I’m not a bad guy. I joined the Force because I wanted to take down bad guys. I left for the same reason. See, on the Force they don’t let you do nothing without ten kinds of paperwork. Then you finally take a guy down, and they let him go the next week. The way I do things now, there’s no red tape, but there’s no paycheck either. So I start taking on a few paying jobs. I figure bad guys mostly want to kill other bad guys. So they call me, I take care of it, I pay my bills.

Sometimes they just want me to rough a guy up a bit. “Breaking kneecaps,” that’s mostly just an expression, but a sock full of ball bearings, that’s absolutely real. I get sent to this guy’s apartment, I’m supposed to give him the once over, nothing too serious. I don’t know why, I don’t ask. I’m in this apartment, me and this guy, our business is completed you might say, and I look at his busted up stereo—it was real nice before I got there—and I see this album next to it still in the plastic. The cover shows some cops hauling off these bloody bodies with sheets on them—it looks badass.

This album is called Bleed Out, and it’s by some band called The Mountain Goats. I’ve never heard of ‘em, but I think, why not? I take it back to my place, put it on, and let’s just say this thing is right up my alley. This Darnielle guy, he gets a lot right. For a guy who’s probably never seen it except on late-night TV, he understands a lot about the job. But he gets some stuff wrong too, about people like me, trying to do our part, so I’m putting in my two cents.

Okay, right off, this song “Training Montage.” My line of work, I gotta stay in shape. This song got me to add two blocks to my morning run. It reminded me of when I first left the Force. There was this low-level punk who’d killed his old lady, made it look like an accident. I had nothing on the guy. So I decide I’m going to go over to his place and beat it out of him. One thing leads to another, and you get the second accidental death in the family that week. I thought about why I did it, and I kept coming back to that poor woman. So if this band comes to town, you bet I’m going to be there shouting along with everybody else:  “I’m doing this for revenge! I’m doing this for you!” And maybe it didn’t do that woman any good. She was already dead. But I got some real justice for once. That guy won’t mess with anyone ever again.

Now, the next song, “Mark on You,” this one reminds me of what I do now. Once you’ve been “marked” there’s no way around it—if I don’t kill you there’ll be a bigger, better, more expensive guy coming after me. I don’t get the bit about the swordsman though. Must be some movie thing. And no one trains anyone for this job, at least not in a gym or something. You have to come prepared. My first mark, that was my “training”—I had to get this hit or I was out. If I didn’t do it, I didn’t get paid, and the guy was gonna find someone else. I’m better now but I still do that guy’s jobs for cheap. You gotta remember who gave you your first shot.

“Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome” makes me think about these young guys who try to get into what I do. Unless you’re really, really good, you aren’t going to get rich doing this. And no one out here is handsome. The work is hard and it shows. You may die younger than other folks, but only after you’ve got a few real ugly scars, maybe after your nose is broken a few times. But some other parts of the song are real good. In this work you stay flexible and you stay independent because you’re doing it your way. And you have to stay undefeated—if you’re defeated out here, you’re dead.