The Long Arm Of Justice - Gino Vannelli

It was a high summer night along the Ouachita

Where in a town named Mammoth Hill

A boy was found at Times Picayune said

Left headless by the cotton gin mill

John Law was slow so the road ran free

From the swamps of Louisiana to the hills of Tennessee

Then on to the Carolines where it brought hard times

To many a family

One Otis Ray Stone weren’t nobody’s fool

He had the look of a righteous man

By day he plied his trade as a teacher

While by night getting blood on his hands

For thirty five years running high on the loose

Two steps ahead of the hangman’s noose

Indeed, it seemed Otis Ray Stone would never atone

For what he done to many a poor youth

Yet the long arm of justice reaches far

From the banks of the Ouachita to the highest star

Like the hour hand on the wall

Like a snail creeping at a dead crawl

One fine day in some mysterious way

Justice finds us all

It finds us all

Many years hence on a Death Valley Road

While jackin' up his broke-down car

Came hell on wheels that left Otis Ray

Lying flat on the hot burnin' tar

For three long days, not a drop on his tongue

Suffering every crawler 'neath the desert sun

And old Otis Ray screamed while a crow picked his eyes clean

Before his dying was done

The long arm of justice reaches far

From the banks of the Ouachita to the highest star

Like the hour hand on the wall

Like a snail creeping at a dead crawl

One fine day in some mysterious way

Justice finds us all

Now, the mortal remains of Otis Ray Stone

Were never made manifest

'Cause what a crow had done to both his eyes

Ten buzzards did to the rest

And all that was, was a blot on the land

A heap of grey dust in the shape of a man

And the last of Otis Ray was finally swept away

By the blowing sand