Death of a Shuckster

The ground was baked hard and the children were thin
 The faces of townsfolk were all but caved in
 So hot that they couldn't tell kith from their kin
 The rainmaker, full of hope, came rolling in
 And his mouth hollered promises, his eyes yelled relief
 And the folks gave all that they could give, except for all their grief
 Drunken on snake oil and glutted on greed
 That merciless shuckster harked his hollow wares
 But high above the valley, no cloud would take seed
 So in a torrent of red dust, he tried to flee there
 But the townsfolk fell upon him, their eyes were like ice
 And they split his guts from neck to flank in grim sacrifice
 Then as his body fell lifeless on that hardscrabble ground
 All bleary eyed and drunk on blood, the townsolk staggered back to town
 Above that parched valley, the clouds in the sky
 Like shuckster's blood clotted as it blackened and dried
 And perched on that firmament of heaven on high
 The black eyes of angels were peeled open wide
 And the heavens were rended with a deafening sound
 And the rain hammered deep in that drought bitten ground
 And a great wall of water through the valley did howl
 It washed away the people and their sins and their town