The Rain Came In

They'd planned to hang him from the tree. But it was looking like rain, and didn't nobody want to be lynching a Jew in the rain. So they took him on inside the barn.

It wasn't a working barn. Hadn't been for a while. All the livestock had been sold off long time ago. Now wasn't nothing in it but some trash and some falling-apart hay bales stacked behind an old hand-start John Deere from the 1940s and a rusted, broken disk harrow. But the rafters was sturdy and the tin roof would keep out the rain.

He'd molested a young Christian girl, is what they said. Didn't want to take it to the police. That'd just bring embarrassment down on that poor child and her family. Best to handle it themselves. Besides, a Jew from up north'd just hire hisself a lawyer and wangle his way out of it. In a way, they said, a Jew doing it was worse than a nigger doing it. Nigger didn't know no better. Nigger just an animal, is what they said. A Jew, though, a Jew was clever. A Jew, they said, knew what he was doing and folks had to be held accountable when they done wrong.

They passed around a bottle, lit up some cigars. The rain came down hard on that tin roof.