“Some years ago my wife was in poor health, and our family doctor, in whose skill and honesty I had implicit confidence, advised a change of climate.”
The opening line of the first story in the collection introduces the reason for why the white Northern couple at the center of the present-day narrative have come down South. The narrator is named John and his wife is Annie.
“It was a plantation of considerable extent, that had formerly belonged to a wealthy man by the name of McAdoo.”
The change of climate brings John and Annie to Dixie where they invest in a plantation once owned by a slave owner.
“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.”
The third major character who appears in each of the stories is Uncle Julius. His description subtly intimates the miscegenation common on slave plantations despite cries against racial impurity by white supremacist admirers of the slavery days of yore. Uncle Julius, John will soon discover, toiled as a slave on the McAdoo plantation and during Reconstruction has been very busy trying to enjoy a little equitable inheritance which is his moral due if not his legal right.
"I wushes you much joy er yo' job. Ef you has bad luck er sickness er trouble er any kin', doan blame me. You can't say ole Julius did n' wa'n you."
Although technically still being narrated by John, the conjure stories themselves that flash back to the days of slavery are recorded by John in a way that mimics the speaking dialect of the old man. The structure of each story essentially repeats the same pattern: John says something conflicts with plans of Julius who is then motivated to share a story that reflects upon the conflict in various levels of subtlety. For instance, in this case John has asked the old man’s advice about cultivating an area the property left grow wild for possible use growing crops. Julius thereupon tries to warn John against this plan by telling him a particularly horrific story which strongly hints that the area of land is best avoided because it is haunted. Later on John surmises that the real Julius didn’t want him clearing the land was that he would discover the old man’s secret treasure trove of honeybees hidden in a tree obscured by the overgrowth. This pattern repeats itself to varying effect and motivation in each story.
"Yes, Julius, that was powerful goopher. I am glad, too, that you told us the moral of the story; it might have escaped us otherwise. By the way, did you make that up all by yourself?"
John’s typical response to a story of Julius which always contains some sort of supernatural or superstitious element is an expression of white superiority subtly couched as relatively inoffensive condescension. The point being made is while John is admittedly and unquestionably not to be compared to the cruel slave owners, he is nevertheless implicated in the systemic racism pervading America.
"Oh, well, I don't care, those are mere ornamental details and not at all essential. The story is true to nature, and might have happened half a hundred times, and no doubt did happen, in those horrid days before the war.”
Annie, by contrast, is able to penetrate past the surface of the stories of Julius to a larger truth which John is either unable to see or unwilling to admit. This response, for instance, is directed toward John’s criticism of the more fantastical elements of a story involving a young boy being conjured into birds. While these surface details move her husband to dismiss the entire story as nothing more than a fairy tale, Annie dismisses the value of the fantastical elements to focus on their true import: the boy is turned into birds so that he may fly across land to be with his mother on a different plantation as a result of being cruelly separated as a result of being treated like property instead of human beings.
