The Trees by Percival Everett

Graywolf Press, 288 pages, $16 (c2021)

Talk about unexpected! I expected a mystery and I got a mystery, but it wasn’t the one I could have envisioned in a million years. Make that two million years.

A White S***head Redneck Peckerwood has been murdered in Money, Mississippi. He has barbed wire wrapped around his neck. He is (ahem, polite euphemism) mutilated. Nearby is a corpse of a Black man holding onto the Peckerwood’s missing pieces. They killed each other maybe? Later it is determined the dead Black man has been dead a lot longer than the Peckerwood. The hunt is on. Then the corpse of the Black man disappears from the coroner’s refrigerator. The coroner is a sloppy White S***head Redneck Peckerwood, so maybe it was just an unfortunate oversight. Then a second WSRP is murdered and, oo-wee, there’s the same Black corpse again, this time holding onto the new WSRP’s pieces.

My thoughts may have roamed to zombies. I thought, okay, that’ll do as well. Southern mystery mutated into a horror story. Yay.

Called to solve the mysteries are Mississippi Bureau of Investigation agents, Ed Morgan and Jim Davis, because Money Sheriff Jetty is dumbfounded, confounded, and unmoored. Plus, he might be a WSRP himself. His deputies certainly are. Among the conversations reported by the author among the pertinent white locals is a liberal use of the N-word. Morgan and Davis are Black. No offense, one of the deputies says at one point after a slip-o-the-tongue. None taken, the agent deadpans.

Hey, more than one person notes, the Black corpse looks vaguely like Emmett Till. And what were the names of the deceased WSRPs? Milam and Brady.

Let’s step aside a moment for some history. In 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till of Chicago was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi. The white woman at the cash register of the store Emmett entered said he spoke inappropriately to her. She also may have alleged inappropriate physical contact by Till. Later, the woman’s husband, Roy Bryant, and J.W. Milam (and probably others) took Emmett from his relatives’ home and tortured and murdered him. Neither Bryant nor Milam were held to account for their actions. And that’s the way it was.

In real-life, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant are long dead, but Carolyn Bryant, the woman at the register who started the whole series of actions that led to Emmett’s death, is still alive. According to Timothy B. Tyson, the author of a book about Emmett Till’s murder, Carolyn admitted to him that Emmett had done nothing to her. It was a lie that he had verbally or physically assaulted her.

Back to the book, which is set in modern times. A fictionalized version of Carolyn Bryant briefly appears as a character in “The Trees.” She is the first to note the connection between herself and the dead men, and is afraid whatever came for them will also come for her.

Agents Morgan and Davis shake their heads, join forces with an FBI agent, Herberta (“Herbie,” curse her parents) Hind, and plod forward to make what they can of the deaths and the disappearing Black corpse.

It is somewhere around here that I stopped believing this was going to be a typical murder mystery or horror book. How a horror book can be “typical,” I don’t know, since there are no holds barred in a horror story, but nevertheless, there I was.

Are you white and believe you are superior to non-whites? Are you a believer in the politics of Donald Trump? Are you someone who thinks you aren’t a racist, but like Amy Cooper (the Central Park dog walker and alarmist), you have an unacknowledged underlying psychopathy? If yes, then this book is probably not for you. The book points a harsh finger at people with those beliefs.

The concluding events come fast and furious. The lesson author Percival Everett has for his readers is not how to deconstruct a murder but how to stare a historical shame in the face. You may have come for the fiction, but you will stay for the truth.

Also stay to appreciate how the characters’ names get weirder and weirder. For instance: Helvetica Quip, The Doctor Reverend (neither of which is true) Cad Fondle (and his wife, Fancel), Damon Thruff, Chester Hobnobber, Ho Chi Minh, and many more. Jim Davis and Ed Morgan are purposely bland in contrast.

One of the thoughts that bubbled in my head about a quarter of the way through the book were the lyrics of the song, “Strange Fruit,” once upon a time banned from airplay — maybe still banned, I don’t know. The version sung by Billie Holiday is haunting. I think that thought was influenced by the book’s title. Also, the fictional Bryant and Milam victims are part of Emmett Till’s killers’ fictional family tree. Whatever. Hold that thought in your head should you continue through to the end.