The Goophered Grapevine

This guide is based on Charles Waddell Chesnutt’s “The Goophered Grapevine,” available at The Atlantic website and originally published in the monthly in August 1887. Chesnutt was the first African American to publish in the highly respected monthly; he went on to also publish "The Passing of Grandison" (1899) and "Po' Sandy" (1899). Structured as a story within a story, “The Goophered Grapevine” is the history of a ruined North Carolina plantation as told to an unnamed narrator by Julius McAdoo, a formerly enslaved individual on the plantation.

The narrator opens the story by explaining that he moved from Cleveland, Ohio, to Patesville, North Carolina, to live in a place that was more comfortable for his ailing wife and to pursue business opportunities. During a stay in Patesville with his cousin, the narrator went to see a plantation that was for sale. Overgrown and debilitated because of poor farming practices, the plantation nevertheless was overrun by wild grapes.

The narrator took his wife, Annie, to see the plantation on another day, and the two discovered the ruins of the main house. During a break, the couple encountered an older African American man, Julius McAdoo, sitting on a bench, eating scuppernong grapes. Initially embarrassed, the man sat back down at the narrator’s insistence and explained that he knew the history of the plantation. Julius advised the narrator not to buy the plantation because it was cursed. When prodded for more details, Julius began to tell the story, eventually getting so immersed in the storytelling that he lost his self-consciousness.

According to Julius, Dugal McAdoo, the old enslaver, bought the plantation before the war. Back then, the plantation’s vineyards produced a thousand gallons of wine. The grapes were so tasty that slaves came from miles around to steal grapes from the vineyard, the only one in neighborhood. Not even guarding the grapes at night could put an end to the pilfering.

Eager to protect his crops, the enslaver consulted with Aunt Peggy, a local conjure woman whose powerful spells terrified the free Blacks and enslaved people in the area. A day after McAdoo stopped by her home with a basket of food, Aunt Peggy performed a conjuring at the vineyard and told the slaves that the grapes were bewitched: anyone who stole them would die within a year. All who heard her left the grapes alone after that. The death of a coachman who ate the grapes because he didn’t know about the goopher and of a runaway enslaved child who ate the grapes convinced the slaves (but not the whites) that the goopher was working. With everyone afraid to raid the grapes, Dugal McAdoo was able to bottle fifteen hundred gallons of wine that first year, a good return on the ten dollars he’d paid Aunt Peggy for the goopher.

The enslaver bought a new enslaved person: Henry, a bald, aging man. Henry arrived on the plantation just as the enslaver and his neighbors were out hunting for a runaway enslaved person and, unaware of the goopher, ate some of the grapes. He was horrified to learn about the curse the next morning. The overseer gave Henry a drink of whisky and took him to see Aunt Peggy the next day. Aunt Peggy gave Henry a bitter concoction that would protect him from the goopher since he had been unaware of it before he ate the grapes, but Henry would need to come back that spring for further conjuring. When spring came, Henry brought Aunt Peggy a stolen ham, and she instructed him to rub the sap of cut grapevines on his head every spring to protect himself from the goopher.

That spring, Henry followed her instructions by rubbing his bald head with sap from the biggest vine between the house and fields. When the vines sprouted, Henry’s hair began to grow again, and by the summer, his hair was full of curls that looked like grape bunches. The arthritis that plagued him when he came to the plantation disappeared when the summer came. When fall came, the slaves harvested the grapes and Henry’s curls straightened out. When the leaves fell from the vines, Henry’s hair fell out. He became balder and stiffer than he was when he first arrived, and he was incapable of doing any work. When spring came again, Henry rubbed the grape sap on his head and was once again spry and curly-headed.

McAdoo, known for his greediness, cunning, and refusal to give his slaves a moment’s rest, sold Henry to an unsuspecting buyer for $1,500 that spring. When fall came and the grapes subsided, Henry aged so quickly that his new owner called the doctor to diagnose him. Henry’s purchaser ran into McAdoo in town and told him about Henry’s mysterious ailment. McAdoo blamed the illness on the swampy area where the new owner lived but agreed to buy Henry back for $500 if he got any worse. When winter came, Henry became so infirm that the new owner sold him back to McAdoo as promised. Every spring for five years, the enslaver played the same trick, taking care to sell Henry in a new county each time. At the end of the five years, he had accrued enough money to buy a second plantation.

That same year, a Yankee (Northern) stranger came to town claiming to be an expert in grape cultivation. He convinced the enslaver to follow his instructions and buy a new wine press to increase his yield from his grapes. The enslaver seemed “bewitched” (par. 43, line 5) and allowed the Yankee to remove soil from around the roots of the plants. The skeptical field hands, following his instructions, trimmed the vines closely and placed a mixture of lime, ashes, and manure around the plant roots for a week. The Yankee lived in the enslaver's home, ate his food, won a thousand dollars as he gambled with Dugal, and then left.

When spring came, Henry rubbed the grape sap on himself again, and the vines grew big and did so rapidly. Henry’s hair grew more luxurious and he grew even younger. The harvest looked so promising that the enslaver kept Henry to help with the harvest instead of selling him again. This time, however, the leaves on the vines shriveled, and the grapes were small and yellow. Watering did no good, and the single period of growth lasted only for a brief time. Everyone on the plantation knew the vineyard was dying. The state of the vines was mirrored in Henry’s health. It was the goopher at work. When the big vine that served as the source of Henry’s sap died, so did Henry.

Angered by the loss of the vines and his slave, the enslaver swore he would assault the Northerner if he ever saw him again. It took several years to re-establish the vineyard. When the Civil War came, McAdoo raised a company of men to kill Northerners but ending up getting killed instead. When the South surrendered, the mistress of the plantation moved to town, the emancipated slaves scattered, and the vineyard was abandoned. This was the end of Julius’s story.

Annie asked Julius if the story was true. He assured her it was and volunteered to take them to Henry’s grave as proof. If the narrator and his wife were wise, he said, they would pass on buying the goophered vineyard. Despite the warning, the narrator bought the vineyard. It thrived, becoming an example of successful Northern investment in the South. Today, the vineyard grows many varieties of grapes, including the original scuppernongs. The harvests and profits from the vineyard show no sign of any goopher since the narrator’s vineyard workers, whom he calls his “colored assistants” (par. 53, line 3), eat liberally from the grapes.

The narrator discovered back when he bought the plantation that Julius McAdoo had been living in a cabin on the old plantation and selling the wild scuppernongs.“This, doubtless,” according to the narrator, “accounted for his advice to me not to buy the vineyard, though whether it inspired the goopher story I am unable to state” (par. 54, line 2). The narrator closes the story by stating that he is confident that the wages he gives Julius more than make up for his losses.