The Trees: A Novel

RISE

1

Money, Mississippi, looks exactly like it sounds. Named in that persistent Southern tradition of irony and with the attendant tradition of nescience, the name becomes slightly sad, a marker of self-conscious ignorance that might as well be embraced because, let’s face it, it isn’t going away.

Just outside Money, there was what might have loosely been considered a suburb, perhaps even called a neighborhood, a not-so-small collection of vinyl-sided, split-level ranch and shotgun houses called, unofficially, Small Change. In one of the dying grass backyards, around the fraying edges of an empty aboveground pool, one adorned with faded mermaids, a small family gathering was happening. The gathering was neither festive nor special, but usual.

It was the home of Wheat Bryant and his wife, Charlene. Wheat was between jobs, was constantly, ever, always between jobs. Charlene was always quick to point out that the word between usually suggested something at either end, two somethings, or destinations, and that Wheat had held only one job in his whole life, so he wasn’t between anything. Charlene worked as a receptionist at the Money Tractor Exchange J. Edgar Price Proprietor (the official business name, no commas), for both sales and service, though the business had not exchanged many tractors of late, or even repaired many. Times were hard in and around the town of Money. Charlene always wore a yellow halter top the same color as her dyed and poofed hair, and she did this because it made Wheat angry. Wheat chain-drank cans of Falstaff beer and chain-smoked Virginia Slims cigarettes, claiming to be one of those feminists because he did, telling his children that the drinks were necessary to keep his big belly properly inflated, and the smokes were important to his bowel regularity.

When outside, Wheat’s mother—Granny Carolyn, or Granny C—wheeled herself around in one of those wide-tired electric buggies from Sam’s Club. It was not simply like the buggies from Sam’s Club; it was, in fact, permanently borrowed from the Sam’s Club down in Greenwood. It was red and had white letters that spelled am’s Clu. The hardworking electric motor emitted a constant, loud whir that made conversation with the old woman more than a bit of a challenge.

Granny C always looked a little sad. And why not? Wheat was her son. Charlene hated the woman nearly as much as she hated Wheat, but never showed it; she was an old woman, and in the South you respect your elders. Her four grandchildren, three years to ten, looked nothing like each other, but couldn’t possibly have belonged anywhere else or to anyone else. They called their father by his first name, and they called their mother Hot Mama Yeller, the CB handle she used when she chatted with truckers late at night after the family was asleep, and occasionally while she cooked.

That CB chatter made Wheat angry, partly because it reminded him of the one job he’d had: driving a semitrailer truck full of fruits and vegetables for the Piggly Wiggly chain of grocery markets. He lost that job when he fell asleep and drove his truck off the Tallahatchie Bridge. Not completely off, as the cab dangled over the Little Tallahatchie River for many hours before he was rescued. He was saved by climbing into the bucket of an excavator brought over from Leflore. He might actually have held on to his job had the truck not held on, had simply and quickly plunged immediately and anticlimactically off the bridge and into the muddy river below. But as it happened, there was ample time for the story to blow up and show up on CNN and Fox and YouTube, repeated every twelve minutes and going viral. The killing image was the clip of some forty empty cans of Falstaff beer spilling from the cab and raining into the current below. Even that might not have been so bad had he not been clutching a can in his fat fist as he climbed through the teeth off the excavator bucket.

Also at the gathering was Granny C’s brother’s youngest boy, Junior Junior. His father, J. W. Milam, was called Junior, and so his son was Junior Junior, never J. Junior, never Junior J., never J. J., but Junior Junior. The older, called Just Junior after the birth of his son, had died of the cancer as Granny C called it some ten years earlier. He passed away within a month of Roy, her husband and Wheat’s daddy. She considered it somehow important that they died of the same thing.

Granny C, ain’t you hot in that ridiculous hat? Charlene shouted at the old woman over the whir of her buggy.

What say?

I mean, that hat ain’t even straw. It’s like a vinyl tarp or something. And it ain’t got no breathing holes in it.

What?

She cain’t hear you, Hot Mama Yeller, her ten-year-old said. She cain’t hear nothing. She’s deaf as a post.

Hell, Lulabelle, I know that. But you cain’t say I didn’t tell her about that hat when she up and keels over from heatstroke. She looked down at Granny C again. And that contraption she rolls around in gets all hot too. That makes you even hotter! she yelled at the woman. How does she keep living? That’s what I want to know.

Leave my mama alone, Wheat said, half-laughing. He might have been half-laughing. Who could tell? His mouth was twisted in a permanent lopsided sneer. Many believed he’d suffered a mild stroke while eating ribs months before.

She’s wearing that ridiculous hot hat again, Charlene said. Gonna make herself sick.

So? She don’t mind. The hell you care, anyway? Wheat said.

Junior Junior screwed the cap back onto his paper bag–wrapped bottle and said, Why the fuck y’all ain’t got no water in this pool?

Damn thing leaks, Wheat said. Got a crack in the wall from where Mavis Dill fell into the side of it with her fat ass. She weren’t even tryin’ to go swimming, just walkin’ by and fell on it.

How did she manage to fall?

She’s just fat, Junior Junior, Charlene said. The load gets leanin’ one way and that’s the way it’s gotta go. Gravity. Wheat can tell you all about that. Ain’t that right, Wheat? You know all about gravity.

Fuck you, Wheat said.

I won’t have that kind of talk around my grands, Granny C said.

And how the hell did she hear that? Charlene said. She cain’t hear screaming, but she can hear that.

I hear plenty, the old woman said. Don’t I hear plenty, Lulabelle?

Y’all sure do, the girl said. She had climbed onto her grandmother’s lap. You can hear just about anything. Cain’t you, Granny C? Y’all is damn near dead, but y’all can hear just fine. Right, Granny C?

Sho ’nuff, baby doll.

So, what you gonna do with this pool? Junior Junior asked.

Why? Wheat asked. You want to buy it? I’ll sell it to you in a heartbeat. Make me an offer.

I can put me some pigs in this thing. Just carve out the bottom and stick them pigs in there.

Take it away, Wheat said.

I could just bring them pigs here. That would be easier, don’t you think?

Wheat shook his head. But then we’d be smelling your hogs. I don’t want to be smelling your hogs.

But you got it all set up and staked out so nice-like. Gonna be a lot of work to move it. Junior Junior lit a skinny green cigar. You can keep one of them hogs for yourself. How about that?

I don’t need no fucking hog, Wheat said.

Language! Granny C shouted.

If I want bacon, I go to the store, Wheat said.

And buy it with my money, Charlene said. Bring them pigs on over, Junior Junior, but I want to keep two of ’em, big ones, and you butcher ’em.

Deal.

Wheat didn’t say anything. He walked across the yard and helped the four-year-old climb into her pink plastic car.