Right now, this work is called the Evie-Book, in part because the title I had for the many years I’ve been writing this book was actually used in a recently published book (which is a lesson to me!). Below is the beginning of the book. If you read my new blog post, you might be looking for this:
Maude says her pincherry possum haw jam called me to her, and I believe it did. I was hungry that day, a runty-stick thin five-year-old-mouth looking for something sweet. Daddy had just left to go back to the logging camp, which meant my heart was as empty as my stomach. We were up in the green foothills above our house. Mama was busy flapping her arms at the ravens so she could get to the wild raspberries first. Emmie and Ellie, newborn and tiny, nestled together in their double-wove basket under a mountain maple. Mountains rose up on every side and the trees so tall and thick I might as well have been in a big green room for all the sun poked through. I sat there, digging my fists into my cheeks, and figured there just wasn’t enough of me for God to hear me asking for solace.
Until, that is, a potent perfume of syrup floated through the air. The smell of it took me by the nose and pulled me to my feet. I left Mama behind to go wander in search of what heavenly brew could bouquet the air like that.
It was some powerful odor, Maude’s special pincherry possum haw jam. I followed it past the Boogles’ old graveyard patch, up a rock chimney, and only stopped when I got to the cataract at the head of Jillie’s Creek.
The smell there was so thick I could taste every sun-warmed berry, heavy with sweet juice I imagined running down my chin. I squinted at the waterfall to see if instead of water it had begun flowing berry, but it ran clear as always. Still, I could swear that was where the smell came from.
I waded into the water and stood before the solid cascade of water. I leaned closer, let my eyes go, like I was falling through the surface of the water and the world and looking back again from outside myself, from the doorway behind the waterfall.
The doorway.
I stretched my hand out, laughing as the water smacked it. I pushed my whole arm in, both arms, steepled my hands together and opened a tear in the cascade’s veil. I ducked through, into the space between mountain face and waterfall and stared at the hidden doorway to a passage through rock to light beyond. It was big enough for a horse. I was certain because there was a horse dropping in the middle of the entrance. I was thankful the possum haw pincherry jam smell was as strong as it was.
I slipped into the opening. The waterfall dwindled to a faint splash. I kept to one side, my hand on solid wall, my flyaway hair catching on stone clefts as I walked through. I blinked in the bright sun as I came through the other side, into a hollow snug as a grass-lined bucket. To one side a house stood, grey as the bare rocks that lined the hollow. I raised my nose toward it, but by now the smell had fingers which pulled me on, sideways from the house. I walked past a fresh dug planting bed and a broken down shed, towards the south side of the hollow. Two boulders had fallen together, leaving a triangle of a doorway. A triangle of a door, carved all over in vines and birds, stood open between them. That door was a marvel to be sure, but I was more interested in what was beyond.
I stood on the threshold and peered in. The ceiling of the room in the side of the mountain hung thick with bundles of every forest green you could think of. Shelves held row upon row of ruby preserves. Tansy and sassafras hung to dry. Mulberries soaked in a glass bowl next to a basket of greens. Hickory bark lay chopped and stacked on a brown stained cutting stone. And in the middle of the rock floor, sunlight gleamed through a smokehole onto a cauldron of wild pincherry possum haw jam simmering over an open fire.
I walked right in and settled down next to the pot, my eyes fixed on that bubbling red goo. I sucked the flavor into my nose, my guts rumbling louder than the crackling flames.
“You found the door? Under the waterfall?”
A tall thin woman came out of the shadows. The wonder in her voice made me tear my eyes from the pot.
“Yes’m.”
She quirked a corner of her mouth up. “I’m no ‘m. I’m Maude. Maude Ambrose.”
“Evie Rowan Ellis.”
She reached out her hand to me, her elbows sticking through the sleeves of her wineberry-colored dress.
“Pleased to meet you, Evie. I didn’t think anyone knew about the way in here.”
“I just sort of looked, m-Maude, and—I saw it.”
Maude nodded. “That’s how it should be.”
Her hair flashed red in the stray rays of the sun. One side of her mouth crooked up and she tucked a stray strand of amber hair back behind her ear. I swung my eyes and nose back toward the jam pot.
“I come to visit your preserves…Maude.” Mama taught me to always be polite to old folks. Maude looked to be close to thirty years gone.
She squatted across the boiling jam pot and handed me a spoon carved from some dark wood. I dipped it in the simmering sauce. I blew hard, because Mama always said to. The nectarean syrup eased down my throat like a good tune.
“Thank you kindly, ma’am,” I said. I thought of Mama and the little ones, who hadn’t never had any pincherry possum haw jam as good as this one. I pulled my pearly white clam shell polished with beeswax out of my pocket.
“Ma’am, I hate to be a trouble, but could I have just three more spoonfuls of the best pincherry possum haw jam that ever cooked this side of paradise for Mama, Emmie, and Ellie?”
I remember Maude looking at me with eyes wide and blue, as though a robin had poked its beak in the window to thank her for the millet that winter.
“You have Amazing Grace in you Miss Evie,” said Maude.
I’ve been looking for Grace ever since.
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