South

The bronze boll weevil came down from its monument because Monday belonged to the Rotary Club.

By Tuesday morning it is eight feet tall and standing inside the Enterprise Waffle House beside the jukebox. This is inconvenient, but not unprecedented in spirit. The South has always understood that history may enter through the front door, expect coffee, and refuse to explain what it wants until everybody has embarrassed themselves.

In Cairo, the Ohio and Mississippi stop choosing the same mouth. The Memphis Pyramid closes early and reopens for an older purpose. An underwater audience applauds beneath the Weeki Wachee mermaids. Dead people open competing medium offices in Cassadaga so they can receive messages from the living. At the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, a suitcase arrives from a destination that never existed. Bishopsville’s Lizard Man problem is not whether he exists. It is whether the museum has the genuine article.

The comedy stays dry because the people have actual jobs. Somebody must run the store, print the funeral cards, pilot the towboat, finish the mermaid show, or explain why the cryptid has the wrong number of fingers. Underneath the absurdity are grief, worship, ownership, family claims, public memory, and the dangerous relief of letting a mystery remain a mystery.

What it feels like to read

The reading experience is funny, strange, fast, and unexpectedly tender. Every premise opens like the best story somebody at the next table should not be telling this loudly, then deepens into grief, obligation, family, or belief.

Three stories inside

• Messages from the Living: The dead hire their own mediums and force the living to request permission to speak.
• The Second Audience: Weeki Wachee’s mermaids perform for watchers beneath the known depth.
• The Boll Weevil Chooses the Next Disaster: Enterprise’s monument climbs down and starts selecting what the town will survive.

Buy South. There are three new offices for the dead, and one of them accepts walk-ins.