when she thinks
that he's forgotten
She'll find him cleaning and staring at the sun.
Telling it that something must be done
and holding it the way she used to hold him.
Robbie's got a gun
Jessie's scared. Things have gone from bad to
worse these last few years.
Any chance they had of holding on has disappeared.
Robbie's not the kind of boy to shed too many
tears
but she knows they're there.
She's a country girl who grew up used to guns on
farms.
She can quote you verse and chapter of the right
to arms
but there's something in his eyes that's setting
off alarms and only she can see.
She hears Shooter's Party talking on the
ABC;
Says the the right to have our guns is what will
make us free.
Robbie laughs and Jessie whispers to her cup of
tea,
"I'm not free, I'm not free, Don't try to tell me
this is free!"
Jessie's scared. She can hear it calling to
him
from the cupboard near the stairs.
Waiting for a final crazy moment of despair
Promising an end to all the struggle and the care.
Chorus:
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