The Conjure Woman and Other Tales by Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1899)
"The Goophered Grapevine"
characters:
John - the speaker, a white carpetbagger who moves South for his wife's health and takes up cultivating a grape vineyard
Annie - the speaker's wife
John's cousin - in the turpentine business, assures John that his own neighborhood is ideal for John and Annie
family doctor
Julius McAdoo - former slave, trickster figure in these stories
[inner narrative] Ole Mars Dugal McAdoo - former owner of the plantation
[inner narrative] ol Mars Henry Brayboy's slaves
[inner narrative] ol Mars Jeems McLean's slaces
[inner narrative] settlement of free blacks by the Wim'l'ton Road
[inner narrative] Yankee salesman - sells Mars Dugal McAdoo a wine press and ruins his vineyard during a weeklong stay in which he wins $1000 from McAdoo playing cards
setting:
Ohio
Patesville [speaker says not the real name], North Carolina - a town of 4-5,000 but one of the principle towns of North Carolina and with a good trade in cotton and naval stores - Post-reconstruction South
[inner narrative] Patesville - McAdoo plantation in the years leading up to the Civil War
plot:
The speaker (John) and his wife Annie have moved from the Great Lakes region some years earlier for the wife's health on the advice of the family doctor. A cousin had recommended his own neighborhood of Patesville, and the couple had gone to visit and look into the matter. They had enjoyed the cousin's hospitality and liked the area, and John learned that grape cultivation had been practiced there but the industry has apparently suffered during the war.
John takes a particular interest an estate that had belonged to a wealthy man named McAdoo but which has since been the subject of dispute between his heirs and has suffered neglect. When John takes Annie out to see the place, they come across a mulatto man seated on a log eating grapes. The narrator observes, "He was not entirely black, and this fact, together with the quality of his hair, which was about six inches long and very bushy, except on the top of his head, where he was quite bald, suggested a slight strain of other than negro blood. There was a shrewdness in his eyes, too, which was not altogether African, and which, as we afterwards learned from experience was indicative of a corresponding shrewdness in his character" (9-10).
When John tells Julius that he is considering buying the plantation, Uncle Julius advises against it and explains that the vineyard is goophered, and when John asks how he tells the story that forms the inner narrative of this piece.
Marse Dugal McAdoo plants scuppernong grapes, which Julius explains are as beloved by blacks as possum, chicken and watermelon. Mars Dugal' makes a thousand gallons of scuppernong wine every year, but soon he begins to miss his grapes and so sets spring guns and steel traps and has the overseer sit up nights to find who is stealing the grapes. After getting shot himself by the spring guns, he looks around for another deterrent and decides to visit the conjure woman Aunt Peggy, who goophers the grapevines and informs the other blacks that any of them who eat those grapes will die within two months. The coachman of a man who comes to visit Mars Dugal dies after eating some grapes when his horse runs away, and a child also dies (whites say of the fever) after eating the grapes. At the end of that season, Mars Dugal' has made fifteen hundred instead of his usual ten hundred gallons of wine. The next spring, one of the plantation hands dies and Mars Dugal buys another, who eats from the grapevine before he is told of the goopher, and the overseer takes him to Aunt Peggy the next day to see if she can take the goopher off of him since he at the grapes in ignorance. She gives him a medicine to take, and says that he should come to him the next spring and she would tell him what to do. The next spring, Henry takes a ham to Aunt Peggy who tells him to take the sap that oozes out of the cuts when Mars Dugal prunes the grapevines and use it to annoint his bald head. Since he has brought her the ham, she arranges things so that he can eat the grapes without ill effect. When the leaves come out on the grapevine, hair also begins to grow on Henry's head and he becomes spry and young-seeming. In the winter, when the vines dry up, Henry becomes old and stiff again. The next Spring he repeats the same procedure and blooms and dries along with the vine. Mc Adoo sees an opportunity for profit in the seasonal blooming and fading of Henry's health, and sells him to a neighbor for $1500 in the spring and then, when the neighbor reports that Henry's health has declined, offers to buy him back for $500 - Mars Dugal keeps that selling trick going for five years and makes enough money to buy another plantation on Beaver Crick.
One day a stranger comes to the plantation - a Yankee - saying that he can make the vineyard produce twice as many grapes as it does, and that with the new wine press he was selling Dugal would make twice as many gallons of wine. Under the Yankee's advice Dugal has all the dirt dug away from the roots of the vines and has them treated with lime and ashes and mayo, and trims the vines close. Dugal does as the Yankee says, and they play cards together every night, and Julius observes that, "dey say Mars Dugal' los' mo'n a thousan' dollars dyoin' er de week dat Yankee wuz a-ruinin' de grapevimes. Henry covers his head in the sap as usual that Spring and when the leaves come out they come out thicker and greener than ever and Dugal decides to keep Henry on his plantation long enough to get his cotton crop in, but when it comes time for the vines to bear fruit they wither and die, and Henry dies along with them. Mars Dugal replanted his vineyard but it was three or four years before it bore fruit, and he swore when he went to the war that he would kill a Yankee for every dollar he had lost from that vineyard. "En I 'spec' he would 'a' done it, too, ef de Yankees hadn' s'picioned sump'n en killed him fus'" (33). Mrs. McAdoo had moved to the town and the blacks scattered after the war, and Julius says the vineyard has not been cultivated since.
Julius advises against buyin the vineyard because of the goopher and when Annie points out that the old vines had died out Julius says that some of them had survived and mixed in with the new ones. He himself knows which is which but he wouldn't advise John to buy the vineyard. The speaker observes, "I bought the vineyard, nevertheless, and it had been for a long time in a thriving condition, and is often referred to by the local press as a striking illustration of the opportunities open to Northern capital in the development of Southern industries" (34). He further notes that he had later learned that Uncle Julius lived on a cabin at the vineyard and for several years profited from the sale of grapes from the vineyard. "This, doubtless, accounted for his advice to me not to buy the vineyard, though whether it inspired the goopher story I am unable to state. I believe, however, that the wages I paid him for his services as coachman, for I gave him employment in this capacity, were more than an equivalent for anything he lost by the sale of the vineyard" (35).
"Po' Sandy"
characters:
John
Annie
Uncle Julius
[inner narrative] poor Sandy - slave of Mars Marrabo McSwayne
[inner narrative] Tenie - Sandy's second wife, who McSwayne had traded away Sandy's first wife to get
[inner narrative] Mars Marrabo McSwayne
[inner narrative] Mars Marrabo McSwayne's wife
setting:
John's vineyard, Patesville, NC
plot:
There is a small frame house on the northeast corner of John's vineyard that was used as a schoolhouse before the Civil War but has since remained unoccupied. When Annie wants a separate kitchen (after the Southern fashion) the speaker John decides to save on expenses by tearing down the old schoolhouse and using the lumber for his wife's kitchen. He calculates that he will need some additional lumber to complete his wife's design, and so one day he and Annie go to the lumberyard driven by Uncle Julius. They are waiting to be helped and listening to a log being sawed when Uncle Julius exclaims, "Uhg! but dat des do cuddle my blood!" (41). Pressed to explain, Julius says that the sound reminds him of poor Sandy.
Sandy was a prized slave of Mars Marrabo McSwayne. When McSwayne's children got married they all wanted to take Sandy with them, and McSwayne avoided conflict by letting them have him in turns. While Sandy is out at another plantation, a speculator comes and trades another woman for Sandy's wife. Sandy is sad but he likes the new woman and takes up with her after a month. Sandy complains to Tenie about how much he has to move around and how he hates to have to leave her when McSwayne lends him out somewhere else, and she tells him that she is a conjure woman. Tenie offers to turn Sandy into a rabbit, which he declines because dogs might chase him. She suggests a wolf, but he doesn't want anyone to be scared of him. She suggests mockingbird, but he doesn't want a hawk to catch him. They finally settle on a tree, and Tenie makes him a big pine tree. Mars Marrabo, finding that Sandy is gone, sends the dogs to track him and they keep coming back to the tree. Once things settle down, Tenie begins turning Sandy back into a human at night so that they can talk. Sandy suffers from injuries by a woodpecker and then a slave who set up a turpentine box, but Tenie puts a sparow hawk and a hornet in place to take care of Sandy.
Seeing so many things happen to the tree, Tenie plans to turn herself and Sandy into foxes so that they can run away, but the day before the plans to do this one of Mars Marrabo's sons comes to the plantation looking for a nurse for his sick wife, and Tenie has to go away before she can see Sandy. While Tenie is gone though, Mars Marrabo decided to build a new kitchen and had a tree cut down for the purpose. The slaves who cut Sandy down report that it was the hardest tree they ever felled. When Tenie gets back and sees what has happened, she gets her "goopher mixtry" to go and change Sandy back - he can't live being chopped like that, but she wants to explain that she didn't leave on purpose. She throws herself on the tree asking Sandy to forgive her but before she can change him into a man that could hear her, the sawmill workers decide she is crazy and tie her to a tree. They cut Sandy up into planks and again, the wood is unusually hard. Mars Marrabo concludes that Tenie is distracted and puts her to caring for the slaves' children, but other slaves start to hear strange bumping and moaning noises as soon as the new kitchen is built, and soon even Mars Marrabo's wife is scarred to go in the kitchen after dark. Mars Marrabo eventually takes the kitchen down and uses the lumber to put up the very schoolhouse that John is planning to tear down for Annie's kitchen.
Annie, after hearing the story, says, "What a system it was . . . under which such things were possible!" and when John asks whether she is really considering the possibility of a man being turned into a tree, "'Oh, no,' she replied quickly, 'not that;' and then she murmured absently, and with a dim look in her fine eyes, 'Poor Tenie!'" (60-61). That night Annie tells John that she wants all new lumber for the kitchen, and a week or two later she mentions that the Sandy Run Colored Baptist Church has split on the temperence question and that Uncle Julius, one of the seceders, had asked permission to use the old schoolhouse as a meeting place. Asked whether the congregation will be bothered by the ghost Annie replies, "Uncle Julius says that ghosts never disturb religious worship, but that if Sandy's spirit should happen to stray into meetings by mistake, no doubt the preaching would do it good." (63).
"Mars Jeem's Nightmare"
characters:
John
Annie
Tom - Uncle Julius's lazy grandson
Uncle Julius
[inner narrative] Mars Jeems McLean- plantation owner who treats his slaves badly
[inner narrative] Libbie McSwayne - Jeems McLean's sweetheart
[inner narrative] Nick Johnson - Jeems McLean's overseer
[inner narrative] Solomon - Jeems McLean's slave
[inner narrative] Aunt Peggy - conjure woman
setting:
Patesville, NC
plot:
John remarks on Uncle Julius's usefulness in his intimate knowledge of the local landscape and suggest that Uncle Julius sees himself as a part of that landscape. "Toward my tract of land and the things that were on it - the creeks, the swamps, the hills, the meadows, the stones, the trees - he maintained a peculiar personal attitude, that might be called predial rather than proprietary. He had been accustomed, until long after middle life, to look upon himself as the property of another. When this relation was no longer possible, owing to the war, and to is master's death and the dispersion of the family, he had been unable to break off entirely the mental habits of a lifetime, but had attached himself to the old plantation, of which he seemed to consider himself an appurtenance" (65)
Julius brings John a 17 year old grandson of his for whom he is seeking employment, and when the boy proves himself too lazy, careless and irresponsible to tolerate, John tells Julius he can't continue employing him. That evening John and Annie go out for a drive and to fill some jugs at a stream, and while they are waiting at the stream for a man to finish cleaning it up a man passes who is mistreating his horse. Uncle Julius comments that, "Ef young Mistah McLean doan min', he'll hab a bad dream one er dese days, de lack 'is grandaddy had way back yander, long yeahs befo' de wah" (70). When ole Mars John McLean had passed away and his plantation had gone to Mars Jeems, the new master had worked his slaves mercilessly, fed them poorly and forbidden them to sing or dance. At one time the slaves were hopeful that their master would start to treat them better because he was sweet on Miss Libbie McSwayne, but when Libbie heard about Mars Jeems' treatment of his slaves, she stopped seeing him saying that if he abused his slaves he might also abuse his wife. After that, things for Mars Jeems's slaves got worse.
While Mars Jeems had been courting Libbie, a slave names Solomon had taken up with a female field laborer. Jeems discovers whats going on, gives Solomon forty lashes, and sends the girl to the Robeson County plantation. When Jeems goes to the other plantation, he leaves his slaves in the charge of overseer Nick Johnson, who treats them even worse than he does. Finally, Solomon is feeling so bad missing his sweetheart that he goes to see Aun' Peggy the conjure woman to see if she can do something to get the woman back and to make Jeems treat his slaves better. Aunt Peggy gives him a mix to put in the master's okra soup that she says will give him a bad dream, and she says that in a month Solomon should come back and let her know how the conjure is working. Jeems goes to the other plantation the day after he eats the soup, and the slaves are under the supervision of the overseer Nick Johnson when Mars Dunkin McSwayne rides up to the big house to deliver a black man in payment of a gambling debt. The man had been found wandering around and unable to give an account of himself, and so had been sold to Dunkin at auction.
The overseer has his hands full with the new man, who claims to be confused and not know who he is, and although the others feel sorry for him they are glad to have the overseer distracted from tormenting them. The new man doesn't seem to know that he is a slave or even how to do the work when he does, and the overseer finally sends him back to Dunkin McSwayne who sells him to a trader on his way to New Orleans. When Aunt Peggy comes to see Solomon and ask why he hasn't been back to report on how the conjure is working, he says that Jeems has been gone this whole time and so he hasn't been able to see whether the conjure worked or not. When Aunt Peggy hears about the new man being sold down the river she scolds Solomon again for not keeping her informed and threatens to put terrible goophers on him if he doesn't come to her house for instructions that night. When he does, she gives him a sweet potato for the new slave to eat and sends him out to find the man, giving him some mix so that the patrols will not see him.
Solomon does at Aunt Peggy says, and the next day Mars Jeems shows up looking sick and in poor clothes and after asking Solomon how things have been on the plantation offers the slave a dollar to go and get some clothes for him. Later, Mars Jeems asks the overseer how things have been and laughs and laughs as he hears about the new man, and then compliments him on being the best "nigger-breaker" around and says he has done such a good job that Jeems does not need him anymore. After that, Jeems treats his slaves much better, and when Miss Libbie hears about it she changes her minds and marries him.
Uncle Julius, completing his tale, observes, "Dis yet tale goes ter show . . dat w'ite folks w'at is so ha'd en stric', en doan make no 'lowance fer po' ign'ant niggers w'at ain' had no chanst ter l'arn, is li'ble ter hab bad dreams, ter say de leas', en dat dem w'at is kin en good ter po' people is sho' ter proseper en git long in the worl" (100). John asks whether Uncle Julius has made the tale up himself, and Uncle Julius insists it was told to him by his mother before John or Annie were born. The next day John returns home to see Tom carrying a bucket of water and asks Annie why he is there, and she says that she had decided to give him one last chance. "I did not share my wie's rose-colored hopes in regard to Tom; but as I did not wish the servants to think there was any conflict of authority in the household, I let the boy stay" (102).
"The Conjurer's Revenge"
characters:
John
Annie
Uncle Julius
Primus - Jim McGee's slave in the story - now a man with a club foot
Conjure Man
Pete - slave who cares for Jim McGee's mules
setting:
Sunday at the front porch on John's vineyard
[inner narrative] Kim McGee's plantation, woods, conjure man's house
plot:
It's Sunday and John, bored, reads a bad novel about a blonde heroine while Annie reads missionary reports. He throws down the novel just as Uncle Julius is coming by and tells Julius he plans to plant watermellons, to which Julius replies that he will need another animal to plow. John plans to buy a mule, and Julius advises against it saying he doesn't like to drive a mule because he always fears he'll be imposing on some human relation, and tells the story of Primus, a slave who belongs to Mars Jim McGee and is turned into a mule by a conjure man for stealing his shoat. The conjure man engages a poor white to sell the mule to Jim McGee and it does several strange things on the plantation - eating tobacco, getting drunk on wine, and attacking the new lover of Primus's sweetheart Sally. When the conjure man takes ill he asks Pete, the slave who takes care of McGee's mules, to bring down the new mule and he begins to reverse the conjure. As he works he grows weak and asks Pete to hand him a liquid in a green bottle, but Pete grabs the wrong one and the conjure man is poisoned. He continues to work as long as he can, but Primus is left with a club foot when the conjure man dies. Annie remarks of the story, "That story does not appeal to me, Uncle Julius, and is not up to your usual mark. It is n't pathetic, it has no moral that I can discover, and I can't see why you should tell it" (49). Julius mentions to John that if he does decide to buy a horse, Julius knows a man who has a horse and will bring it by for John to see. John ends up buying that horse, but it is quickly discovered to be useless and soon dies. John sees Julius in a new suit of clothes soon after the purchase of the horse and suspects that Julius has profited from the sale.
"Sis' Becky's Pickaninny"
characters:
John
Annie
Uncle Julius
[inner narrative] Becky - slave woman
[inner narrative] Mose
[inner narrative] Aunt Nancy - cares for children on Pen'leton plantation
[inner narrative[ Aunt Peggy - conjure woman
[inner narrative] Colonol Pen'leton - Becky's owner, loves horse racing
setting:
John's vineyard in Patesville, NC. Two years after he and Annie move to NC.
[inner narrative] Colonel Ren'leton's plantation
[inner narrative] horse trader's plantation in Bladen County
plot:
Annie's health has improved since moving to Patesville two years earlier, but recently she has suffered from melancholy and feelings of foreboding. John is about to read to her form a novel one day when Uncle Julius arrives with a rabbit's foot. Asked about it, Uncle Julius says that it brings good luck and offers as evidence the fact that nothing bad has happened to him while he has had it. John is unconvinced by the logic, and Uncle Julius offers to tell a story to illustrate his point.
Julius's story concerns a slave woman named Becky who is on Colonel Pen'leton's plantation on Wim'l'ton road about ten miles from John's vineyard. She has a husband on the next plantation and when his master dies Colonel Pen'leton would like to buy him but has lost his money in horse races and so the man is sold in Virginia. Becky consoles herself with still having her son Mose, but soon Colonel Pen'leton trades Becky for a racehorse and since the new owner does not want the boy, they are separated. Mose is so upset by the separation that he becomes ill, and Aunt Nancy, who cares for the children on the plantation, takes him to Aunt Peggy. Aunt Peggy turns the boy into a hummingbird so that he can go see and sing to his mother during one day, and mother and son are comforted for a while. When the boy is sick again, she turns him into a mockingbird and the same process repeats. Aunt Nancy, growing weary of the extra work, asks whether a more permanent solution might be found and, in exchange for a handkerchief, Aunt Peggy agrees to conjure Becky back to the plantation. She sends hornets to sting the new horse Lightning Bug in the knees and Colonel Pen'leton, thinking he has been sold a lame horse, writes angrily to the breeder to demand his slave back. The dealer refuses, and Aunt Peggy puts a conjure on Becky so that she feels ill and refuses to work. The horse breeder knows the horse was good when sold to the Colonel and would rather have a lame horse than a dead slave anyway, and so writes to the Colonel claiming to feel guilty about the whole affair and offering to trade back. Becky goes to Aunt Peggy on her return, and Aunt Peggy removes the conjure.
John and Annie admire the story and when John points out that it does not prove the point about rabbit's feet being lucky, Uncle Julius says that it is plain enough. Annie guesses that Becky does not have a rabbit's foot and Uncle Julius confirms, adding that if she had none of this would have happened to her. Annie starts to improve that same day, and several weeks later John happens to find Uncle Julius's rabbit's foot among her things.