The Conjure Woman | Page 2

on to any
great extent, was not entirely unknown in the neighborhood. Several
planters thereabouts had attempted it on a commercial scale, in former
years, with greater or less success; but like most Southern industries, it
had felt the blight of war and had fallen into desuetude.
I went several times to look at a place that I thought might suit me. It
was a plantation of considerable extent, that had formerly belonged to a
wealthy man by the name of McAdoo. The estate had been for years
involved in litigation between disputing heirs, during which period
shiftless cultivation had well-nigh exhausted the soil. There had been a
vineyard of some extent on the place, but it had not been attended to
since the war, and had lapsed into utter neglect. The vines--here partly
supported by decayed and broken-down trellises, there twining
themselves among the branches of the slender saplings which had
sprung up among them--grew in wild and unpruned luxuriance, and the
few scattered grapes they bore were the undisputed prey of the first
comer. The site was admirably adapted to grape-raising; the soil, with a
little attention, could not have been better; and with the native grape,
the luscious scuppernong, as my main reliance in the beginning, I felt
sure that I could introduce and cultivate successfully a number of other
varieties.
One day I went over with my wife to show her the place. We drove out
of the town over a long wooden bridge that spanned a spreading
mill-pond, passed the long whitewashed fence surrounding the county
fair-ground, and struck into a road so sandy that the horse's feet sank to
the fetlocks. Our route lay partly up hill and partly down, for we were
in the sand-hill county; we drove past cultivated farms, and then by
abandoned fields grown up in scrub-oak and short-leaved pine, and
once or twice through the solemn aisles of the virgin forest, where the
tall pines, well-nigh meeting over the narrow road, shut out the sun,
and wrapped us in cloistral solitude. Once, at a cross-roads, I was in

doubt as to the turn to take, and we sat there waiting ten minutes--we
had already caught some of the native infection of restfulness--for some
human being to come along, who could direct us on our way. At length
a little negro girl appeared, walking straight as an arrow, with a piggin
full of water on her head. After a little patient investigation, necessary
to overcome the child's shyness, we learned what we wished to know,
and at the end of about five miles from the town reached our
destination.
We drove between a pair of decayed gateposts--the gate itself had long
since disappeared--and up a straight sandy lane, between two lines of
rotting rail fence, partly concealed by jimson-weeds and briers, to the
open space where a dwelling-house had once stood, evidently a
spacious mansion, if we might judge from the ruined chimneys that
were still standing, and the brick pillars on which the sills rested. The
house itself, we had been informed, had fallen a victim to the fortunes
of war.
We alighted from the buggy, walked about the yard for a while, and
then wandered off into the adjoining vineyard. Upon Annie's
complaining of weariness I led the way back to the yard, where a pine
log, lying under a spreading elm, afforded a shady though somewhat
hard seat. One end of the log was already occupied by a
venerable-looking colored man. He held on his knees a hat full of
grapes, over which he was smacking his lips with great gusto, and a
pile of grapeskins near him indicated that the performance was no new
thing. We approached him at an angle from the rear, and were close to
him before he perceived us. He respectfully rose as we drew near, and
was moving away, when I begged him to keep his seat.
"Don't let us disturb you," I said. "There is plenty of room for us all."
He resumed his seat with somewhat of embarrassment. While he had
been standing, I had observed that he was a tall man, and, though
slightly bowed by the weight of years, apparently quite vigorous. 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. He went on eating the grapes, but did not seem to enjoy
himself quite so well as he had apparently done before