Robbie's Got A Gun
Words and Music: Pat Drummond
For Jessica Farmer. Dateline: Gympie, Queensland.
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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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