Sing, Unburied, Sing

Leonie hangs up and heads to the Cold Drink, where she works as a bartender. When her shift ends, she and her coworker Misty go to the latter’s house to do lines of cocaine. As soon as Leonie is high, the spirit of her dead brother Given appears before her. Ignoring this, Leonie talks with Misty about Michael’s release until Misty notices her distraction. Leonie asks whether Misty ever hallucinates while high, and Misty says cocaine shouldn’t have that effect: “Given-not-Given frowned, mimicked her girly hair flip, and mouthed: What the fuck does she know?” (37).

Given’s appearance isn’t a fluke: Ever since Michael was imprisoned, Leonie has seen him whenever she’s high. She sometimes wonders whether this is a manifestation of the psychic abilities her mother says run in the family: Mam practiced naturopathic medicine and voodoo for years and can hear voices emanating from people and animals’ bodies. However, Leonie has never talked about her experiences with Mam, who desperately wishes she herself could see the dead—specifically, her son Given, who was murdered during his senior year of high school for showing up Michael’s cousin in a hunting contest. Michael’s father Big Joseph had at one point been the town sheriff and ensured the cousin got off lightly. Michael, however, didn’t share his family’s racism and began dating Leonie roughly a year after her brother’s death: “He was just tall enough that when he hugged me, his chin rested on my head, and I was cupped under him. Like I belonged” (54).

Leonie leaves Misty’s house in the morning and tells Pop she plans to take the children with her to Parchman. Pop is unhappy and tries to talk her out of going at all, reminding her that Mam is dying and that Michael’s parents could pick him up. Leonie is insistent, however, and explains the situation to Mam, who is more accepting: “You love who you love. You do what you want” (47). Leonie decides to leave a note in Big Joseph’s mailbox to explain what’s going on, but Big Joseph catches her in the act and comes after her with a rifle. She manages to drive away just in time, flipping him off as she does.

Leonie gathers up the children to leave, and Pop reminds Jojo to look after his family: “You a man, you hear?” (61). Once in the car, Leonie largely ignores Jojo and Kayla in favor of talking to Misty, who is coming along to visit her boyfriend in Parchman.

Jojo finds himself staring at Misty and thinks about how it was Mam who gave him the sex talk. She did so, she said, because Pop “don’t know how to tell a story straight […] He tell the beginning but don’t tell the end” (67). This in turn leads Jojo to remember more of Pop’s stories about Parchman and Richie: When Richie was assigned to field work, concern for the younger boy’s welfare shook Pop out of the stupor he had fallen into prior to Richie’s arrival.

After a couple of hours of driving, Jojo finds a gris-gris bag—a voodoo talisman—hidden in his clothing. He wonders whether Pop has given similar bags to anyone else and thinks more about how Pop tried to help Richie: “Tried to break his line when he was hoeing, dig a little deeper in his grooves. Reach over and clean his plants better when he was harvesting. Pull his weeds” (75). Eventually, however, Kinnie Wagner—an inmate charged with caring for the prison dogs—realized that Pop had a natural affinity with animals and asked that he be transferred to work as a dog runner.

Leonie detours to a rundown house, where a woman ushers her and Misty into the kitchen. Jojo and Kayla stay in the living room with the woman’s four-year-old son, who plays a video game until the TV freezes. Enraged, the boy cracks the TV screen with a baseball bat, which his mother then grabs and uses to hit him. Jojo goes outside, where he catches a glimpse of the woman’s husband cooking meth in the house’s shed. As everyone gets back in the car, Jojo sees that Misty is “trying to act like she’s not holding a paper bag tucked into a plastic bag, her arms straight as a yardstick at her side, the bag crinkling and hissing when she walks” (89).

Leonie recalls the circumstances that first led Michael to get involved with the drug trade: He lost his job on Deepwater Horizon when the rig exploded and began cooking meth to make money. Although Misty has assured Leonie that transporting this bag of meth will provide her and Michael with enough money to move out of Mam and Pop’s house, Leonie remains anxious. When Misty suggests they stop to visit a “pretty courthouse,” Leonie’s irritation nearly boils over: 

[Michael] told me about the guards beating an eighteen-year-old boy who had been convicted of kidnapping and strangling a five-year-old girl in a trailer park. They heard him screaming and then nothing, and then got word he bled to death like a pig in his cell. That, I want to say to Misty, is your pretty courthouse (96).

Meanwhile, Kayla grows quiet before beginning to cry, cough, and throw up. Frustrated, Leonie pulls over to clean Kayla, then stops at a gas station to buy Powerade. Kayla, however, will only accept the drink from Jojo: “I put the nipple of the sippy cup in her mouth, and she blocks it with her clenched teeth and whips her head to the side” (100). The group remains parked in the gas station, Jojo trying to console Kayla and Leonie forcing her to drink at regular intervals.

Kayla continues to throw up, and Jojo eventually refuses to keep giving her the Powerade. After confirming the gas station doesn’t stock anti-nausea medication, Leonie searches the area for milkweed or wild strawberries—plants Mam once taught her could treat vomiting. She eventually finds wild blackberries, but can’t fully remember Mam’s instructions on what to do with them: “Mama always told me they could be used for upset stomach, but only for adults. But if there was nothing else, she said I could make a tea and give it to kids. Not a lot, I remember her saying. From the leaves. Or was it from the vine? Or the roots? The heat beats down so hard I can’t remember” (105). Despite her uncertainty, she picks some of the plants.