The White Road

9

THE FIRST FILES were blue and contained witness statements and other material assembled by the police in the aftermath of Maria

I had taken on a little defense work in Maine in the past, so I had a pretty good idea of what was ahead of me. Atys Jones would be the most important element, of course, at least to begin with. Defendants will often tell an investigator things that they haven’t even told their attorney, sometimes out of sheer forgetfulness or the stress surrounding their arrest, other times because they trust the investigator more than their lawyer, especially if their lawyer is a hard-pressed public defender already overwhelmed by his or her caseload. The rule of thumb is that any additional information is passed on to the attorney, whether favorable or prejudicial to the case. Elliot had already received some statements and testimonials from those who knew Jones, including schoolteachers and former employers, in an effort to form a favorable profile of his client that could be presented to the jury, so that was a little less donkey work for me to do.

I’d have to go over the police reports with Jones as these would provide the basis for the charges against him, but also because he might pick up on mistakes made or witnesses that had not been contacted. The police reports would also be useful to me in checking statements, since they usually contained the addresses and phone numbers of those to whom the police had spoken. After that, the real legwork would begin: all of those witnesses would have to be reinterviewed because the early police reports were rarely in depth, the cops preferring to leave the detailed interviewing for the prosecutor’s investigators or the primary detective. Signed statements would have to be obtained, and while most witnesses would be willing to talk fewer would be willing to sign their names to a summary of their comments without a struggle. In addition, it was likely that the prosecutor’s investigators had spoken to them already and they often had a way of intimating to witnesses that they should not talk to the defendant’s investigator, placing another barrier in the way. All things considered I had a busy time ahead of me, and I might be able to do little more than scratch the surface of the case before I had to return to Maine.

I pulled the green file toward me and flipped it open. Some of the material inside dated back to the seventeenth century, and the earliest origins of Charleston. The most recent cutting came from1981.

“Somewhere in here may be part of the reason why Maria

He had been rummaging in his kitchen cabinets as he spoke, and he now returned to the table with his right fist tightly closed.

“But in a way,” said Elliot softly, “this is really why we’re here today.”

And he opened his fist to let a stream of yellow rice cascade onto the tabletop.

Amy Jones

Age 98 when interviewed by Henry Calder in Red Bank, S.C., from “The Age of Slavery: Interviews with Former North and South Carolina Slaves,” ed. Judy and Nancy Buckingham (New Era, 1989)

I was born a slave in Colleton County. My pappy name Andrew and my mammy name Violet. They belong to the Larousse family. Marster Adgar was a good marster to his slaves. Him had about sixty families of slaves before the Yankees come and made a mess out of their lives.

Old Missus tell all the colored people to run. She come to us with a bagful of silver all sew up in a blanket, ’cause the Yankees apt to take all they valuables. She tell us that she couldn’t protect us no longer. They broke in the rice barn and share the rice out, but they not enough rice there to feed all the colored people. Worst nigger men and women follow the army, but us stay and watch the other chillun die.

Us wasn’t ready for what come. Us had no education, no land, no cow, no chicken. Yankees come and take all us had away, left us with freedom. They give us to understand us as free as our master was. Couldn’t write, so us just had to touch the pen and tell what name us wanted to go in. After the war, Marster Adgar give us one-third of what us make, now that us free. Pappy dead just before my mammy. They stay right to plantation and dead there after they free.

But they tole me. They tole me about Old Marster, Marster Adgar’s pappy. They tole me what he done…

To understand the crop is to understand the history, for the history is Carolina Gold.

Rice cultivation began here in the 1680s, when the rice seed reached Carolina from Madagascar. They called it Carolina Gold because of its quality and the color of its hull, and it made the families associated withit wealthy for generations. There were the Englishmen-the Heywards, the Draytons, the Middletons and the Alstons-and the Huguenots, among them the Ravenels, the Manigaults and the Larousses.

The Larousses were scions of Charleston aristocracy, one of a handful of families that controlled virtually all aspects of life in the city, from membership in the St. Cecilia Society to the organization of the social season which lasted from November to May. They valued their name and reputation above all else, and safeguarded both with money and the influence that it bought. They could not have suspected that their great wealth and security would be undermined by the actions of a single slave.

The slaves would work from first light until last, six days each week, but did not work on Sundays. A conch shell was used to call in the laborers, its tones sweeping across the fields of rice now afire in the dying rays of the setting sun, the black shapes against them like scarecrows amid the conflagration. Their backs would straighten, their heads rise and, slowly, they would begin the long walk back to the rice barn and the shacks. They would feed on molasses, peas, corn bread, sometimes home-raised meat. They would sit in their homemade clothes of copper straw and white cloth at the end of the long day, and eat and talk. When a new delivery of wooden-soled shoes came, the women would soak the rawhide leather in warm water and grease them with tallow or meat skin so the shoes would slip onto their feet, and the smell would cling to their fingers when they made love to their men, the stench of dead animals mingling with the sweat of their lovemaking.

The men did not learn how to read or write. Old Marster was strict on that. They were whipped for stealing, or for telling lies, or for looking at books. There was a dirt house out by the swamp, where they used to carry those who had smallpox. Most of the slaves carried out there never returned. They kept the Pony in the rice barn, and when the time came for more serious punishments to be meted out the man or woman would be spreadeagled upon its frame, strapped down, and whipped. When the Yankees burned down the rice barn, there was blood on the floor where the Pony had stood, as if the very ground itself had begun to rust.

Some of the East African slaves brought with them an understanding of rice cultivation that enabled the plantation owners to overcome the problems faced by the original English colonists, who had found its cultivation troublesome. A task system was introduced on many plantations that allowed skilled slaves to work somewhat independently, enabling them to create free time to hunt, garden, or improve the situation of their families. The produce or products created could then be bartered by the slaves to the owner, and removed some of the pressure of providing for his slaves from him.