[Intro: tape click, chair creak, guitar] [Verse 1] Harris should have gone, he was thirty-four, Twelve years in the Regiment, he could climb any wall, Johnny had a bad hip and a plate in his side, And I said Johnny's name. That's all. [Chorus] It wasn't luck. I sent him. I've told it every way a man can tell it. It wasn't luck. [Verse 2] He grinned that big Detroit grin in the snow, He said, "Sarge, I always go first," And I gave him the stick of Black Jack I'd carried seven years from Savannah in my shirt. [Verse 3] He chewed it like a piece of a tire, And he folded the wrapper, the way he used to do, He closed my fingers over it, And he said, "Don't eat it all at once." [Chorus] It wasn't luck. I sent him. I've told it every way a man can tell it. It wasn't luck. [Verse 4] Two clicks at the door, two clicks on the wall, Two clicks at the window, and the light was on, Then every light in that monastery came on at once, And Harris lay on top of me, saying, "You can't." [Verse 5: slower] The bell rang and rang, and then it was quiet, And the radio made a sound through the static: Three notes, very slow, like a man without much air, And I held down the button, and I whistled back. [Bridge: spoken] Walter came on the radio. He said, "Tom." That was the last time anybody called me Tom. "Tom. He's gone. You know he's gone." Three days later I opened my hand. [Final Chorus] It wasn't luck. I sent him. I've made it a paperback, I've made it the dice, It was me on that ridge. I said his name. [Outro: three whistled notes, faint and slow, tape stops] [End]
