Summary
While Pop is disassembling an animal pen that has been eaten by termites, Jojo finally gets him to share the story of Richie's death. Pop explains that Richie was able to escape from Parchman, but he died before making it home. Another inmate named Blue, who suffered from mental health problems, kidnapped and raped another female inmate. Fearing punishment, Blue decided to run away. Richie, who is listening to Pop’s story, interjects to tell Jojo that he found Blue and the woman in the woods. Blue threatened to kill Richie if he told anyone what he had seen, and he convinced Richie to run away with him.
Pop’s job was to take the dogs and search for the runaways. Pop recalls that when Blue was running, he was speaking to his mother and begging her to “sing” for him. Blue tried to attack a white girl once he escaped, which caused the entire white community surrounding Parchman to be on watch. Eventually, the officers from Parchman located Blue in the woods. He was mutilated and skinned alive. Pop fears that the same fate will befall Richie.
Pop successfully locates Richie in the woods before he is discovered by the officers. After reassuring him that everything would be okay, Pop stabbed Richie in the neck. After he was stabbed, Pop said that the dogs began to eat him. At this point in the story, both Richie and the animals on the farm begin to squeal incessantly. Pop reveals that he has felt guilty for killing Richie ever since.
After retrieving the offerings for Mam, Leonie searches for Given. Meanwhile, Kayla is crying and repeating “the black bird, the black boy.” She is referring to the ghost of Richie, whom Leonie cannot see. Kayla says that Richie wants Mam, and Given is coming to Mam’s defense. Given acknowledges Jojo and calls him “nephew.” Leonie says a prayer, and Given escorts Mam to the other side.
Jojo is angry at Leonie for saying the prayer that “takes Mam away.” Pop defends Leonie’s actions and explains that it was Mam’s time. Frustrated at Jojo’s constant disapproval, Leonie hits him multiple times. Later, Michael returns home and finds Leonie distressed on the front porch. She begs him to take her to Al’s to get high and cope with her sadness. She leaves Jojo and Kayla with Pop and indulges her vices.
The narrative jumps ahead to a point sometime after Mam’s death. Leonie and Michael are rarely at home. They are both very skinny and appear to be abusing drugs. Jojo explains that he occasionally feels as though he can understand Leonie, but other times he is overcome with rage. Jojo can still see Richie, who has been unable to “cross” into the next phase of the afterlife. Richie tells Jojo that he hears “the song” he wants to be a part of, but he is unable to reach it. He thought hearing about the circumstances of his death would allow him to continue onto the next part of his journey, but he remains a ghost in the present.
At night, Jojo can hear that Pop is speaking to Mam. He calls Mam by her first name, Philomene. Jojo is also able to see the other ghosts that surround Richie. Kayla can see them too, and she sings to them. The ghosts seem to be eased by Kayla’s singing. As the novel ends, Jojo listens as the ghosts chant the word “home.”
Analysis
Pop finally tells Jojo the story of Richie’s escape and subsequent death. Although Pop does not know that Richie's ghost has followed Jojo home from Parchman, he understands that it is time for Jojo to learn about his own past. As Pop narrates the story, Richie chimes in with his own adages. This style of narration makes it clear that Pop’s story is not linear: rather, it contains moving parts and features different perspectives. In this way, Ward further develops the theme of the circularity of time. The novel uses alternating narrations to reject conventional storytelling and challenge contrived worldviews.
Richie is not the only one who chimes in about Pop’s story. As Pop tells Jojo about how he killed Richie in order to spare him from an even more violent fate, the animals begin to make a series of cacophonic noises. In this way, the importance of animals in the story is reinstated. The animals are not sedentary or inanimate—rather, they are in touch with and affected by their shared existence. In this way, Ward reverses the human-centric hierarchy. Through this detail, Ward argues that all life forms are interconnected.
The motif of singing also reappears on a few different occasions towards the end of the novel. While Richie was initially led to Jojo through song, Blue also hears a song that carries him away from Parchman and back to his mother. In these two particular examples, Blue and Richie seek to share and further uncover their own life stories. Singing signifies the suffering experienced by Black Americans during enslavement. These “unfinished” songs indicate that the oppression is unending, and these spirits are unable to rest due to continued injustice.
It is not only the ghosts that have unfinished business–Pop’s story proves that he, too, is haunted by his past. Pop is overcome with emotion when he explains the details of killing Richie. He tells Jojo that although so many years have passed, he can still feel the “blood on his hands” and he remains overwhelmed by his inability to “wash it off.” Pop’s choice of phrase parallels an integral plot point in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, where Lady Macbeth hallucinates that she cannot wash off the blood from her murders, leading to the famous line "Out, damned spot!" Ward’s use of literary allusion addresses the haunting sense of guilt and the painful legacies of survivors.
Mam’s death links the family’s personal grief with the grief of the greater community. As Pop mourns the loss of his wife, Jojo and baby Kayla connect with the ghosts of those that have passed before them. For the millions of Black Americans who have died as a result of systemic violence, their spirits remain stuck in a state of flux. Kayla’s song acknowledges this communal, ancestral pain—she offers her voice to amplify those silenced throughout history. In this way, Ward offers a hopeful message for the future. In order to begin healing the wounds of the past, we must recognize how this pain appears in the present and work towards building an understanding, empathetic, and shared consciousness.
