WIDE MEADOWS: FINDING A WIFE FOR THW 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.

Everyone wanted Jeem to haul it all down to the festival sometime, or put it on display over to the city, but Jeem, never in a hurry, said it wasn't finished yet; and by that we knew there was someone else to go in Jeem's dooryard before he would call it complete. And after Molly and I took Miss Kate up, Jeem started whittling again and what we saw of it, it sure looked like Miss Kate.

"Let's go up and see if it really is," I proposed to Molly a while later, so after she'd tidied up the noon dishes one day, we started. Molly took along a bucket just in case we found any huckleberries.

We met Jeem coming down and he offered to go back with us, but Molly wouldn't hear to it.

"We just wanted to see how you were coming along on your piece," Molly said, blushing. She always blushed when anyone looked straight at her and Jeem always looked straight at anyone. His eyes not only looked -- they appraised, too. Most times it was hard to tell what his appraisal was, but with Molly and me he always seemed more than satisfied. Of course I was just a kid.

"Well, go on up and in. The door's open," Jeem invited. "I'll be back after a while." Molly said she didn't think we should, though, and we looked around for some huckleberries and luckily found a nice patch of ripe ones. We picked a gallon, all the time edging on up the mountain toward Jeem's place.

"Aw, come on, Molly, let's go on in," I begged when we got there. "Just to see if it is Miss Kate. Jeem won't care. He said so." "Well, who cares if it is Miss Kate?" Molly said belligerently, sitting down on the step. "Go on in." It wasn't like her to be cross that way.

I never tired of looking at the carved valley and running my fingers over the hills and dales that my feet knew so well. Of course I looked at the Hollister place first to see if anyone new had been added.

"No one yet," I reported to Molly disappointedly, and then she came on in. just like me, her eyes sought out the Hollister place first, but unlike me, that was all she was interested in and turned her attention elsewhere. She fluffed up a patchwork pillow in Jeem's chair, brushed some crumbs off the table, and swept wood shavings back into the fireplace. There were some cold, greasy fried potatoes sitting on the table and a flabby piece of side pork. Molly shuddered.

"Likely ain't had no proper cookin' for years," she mumbled. Her eyes lit on our bucket of huckleberries and soon she was rummaging in Jeem's cabinet for flour and lard and sugar. Before he came back up the mountain she had a pie sitting under a cloth on the table, rich purple juices oozing out of the brown crusty slashes.

"Cook for everyone else 'round here. Don't see no reason why I can't cook for him," Molly mumbled, justifying herself, a smudge of flour graying her hair. I wished I could have been around when Jeem lifted that cloth for his supper, for Molly sure could cook.

I took up the next visitor all by myself. "Jeem, this is Grace Allen, Aunt Ellie's niece. She wants to see your carving," I said.

Jeem was chopping wood, but, of course, he quit and showed Grace his work. He never more than just pointed to it with his thumb, though. It was I who explained it all.

"My, my," Grace said, all big bug eyes and deep dimples, "I bet you cut your poor self a lot doing all this, don't you?" Her eyelids fluttered like a meadow lark settling on a millet stalk.

Grace's chances died a-borning.

Before school started again I took up Alice Grant, Miriam Hastings, Sue Craft, and Maryanne Cleaver. "They want to see your carving, Jeem," I repeated each time. Jeem would have had to have been a Silly Willie indeed not to have caught on. They all "oo-ed" and "ah-ed" and then turned their eyelashy attention to Jeem. "Why don't you sell it, Mr. Hollister?" some asked. Others said, "My, don't you get awful lonesome way up here in this God-forsaken spot?" Others looked around the cabin, noting the dust on things and the wood shavings on the floor.

When I told Mama how the girls looked around at things, she sent Molly and me up to clean the place right away. "Why didn't I think about that before?" she demanded of herself.

"But he hasn't asked me to," Molly protested. "I can't just go barging in with a broom and mop when he hasn't asked me. I wouldn't know what to do." "Oh, Molly. Just look around and do what you would do if you were living there. Make it pretty. Jeem always goes to town on Saturdays. Go up then and you won't bother him. I'll tell him I'm sending you."

Well, Molly really put her heart into it, once she got started. Most of Jeem's furniture he had made himself -- a round pine table; ladder-back, hickory-bottom chairs; a fancy corner whatnot shelf. Molly polished and waxed until everything was softly gleaming. She knit a rag rug in the next few weeks and took it up, and made some blue-checked ruffled curtains for the windows. She cleaned and scoured the cooking pots and pans and fixed the furniture around a little more handily. If Jeem ever noticed any difference he never said so, which made Molly brave enough even to buy a blue bowl that matched the curtains to set in the center of the pine table.

"Gee, it sure is pretty, isn't it?" Molly would say, looking around proudly. "You think she'll like it?"

By "she" Molly meant Janice McFarland now, for the McFarlands had a niece who was out from town staying with them. They were asking Jeem down for a few Sunday dinners, and Jeem had taken Janice to a box supper. McFarlands had Molly come down to their house now and cook nice meals for Jeem when he came "a-callin' on Janice." It really looked like Molly was doing more to get Jeem a wife than anybody else.

When Molly would come back over to our house on special work days, Mama would ask her how things were between Janice and Jeem.

"Well, how should I know?" Molly stormed out, which again was unlike Molly.

"Well, you surely know how often he comes. And how does he look at her? Can't you tell by the way a man looks at a woman he loves her?" Mama demanded.

Molly blushed scarlet and said, "Nope."

I knew Mama was sorry afterward she had asked Molly such a question, she who, of all people, had never had a beau in her life.