WIDE MEADOWS: A WHITTLIN' MAN (A CONTINUING SERIES)

Editor's note: This is a chapter from Jean Bell Mosley's book "Wide Meadows" that was first published in 1960.

On winter evenings a frequent visitor around our fireplace was Jeem Hollister. Jeem lived at Laurel Cove, far up the mountain where the mists were last to disappear of a morning and where his cabin remained in sunlight long after the evening shadows had crept over the valley below. He lived all alone, which was unnatural for a man his age, 28. Not to mention such other features as his quiet eyes, dark hair and handsome ruggedness.

Jeem had been to the wars and while he was gone his mother and father had died and his girl, Ginny Crawford, had up and married another man. So no one expected him to come back and stay on his scrubby, honeysuckle-tangled, slant-sided farm; but Jeem, in his slow-soft-spoken way, said he couldn't think of any better place to live. A man could get perspective up there. So he bought back the mule his folks used to own, plowed up a corn patch, put in some potatoes, purchased a cow, and took up his whittling where he'd left off.

Making a match

Though a man of few words, Jeem was a staunch credit to the countryside, and Mama and Grandma and the other happy housewives down in the valley set about finding a suitable wife for him. They paraded before him all their second, third, and fourth cousins' cousins, and nieces and friends' friends from the surrounding town. It was the easiest thing in the world to arrange a meeting. All you had to do was to say, "Mary" -- or "Clara" or "Jane," whatever the eligible girl's name happened to be -- "I want you to go with me up to Jeem Hollister's and see his woodcarving," and Mary or Clara or Jane, being now in, or hovering near, the dreaded old-maid class, was always anxious to go, having been briefed on Jeem's six feet two and his wide, knotty shoulders, though they tried to feign non-interest by complaining of the long walk up the mountain. But they always went.

Sometimes if Mama or Grandma were too busy canning beans or cooking for harvesters, Mama had me and Molly Layton go along to show the way. Any girl who couldn't take over from there wouldn't be worthy of Jeem anyway. It was Molly and me who took Miss Kate, the new schoolteacher, up to Jeem's.

Miss Kate was pretty as a puccoon blossom with her yellow hair and brown eyes. If anybody could make Jeem forget Ginny Crawford it was the settled opinion of all that it would be Miss Kate. And she looked prettier than ever when he was showing her his carving. Of course, anybody would look pretty if they appreciated whittling when they saw Jeem's work. Even Molly's plain face was softened and it lighted up when she gazed at the intricate work which took up a good portion of his small living room.

Carving picture of valley

Several years ago, before Jeem ever joined the army, he had come upon an old knobby log that had once been a mighty tree brought to terms by a bolt of lightning which had left a jagged depression down the massive trunk. Later on, a windstorm had uprooted its big, burry stump and for a year or more thereafter it lay in the forest, a perch for a squirrel or jay, and a favorite sunning place for green-tailed lizards. Lou and I hopped over the thing every morning and afternoon on our way to and from school. But it was Jeem, who spent lots of time in the woods, who discovered how much like the topographical contour of the valley the log was.

"See here," he said, his eyes alight with interest and none of his usual reticence in evidence, "this is the river down through the valley." He ran his finger along the depression made by the lightning. "Here are the mountains: Simms, Stono, Brown." He caressed the knobs and ridges. It was uncanny how much like the valley the log really was.

Jeem brought his mule down and snaked the log up to his house and no one heard any more about it until after he had gone to war and his mother, before she died, had asked some of the neighbors in to see her Jeem's whittlin'. Word got around about it and people made new paths up the mountain, going to see and to stand and study the masterpiece.

Jeem had removed the bark, sanded the log down to a smooth, satin finish, and set about making a wooden replica of the valley. And there it was to the tiniest detail, and all in perfect scale. Down at the far end of the valley, near the end of the log, was the river bridge spanning the lightning depression which was now our beloved river. It was made of the thinnest little pieces of hickory, and Jeem had even left a board loose in the bridge floor like it really was. Then there were the houses up and down the river -- all exact models with the correct number of chimneys, windows, and doors. Ritter's. McFarland's. Britt's. Stacey's. Ours. And each one had its proper assortment of barns and outbuildings.

Houses in miniature

There was the stake-and-rider fence zigzagging up Simms Mountain, and the swinging bridge. Jeem had fixed it on tiny wire cables so it really would swing. Along the River Road was a horse and buggy, with Grandpa inside, driving. I think this tiny little spoke-wheeled buggy fascinated me more than anything. Then there were all the people, and you could have told who they were even if Jeem hadn't set them around their own homesteads, doing the things they did most. Lou and I in our sunbonnets he had put down in the pasture driving home some miniature cows. There was old Abe Adams with his slouch hat sitting on the steps of his summer kitchen. Mr. McFarland, wooden pitchfork in hand, was set in his barnyard, and Mrs. McFarland was hanging out wooden overalls.

No one was slighted. Even McDowells, with all their children, were all there. Some milking cows, some sawing wood, others in the garden. Jeem even threatened, with straight mouth but twinkling eye, to put in Slim Cole's still if he ever came across it, and folks said Slim traded off his best coon hound to Jeem to keep him from doing it.

At our place Jeem had put in the hounds, and, if you can believe it, Tabby, the cat. She was no bigger than your little fingernail, with a ridiculously tiny tail.

He had left his place until the last. Up on the highest knob of the stump was the Hollister homestead, a slant-roofed cabin made of tiny logs with a picket fence around it. Jeem had made his mother and father and set them on a bench overlooking the valley. Himself he had placed near the doorway and he, of course, was whittling. The door to his home was on tiny leather hinges that allowed it to open and shut. He was halfway through with the carving of Ginny Crawford, who would, of course, have been placed in the same dooryard, when he went away. Folks said the first fire he built when he got back home, he used the half carving of Ginny for kindling.