Jasper Jones: A Short Story

James burst out of the wooden screen door of his farmhouse armed with a double-barreled shotgun, his black finger ready on the triggers and a primordial holler, “You son of a bitches! What have you done to my barn?” From the front porch of the farmhouse and across a small open plain of grass made damp by midnight dew, a barn cobbled together from warped boards and pieces of timber, and just big enough to store a cramped allotment of hay, field tools, a broken-down tractor, and a cantankerous panicking mule, stood alight. Flames screamed violently into the blackness of night, as though they were challenging the brightness of the stars. Trees that hung over the barn, and provided protection from the summer sun’s relentless rays, and reminded James of his wedding alter, now curled and cracked from the undeniable blaze.

“Get inside your house, monkey!”
“Get inside and then we’ll burn it down!”
“And once that’s down, you can join your wife and son!”
“Nigger!”
James cringed as the javelins plunged deep within his soul. When he was young, his father had told him that times may change, but ideals are traits handed down from daddy to son. He solemnly hoped that these kinds of traits would not exist in his lifetime.
Although he couldn’t be sure who all the men were, the short heavyset man’s gait, reminded James of his neighbor, Oliver, who lived about a mile down the gravel road.
“Oliver!” “Oliver is that you?” James boomed. Amid the chaos, the fat man briefly stopped and whipped his head around toward James.
“Jesus, why are you doing this