Death of a Shuckster Lyrics

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
when 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.
And as his body fell lifeless on that hardscrabble ground,
all bleary-eyed and drunk on blood, the townsfolk 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 on 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.