Fear drained from the Overseer to be replaced by curiosity. What was anyone doing sneaking into the shed where they stored rice straw? The Overseer moved closer until he could see inside the building. A large muscular slave stood with his back to the doorway holding a small “fat light’erd,” a splinter of pine heartwood saturated with pine resin that served as a torch, illuminating the inside of the building. Under his direction, three field hands dug down into the piles of straw and pulled out seagrass baskets. From the baskets they poured rice into sacks.
When the sacks were full and tied closed the workers hoisted them over their shoulders. The man with the torch then turned to lead them out and the Overseer could see him clearly. It was not Devine. It was John! One of Captain Ward’s most trusted field hands, and the plantation Class Leader!
As the Overseer watched, John extinguished his torch. He and the others stole back out into the night and headed toward their homes in the Street. The Overseer understood that later they would pound the rice in homemade mortars hidden in the swamps to remove the outer hulls, then boil it up for dinner in their cabins in the Street. Not only would they have extra rice to stretch their weekly rations, but fancy whole grain rice even better than the midlins, which are the broken grains that could not be sold on the international market, that Captain Ward and his family ate, and certainly better than the small broken pieces the slaves usually got in their weekly food ration.
Now the whole situation became clear. No wonder he hadn’t caught his rice thief by sleeping in the barn. Devine was not stealing rice from the barn. Nobody was stealing rice from the barn! And Devine was not involved at all. The thief was John!
Each day as field workers threshed the rice and scooped it into baskets, they hid some of the baskets in bundles of straw instead of taking them to the rice barn. Then when they carried the bundles of rice straw into the outbuilding for storage, they were also carrying away hidden baskets of the newly threshed grain. Later they easily returned during the night to collect the hidden rice from under the straw in the unlocked shed. There was no need to steal rice from the carefully locked rice barn!
The Overseer had discovered his thieves at last. And the biggest shock was that John, the plantation Class Leader—the slave religious leader—was now leading them in their thievery!
Captain Ward had grown to admire John, the Class Leader on his Brookgreen Plantation. John was a tall strong man, a good worker, and a leader among his people. As a field hand, he became expert in all phases of rice production. Captain Ward came to rely on John more and more because of his intelligence, his expertise, his leadership abilities, and especially because of his honesty.
The plantation Overseer was not quite so trusting of John and sometimes resented Captain Ward’s reliance on John’s judgment in matters related to the rice growing operation. But Captain Ward continued to entrust John with numerous responsibilities and to praise his abilities and loyalty.
The year that this story took place, which must have been shortly before the War, had been a good one for rice production. When the harvest came, Captain Ward placed John in charge of the threshing floor just in front of the rice barn. John worked under the direction of Devine, the Driver or head slave, and under the direction of the white Overseer of course, but Captain Ward trusted John completely and gave him serious responsibilities. After all, John was the Class Leader on Brookgreen Plantation.
The harvest was in full swing. Every day rice flats piled high with bundles of rice stalks laden with plump grains of rice arrived at Brookgreen Landing, just down the rice island steps from us here at the Museum. A steady stream of field hands carried bundles of rice stalks up the steps from flatboats to the barnyard. John directed them as they arranged the bundles on the hard packed dirt of the threshing floor in front of the barn.
Under John’s supervision, workers beat the rice stalks with wooden flails to knock rice grains loose from the stalks. Then, they scooped up the rough rice from the threshing floor into coiled seagrass baskets and carried it into the rice barn to storage bins where it would wait for milling later in the season. Finally, they carried off the bundles of rice stalks, now just the remaining straw, to an outbuilding for storage.
At least, that was what was supposed to happen. But now the Overseer had discovered that John wasn’t sending all the rice into the barn. There in the dark of the midnight barnyard the Overseer had discovered the secret of John’s thievery!
The Overseer was eager to tell Captain Ward what he had discovered, especially since it involved John, whom he had long suspected of being less perfect than Captain Ward believed.
But what surprising development awaited him? …
Find out in
Gullah Ghosts
by Lynn Michelsohn
(available in paperback or as an ebook).
~
Thank you for reading this selection. We hope you will continue to enjoy Lynn Michelsohn’s writings.
Happy Reading!
Lynn Michelsohn’s Other Books
(most are available in both paperback and all ebook formats)
In the South Carolina Lowcountry …
Lowcountry Ghosts
Alice Flagg, Confederate Blockade Runners, and Haunted Beads
(Tales from Brookgreen Series)
Stories of ghosts from Brookgreen Gardens in the South Carolina Lowcountry
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Gullah Ghosts
(Tales from Brookgreen Series)
Gullah folktales from Brookgreen Gardens in the South Carolina Lowcountry, with notes on Gullah culture and history
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Crab Boy’s Ghost
A Gullah Folktale
(Tales from Brookgreen Series)
Stories from Brookgreen Gardens in the South Carolina Lowcountry
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Tales from Brookgreen
(The Complete Series)
Folklore, Ghost Stories, and Gullah Folktales in the South Carolina Lowcountry
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Lowcountry Confederates
(More Tales from Brookgreen Series)
Rebels, Yankees, and historic South Carolina rice plantations
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In the Galapagos Islands …
Galapagos Landscapes
Scenic Photographs of Moses Michelsohn, Words of Melville, Darwin, and FitzRoy
(Galapagos Islands Nature Series)
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Galapagos Birds
Wildlife Photographs of Moses Michelsohn, words of Melville, Darwin, and FitzRoy (Galapagos Islands Nature Series)
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The Chola Widow
Herman Melville’s Short Story of Death and Rape in the Galapagos Islands
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In the Galapagos Islands with Herman Melville
Tour the Galapagos Islands with the author of Moby-Dick
Nature photography by Moses Michelsohn
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In the American Southwest …
Billy the Kid’s Jail
Santa Fe, New Mexico
A glimpse of history on the Southwestern Frontier
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Billy the Kid in Santa Fe
Book One: Young Bill
Wild West History, Outlaw Legends, and the City at the End of the Santa Fe Trail
(A Non-Fiction Trilogy)
~
Roswell
Your Travel Guide to the UFO Capital of the World!
Tour Roswell like a Native, or maybe like an Alien!
“The best book on Roswell I’ve ever seen.” - Judge Dick Bean, Roswell Native
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(Writing for children as Libby Lynn)
I See Santa Fe!
A Children’s Guide
“Should delight any child under ten.” - New Mexico Magazine
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Lowcountry Hurricanes Page 5