What She Had To

Album:Mountains

I was three years old

sitting in the seat of a Greyhound bus

My brother and me,

Mama's tears falling like a Carolina rain

Cause she pulled out a gun the night before

Said he ain't gonna drink and hit me no more

She pulled the trigger on my father

in a moment's rain

Thank God that gun wasn't loaded

Didn't know where to go

or how she'd survive

Didn't care, anywhere

but there that night

Now she held her babies tight

And we rode through the cold of the midnight blue

She was scared, she was broke

But all she knew was she was gonna do

What she had to

She got her a job in a trailer out west

It wasn't much but she was doing her best

Putting food on the table for her family

But then one day I came home from school

My Mama was crying alone in her room

She said, I lost my job

and we're gonna lose the trailer too

And she got that volkswagon loaded

Didn't know where to go

or how she'd survive

Didn't care, anywhere

but there that night

She held her babies tight

And we rode through the cold of the midnight blue

She was scared, she was broke

But all she knew was she was gonna do

What she had to

Whenever things go wrong in my life

I just think of her,

what it took that night

To get on that bus in a Carolina rain

Didn't know where to go

or how she'd survive

Didn't care, anywhere

but there that night

She held her babies tight

held her babies

And we rode through the cold of the midnight blue

She was scared, she was broke

But all she knew was she was gonna do

What she had to

What she had to she had

Yeah, yeah, ooooh,

what she had to

What she had to