The Trees

by Percival Everett

“Mr. Mayor, this here is the sovereign state of Mississippi. There ain’t no law enforcement, there’s just rednecks like me paid by rednecks like you.”

“She could have some crazy-ass husband or boyfriend. You know, a stupid redneck with a gun.” “That’s redundant.”

“Your book is very interesting,” Mama Z said, “because you were able to construct three hundred and seven pages on such a topic without an ounce of outrage.”

“It will be difficult to see in the dark,” Damon said. “That’s very true, my boy, very true. I want you to remember that.”

However, the crime, the practice, the religion of it, was becoming more pernicious as he realized that the similarity of their deaths had caused these men and women to be at once erased and coalesced like one piece, like one body. They were all number and no number at all, many and one, a symptom, a sign.

“I don’t believe in a god, Mr. Thruff. You can’t sit here in this room, touch all of these folders, read all of these pages, and believe in a god. I do, however, and I’m certain you do too, believe in the devil.”

“I ask because you have to have civil rights in order for the them to be violated.”

“Even if I believed there was a god I wouldn’t believe that. Less than 1 percent of lynchers were ever convicted of a crime. Only a fraction of those ever served a sentence. Teddy Roosevelt claimed the main cause of lynching was Black men raping White women. You know what? That didn’t happen.” “Why do you think White people are so afraid of that?” “Who knows. Sexual inadequacy, maybe. An amplification of their own desire to rape, which they did.” Mama Z puffed out smoke. “But I think rape was just an excuse.” “You think Whites are just afraid of Black men?” “I think it’s sport.”

“Everybody talks about genocides around the world, but when the killing is slow and spread over a hundred years, no one notices. Where there are no mass graves, no one notices. American outrage is always for show. It has a shelf life. If that Griffin book had been Lynched Like Me, America might have looked up from dinner or baseball or whatever they do now. Twitter?”