What if the dead don’t have to stay dead?
How do we deal with tragedy so vast, and so systematic, so enshrined in our institutions? Percival Everett’s novel The Trees responds to that question by positing a world in which the past won’t stay buried. In Money, Mississippi (a place I had to look up to verify it’s reality, despite its imaginary qualities in this novel) the local cops are faced with a series of strange murders. This fictional version of Money is home to Carolyn Bryant, whose name you might recognize as the real life accuser of Emmett Till. Till was a child from Chicago, visiting a small town in Mississippi when Bryant accused him of making advances towards her in her store. When her husband and brother-in-law heard of the incident, they brutally murdered Till. Later, Bryant may have recanted her initial explanation of what happened (which wouldn’t be surprising if were not true, or vastly exaggerated, but nothing that took place in the store that day would justify the brutality that her husband and his brother engaged in as a response). In this story, Bryant lives with her son and daughter-in-law – as the story begins, her relatives are brutally murdered in strange ways. Perhaps the oddest thing about the crime scene is the presence of a second body- the corpse of a brutally murdered black man, holding the severed testicles of the more recently murdered white man. After the first murder, the cops take both bodies to the morgue – but the body of the unknown black male disappears. When this pattern is repeated twice, the local sheriff knows he needs some helps and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation (MBI) is called in.
Here we meet the true protagonists of the story – Ed and Jim, two Black MBI special detectives who receive at best a chilly welcome and at worst threats from the openly racist, n-word loving souls in Money. They discover an ally in the light skinned (so, passing) waitress (Dixie to white customers, Gertrude to those who know her). Gertrude introduces the detectives to Mama Z, who at over 100 has been keeping records of every lynching since her birth – there are a devastating amount of records to be kept. As Ed and Jim engage in the investigation, the bodies begin piling up – and the dead black men who have arrived strangely on the scene keep disappearing. Crimes like these begin happening all over the US, engaging the FBI. Special Agent Herberta (Herbie) Hind shows up and together with Ed and Jim they try to piece together just what is going on. They will ultimately be faced with as many questions as answers.
The novel is set in contemporary times, pre-pandemic but decidedly within the Trump era. There are intersections with so many events that we recognize – and historical resonance with other events that we might be tempted to see as the past. This book calls back to the past, more than echoing what took place – and asks us to really interrogate ourselves about any notion we have of justice. Who decides what is just? Does justice have any limits?
I loved this novel. There’s a blend of humor with the utter horror of the reality of lynching. Not all characters are presented with empathy – but should racists get a sympathetic re-write? There’s liberal use of the n-word in especially derogatory ways, some descriptions of brutality, but it did feel in keeping with the story itself. There’s some police-procedural elements (there’s definitely an investigation into a crime that keeps the story moving forward and ties all of the events together) but there’s also a bigger picture at play. It’s a story masterfully told, I’m definitely planning to dig into this author’s back catalog soon.
