Now John was a man and knew he was a man, but played the fool, like most did. He wont no ordinary slave though. No, John was one of the few that still remembered Africa, our home. On one of them back break'n plantations down in the lowcountry is where John lived. Where field hands, from sun up to sun down, picked sea island cotton and rice sheafs till their hands bled numb. Like the tide's infinite dance, there wasn't a day them African's work wont carried into the next. Under the moon their shadows crept along the outskirts of the fields, allowing them to only fantasize freedom.
On Bukra Turner's plantation, John was a field hand, so most of his time was spent either in the fields pick'n cotton or fill'n water oak barrels with Carolina gold. Ole Massa had field and house hands, coopers, and blacksmiths. Ebbry las' one of em hated his guts. Missie's too. John had caught rattlesnakes, with fangs long as rake teeth, that was nicer than the white folk on the island. Oooooooo them white folks was so mean the wasp would turn they stinger the other way soon as they'd see 'em coming.
One evening after all the slaves had got done pick'n, Massa caught John in the cooper shed beating the top of a barrel. There John was in the middle of the shed surrounded by kegs of all sizes and colors. Some made of cypress and oak, others cut from red bay. Across the top of the tallest barrel, the one he stood 'front of, was a hide that was rolled out as if dinner was fixed and ready. Massa say to John, "What's all that racket comin out this here shed?" Massa expected John to turn 'bout pale as him with fear, but John kept steady play'n on the wooden barrel, with his eyes closed and head cocked to the side as if Bukra Turner wont even there.
When John ain't speak back, Massa got all red in the face with anger and came closer to John to see what had come over him. When Massa got close enough to touch the barrel, John eyes sho nuff shot open, but he still aint say a word.
"Boy, did you hear me?" Massa say call'n John out and around his name. John say, "Sorry Massa dis hide hea was in need of a good beat'n. It's strong enough na fa makin' chairs fa sitt'n and eben belts fa wear'n." The hide, brown like molasses, was wrapped around the tall wooden barrel and thinned at the top. It looked all around pitiful. "That old hide been lay'n outside the slaughter house fa weeks, aint been iced or nothin'….. aint no more use in it." Massa told John. "Now quit beatin'n on these barrels like the devil up in you Boy. Go'n back to the quarters."
So John came from around the barrel and got to walking like he was leaving, 'til he reached the door of the cooper shed, turned back to Massa and said, "N' old hide lak dis'll make you plenty out there in town. I's sure of dat. And to proob it ta ya, fo' det deer you got mounted up in de yo hous', I bet you I make de prettiest piece a' anything outta dis hide." Without hesitation Massa laughed and said, "That hide on its last life, John ain' t nothin' even God could do to make it into somethin' worth lookin' at. Besides, I got plenty a' chairs, enough to sit the whole island if I wanted to."
Turning fully to his enslaver, John said, "Yessuh, I's sure of dat. But if I could say. Dat's why I'd rather make you a belt. Just de other day from the fields I seen on your very porch de shiniest thing I'd ever saw. All we seen it from de fields. It was de belt a' Massa Whitmore. We see'd it before we seen him."
To Massa's knowing, John was just one of his sea island cotton and rice pick'n slaves who knew the furthest thing from any of the other trades. "What you know bout turn'n hide into belts, Boy?" Massa asked John with wide eyes. "Plenty much, you just ain't neba let me showed you yet." John confidently said.. "Gib' me a week and I'll hab de smoothest leather yo eyes did see. After I finish out in dem fields each day I'll work up some mo' sweat in dis hea shed," John pleaded.
By the looks of the old cattle skin, a worn out hide like that would cost him near nothing to lose. So Massa got to dreaming bout a belt prettier than his neighbor's and how much money he'd get off his slaves makin more than just him and his family's meals, turnin' cash crop, and fill'n barrels made of oak. Lost in thought, Massa agreed to John's bet, and forgot all about the deer head that came with it. "You got a week Boy, and you better not miss yo pickin' quota or Driver Bill gone have his way whichya. You here?"
"Yessuh Massa. Youn't hab' ta worry, I ain't neba missed a quota, not since my momma born me and now surely wont be da start," John said with a slick smile as he watched Bukra Turner walk out the shed whistling, happy as he could be.
John knew it was two things in this world de Bukra could not never turn down. New money and out doin' the next man. Fix'n a belt outta animal skin was no problem for John, it was actually the least of his concerns.
As Massa and Missie slept soundly in the Big House, John crept to the slave quarters to wake the others. That night all the slaves quietly followed down behind him into the shed and sat around John as he beat on top of the barrel. Mistakenly the slaves hummed and churned to the pulse that reminded them of Sundays, but mostly home. No longer cross legged, they stood up from off the shed's cold floor and began walkin' in a circle around John as he beat familiar rhythms out of the barrel.
With closed eyes some threw their bodies into those in front of them and others leaned back into open arms to be carried as they caught hold of Spirit. Shufflin' they feet across the floor boards the enslaved became a collective drum.
Now remember, John was one of them slaves that hadn't lost all his memories of back home. The white folks knew John as just a field hand, but the slaves knew John to be all types of magic. John existed in this world and the other, and could turn a root on whoever he wanted. But John knew his powers didn't amount to much if he was still another man's property. All the magic white folks thought they had stole, the slaves still had up in em, and John knew'd it too. So he aimed to get we free.
After putting down the hoop driver he used as a beating stick, John untied the stiff cattle hide that was fastened around the water oak barrel. He shook it one, two, three times. But before the third, he paused and stared at the Africans that had been made into chattel, and watched proudly as they retrieved their divinity. On its last shake the worn out hide disappeared behind a thick blue smoke and turned into 40 inches of glossy brown skin, cut in a long, rope-like shape. John came from 'round the barrel like one of them preach'n slaves holding up the belt like it was the Word, and told the Africans this was how they was gone go about tast'n freedom in just one week's time. Every night after they'd returned from the fields, the slaves would meet in the cooper shed and shout as John played his barrel. And each night from his bedroom window, Massa would stare at the shed, listening to the sound of the beating and imagine how good he'd look in his new belt.
Five days passed and when morning came Bukra Turner sat on his porch waiting for John. From where he sat, he could see well into the green, swaying rice grains and high stalks of cotton. His eyes scanned the field for John, but came up short. Soon after, a familiar voice called out to him from down by the ole mill barn. It was John. He had a long piece of animal skin in his hand and it hung out like a rope.
Massa stood up from out his chair with eyes glazed over. Shock was all in his face."Massa I toles ya I knew a' ting bout turning hide," John called out as he approached the porch. Massa came down and took the skin from John's hands. When he wrapped it around his waist the belt revealed to be a perfect fit. Ole Bukra Turner patted John on the back with a smile wide as dayclean and said, "John, Boy you done out did you'self". "Yessuh…beat dat hide good, cleaned and tanned it real nicely. What you think?" John replied. "I'on know whether to sport it or sell it," Massa said, looking fondly at how the sun bathed and beamed in the dark skin of the belt John had made him. "I can't wait ta get my hands onnat deer y'all stuffed Massa".
" What you need that deer mount for anyway?" Massa asked John curiously as he walked back up the steps. "See, I was gone woo de chillen wif it in de quarters, but den I got ta think'n, don't nobody I eber seen got a belt made outta deer hide. 'Specially not one de culuh midnight. You's gone be da first, and I's gone see ta it," John said, with one foot on the bottom step and the other firm on the ground, because field hands weren't allowed in the Big House. "Now you'll have two belts, one em shiny, de other soft as felt."
"Now John, this here's why you's my best slave. Always look'n out for your Massa's best interest." Bukra Turner walked over to one of the house hands named Wilma and told her to fetch some more hands to unhook the trophy from above the desk in his study. Within seconds, Wilma and three other house hands walked out carrying the head of a buck with antlers thick as elephant ivory. "Just for all you doin' fa me, gone head back to them fields and I'll have Wilma and 'nem personally deliver it to the shed." Massa said to John as he turned his back to him and walked back inside.
Wilma, who folk called Sugar, Gulling, Jannie, and Tuesday, who was really named Junior, carried the deer head carefully down the steps of The Big House after Massa went inside. The house hands knew John's intentions for the animal, so they painted their faces with grins and glided across the plantation without dissatisfaction. As they passed by John, he reached out to let his hand brush up against the deer's hairy coat. As each strand caressed the inside of his palm John felt a growing heat rise up off the animal who gave no signs of life. But John knew the deer was very much alive with magic.
That week, Massa slept even better than he did the week before, knowing he'd make triple the amount of money, with a rarity of belt a like the black one John was making him.
You see white folks didn't believe in spirit magic how the slaves did. And as much as their enslavers tried to pray it away or whip it out of them, they couldn't. Them Africans knew it was what sustained their mothers and fathers while in the belly of the Atlantic. And it had remedied their sorrows once arriving on these dreaded shores.
Life on Bukra Turner's plantation made believing in magic hard. Most had almost forgotten how animals could talk, folks could fly, and even how trees possessed sight. John hadn't though, and since he started beating barrels and making belts for Massa something on the plantation had shifted.
The deer John now possessed had a color hidden from white folk. They thought it to be black and named it after what they assumed. But the deer wasn't black. It was blue. Magic ran all through its hide, a whole lotta it too. It was named after the plant that stained the hands of Lowcountry Africans and bled rivers out its leaves.
It took John all of the five nights Bukra Turner gave him to transform the hide. First, he took some flowers that grew wild on the fringes of the cotton fields and washed the animal head in them. He whispered chants to himself that were meant to be bellowed. This intensified the deer's color and the allure it possessed.
Using a small knife, he removed its hide, and for an entire day the skin hung to tan outside near the bark of Southern magnolia. When it was dry, unlike the first that was bound by a knot, John secured the deer hide with burlap rope around the barrel's entire wooden body.
The old folks used to tell stories about how in Africa if a child came back to the village with colorful skin they had been marked by a nature spirit. Often in trying to find their way out of the wild, the lost child stumbled across a Simbi, one of God's unfinished creations. With one touch the deer had relinquished a part of itself, like the child had done its humanity, to the Simbi, and in the process absorbed all of the creature's magic. John remembered these stories when he saw Massa and his son bring in the body of the game they hunted last month, the indigo deer.
Every night when John would beat into the hide Bukra Turner's slaves imagined themselves free as the indigo deer that once roamed the hammock in the fullness of its magic. John used the antlers of the deer as beating sticks. Everyone sat and one by one the enslaved called out their grievances of plantation life and what all it was gonna take to get free. Some said let the fields burn, others said kill them all. John struck the barrel harder to provoke them, and it worked!
The morning came when Massa waited for John to bring him his second belt. As usual, outside the barn the gatemaking slaves who worked with iron were hammering large iron rods, the field hands were work'n to meet their daily quota of cotton bales and rice husk, and at the Big House the house hands used their limbs to balance food trays and saucers. From his two-story porch, Massa scanned the plantation anticipatingly for John, but he was nowhere to be found.
Ole Bukra Turner waited and waited. Time went by and John still didn't show with the belt he'd promised he'd make him.
Out of nowhere a shriek from the cotton field let out and one by one the slaves in the field dropped their burlap sacks. From the porch Massa saw it all play out and jumped to his feet. Then, another throat cried, a loud bang came from inside the Big House, behind him. Massa ran inside to find Missie and their two sons spread out on the dining room floor gasping for air. The house hands ran into the kitchen as Bukra Turner knelt to his wife, shak'n and slappin' her face to make her look less without life. Sobbin' he turned to his children whose mouths hung open and all around them were shards of broken blue glass and food that had spilled from their plates.
Massa ain't know but the scream from the field was Driver Bill and the poisoning of his family signaled the beginning of a revolt.
Massa got in his mind to go outside and ring the iron bell that stood tall in the center of the plantation. When he got to the edge of the porch, there was John, standing in the middle of the path. From ear to ear John was grin'n and by his foot was a small barrel.
"John! Boy! What you doin' standin' there? We's under attack, come help yo Massa ". John picked up the barrel next to him by its jute straps, placed it under his right arm and began walking toward the porch. "Massa I'm here ta bring you dat which gone make you the talk of dis hea whole island", John yelled out. As he got closer Massa realized it won't in John's eyes to help. John was all the trouble the day had brought.
"It ain't a belt nawl, but it sho' is gone keep us folk from fallin',". Washed and tanned the deer's skin was fastened around the top of the small barrel, whose waist had been taken in with John's carving knife. When he looked over to where the rice grew, his field hands were no longer working, but running rampant and kicking in troughs with forceful intent. Bukra Turner nearly fell over in disbelief, as a similar commotion came from the neighboring cotton field along with the smell of burning leaves. From each corner of the plantation, all the Africans Bukra Turner owned appeared, and with a righteous rage, they marched in formation straight towards the John, him and The Big House.
Out of his back pocket John pulled out an antler and began to beat it on the skin of the drum. He struck the barrel a second time, causing Bukra Turner to stumble and fall down the porch steps made from stolen marble. When Massa picked his face up off the ground John was standing over him. Massa just lay there knowing his end had came and won't nothing he could do about it.
Back home our people used the drums for three things: play'n, pray'n, and talk'n. For two weeks the beat of a drum had run rampant through Bukra Turner's plantation, without a white word in opposition. Not even from Massa himself. And not just any ole tune for feet that aimlessly hopped, but one more suited for the stomp'n feet of revolt'n Africans.
Disguised as a leather makin' station, John had made a talking drum in Bukra Turner's cooper shed and enticed all the slaves to return to their old ways. No longer did Bukra Turner's field hands have to wrestle skeetas in lukewarm water. The house hands had undid curses, poisoning the Big House's entire food supply. And the blacksmiths had abandoned the gates for rods of ancestral royalty, ones that would anchor them as they ran.
After they all had their way with Bukra Turner, John led them free Africans with the talk'n drum in hand, into the hammock to be with the wild ones. And that's the story of how High John outsmarted his Massa with an old hide.