Hard to Kill

Everybody wants to kill Richard Milford. The central figure of Nafissa Thompson-Spires’ debut novel, The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford, has stirred up so much resentment that, when it’s time to put him in the ground, the funeral might as well be held in a discotheque. The town of Newville, Oklahoma, is ready to dance. “Excuse us, then, while we alternately stomp, spit, blow our noses, Cakewalk, C-walk, Charleston, Nae-Nae, Macarena, Wobble, Electric Slide, Cha-Cha Slide, and do the Hustle on Rich’s grave,” the narrator says. If most of those dances seem anachronistic for the 1927 setting, settle in — the fun is just beginning.

Thompson-Spires’ slim novel is packed with an epic’s broad cast and interlocking incidents but has the quick pace of a fable. The story’s energy derives not from the question of who dunnit — we know early on that the women in his house are the guilty parties – but whether they will get away with it. Milford’s women, who share the work of narration along with the murder, deserve fresh starts after enduring years of living under the roof of an egomaniacal, would-be Svengali.

Richard Milford appears as a chameleon — variously con man, business mogul, outlaw, and cult leader — who employs charm to bend people to his will. When charm fails, he resorts to force. As one of his woman-companions (“wives,” for three of them, is figurative) puts it, “By my count, there were five Riches, a spectrum from Rich to Not-Rich, any of which could appear on a single day.” In the morning he’s a hard-working rancher and black-market businessman (brisk sales of moonshine), but by the afternoon he might transform into “Rich the Enriched, dreamer, peering through his hand-built telescopes.” At night a lover, during the day he’s Daddy for his 13 children. On occasion, he sheds all recognizable identities and changes into “Rich who was not Rich, like a caterpillar and a chrysalis and a butterfly all out of order.”

Whatever the state of his inner being, Milford has a knack for attracting women. Muscular, medium height, with mesmerizing eyes (one hazel, one brown), he casts spells that remain potent long after he’s revealed himself to be dishonest and abusive. The third of his mistresses, Sophronia, expresses frustration at living “under his thumb and pecking for crumbs” of affection. She also concedes, “But when Rich was good, he was very, very good.” When the women turn on him, in five separate attacks that happen to fall on the same day, they are motivated largely by jealousy. If they can’t possess him wholly, they want no one else to have him at all.

For a story filled with attempted murder, the novel is surprisingly funny. There’s a kind of Clouseau slapstick involved in the plots against Milford, plus a Monty Python-esque ingenuity to the ways he stumbles into survival (until his luck runs out). The grievances against Milford, as well founded as they are, are played for comedy, not tragedy. Thompson-Spires piles up the absurdities at such a rapid clip that one rarely stops to ponder the despair that must infect characters trapped in these circumstances.

Beneath the humor, though, lies the ghastly history of lynching in towns like Newville (a fictional place based on all-Black towns in Oklahoma in the early 20th century). Its citizens continually monitor roads for white men in cars. The recent oil strike on Milford’s land boosts the local economy but also draws attention from the region’s racists, who have a record of punishing Black success. In the wake of the Tulsa massacre and the murder of Lige Daniels (both in 1921), locals form The Newville Brigade Against Lynching and White Terror (“TNBALAWT,” for short, sort of) and criticize Milford for not volunteering to participate. “Rich Milford lives like an Honorary White,” one resident says.

Among the whitest of his behaviors are his dietary restrictions, which prohibit diverse colors. His cook Alberta (who attempts to murder him with a poisoned pie) must collect his groceries from the local market, where her “bizarre” purchases spark speculation. “Our children reported that Rich subsisted on a diet of white food and sweets at lunch, buttered potato sandwiches overdressed with too much mayonnaise and two slices of Swiss,” the narrator says. (Do not try this diet at home.) His bonkers diet is a component of Stoic Enterprising (Milford’s coinage), a philosophy he constructs from the poetry of Pythagoras and the letters of Seneca.

Thompson-Spires, who holds a doctorate in English from Vanderbilt, received enthusiastic critical praise and a mantel of awards for her first book, the story collection Heads of the Colored People (2021). Her new novel should expand her readership and spark curiosity about what this talented writer will produce next.