I wrote this story for my creative writing class from the perspective of a 'quaint' farmer in Appalachia.

My name is. . . please save the laughs, my name is Jehoshaphat Williamson. If you don't know, Jehoshaphat was a king in the Bible book of Chronicles, one of the good kings, though according to my mother, he did not remove Israel's high places and therefore would serve as a pertinent reminder to me to remove the 'high places' in my own life. My mother, God bless her soul, desired unique Biblical reminders in the names of her offspring, for all of her offspring. I am the oldest and so the weariest of the naming. My five sisters' names are Hadassah, Bathsheba, Deborah, Dorcas, and Jezebel. Poor Jezebel. Her old excuse for Jezebel goes: "Jeze, it's just a reminder that all of us are sinful." But Jezebel is still finding it difficult to turn up a Christian man to wed.

Family and friends call me JJ, just to relieve the burden of frequent muscular distortions from their tongues. In their less charitable moods, folks might call me (Ph)atty. It's a bit of joke, as I am the size and shape of a fence rail. You can call me JJ. I am not writing this little piece to impress or entertain necessarily. Primarily, I want to give you a glimpse into the life and living of my family as we abide in these Appalachian Hills. It is an existence I dearly love and a thing of beauty that I would like to share with you, that is, unless you call me Phatty.

Now I spoke of Appalachia, and so we do live shrouded in its blue smoke. The Williamson family exists as onlookers to a wild place, just on the edge of the action and within the borders of tradition and safety, within after-church potlucks and slow checkers games at the "Country Store." Wimbledore, North Carolina is nestled cozily up against the Tennessee border and the national forest. We may look in, but not wholly partake, of the wilderness of a true southern state. The name has always sounded a tad comical to me and unfittingly prestigious. Dorcas often cleverly (she thinks) remarks to newcomers or visiting friends that it has the sound of being a wobbling door to England, like a reverse version of Narnia and the wardrobe. But I've been thinking, that would mean that Appalachia is Narnia, and that we are the dullest part of Narnia. That's about where the illustration breaks down for this town. Might need to mention that to Dorcas.

Now I am going to relate to you the various piles of facts and events and names that serve to describe my family, these lumpy stacks of adjectives and verbs that could never fully capture their souls and their worth, in my humble opinion. It all started with a woman, of course.

Darling Gibbs, she was called back then, when the Gibbs clan occupied the polished pew in front of us at Landmark Baptist, which stood on the green corner of Scree and Hilltop Roads. Darling is the third child of nine. Don't ask me to recall all of their names. None of them are either biblical or humourous, and so not worth relating. Well, Mr. Gibbs, Darling's father, was sometimes called Tomato Tom for the color his sweating face turned when he was stacking feed at Scree Feed and Tack. That's interesting enough.

When I turned twelve years old, standing on that great brink of manhood, or rather, peering worriedly over the edge, I received a Radio Flyer red wagon for my birthday. I was never able to pull the information from my father but am rather certain that I saw this wagon out in the trash pile by Daniel Sim's mailbox, the rich boy in my class at school. He probably threw away old toys yearly, with the size of his birthday present haul. The Sim's house was reminiscent of the Biltmore, which I had seen back on my eighth Christmas when the family decided in a lavish leap to sale Grandmother's prized old grandfather clock and to "give the poor woman something good, for once." And so the extended members of our relations piled into two rented vans, with Grandma riding shotgun, cane across her knees and spectacled eyes wide, and made a curving drive over to that mansion in the mountains. Crammed in between Cousin Alfie and Cousin John in the far abyss of a back seat, I became so car sick that grey dots began to join the acne collected on my cousins' faces, and they started poking me in the ribcage with their bony fingers and what felt like plastic dinosaur figurines, speaking encouragements like "Do you need us to burp you, little Phatty?" or "You're too skinny to give anything back up!" The vans pulled up, and I fell out, ungraciously shoved by John, and promptly emptied my stomach onto the Biltmore's grand stairs. That was almost the end of the line for Grandma. Her small, plastic-looking loafer took a slip in my pile of puke, but bald Uncle Stanley swooped her up with a loud guffaw and toted her to the kingly entrance like a ragdoll. Everyone was so excited to enter the mansion that they forgot me and my leftovers. Don't pity me though. The fresh air was quite nice. At my 12-year-old birthday, I was quite beyond this undignified stage and hopeful about my future days, and I did like my useful little wagon, though I did not ride or pull it past Daniel's house, because of pride and because of the associated puke memories.

To get back to Darling, there was a deep sort of vale in the woods that bordered our lower fields named Kendrick's Hollow. A small dirt path ran like the meat of the sandwich between our tilting fence line and the quiet trees and wound down into the hollow. My red wagon ate up that path, and I frequently ate its packed dirt. A month after I received my precious vehicle, I took it for a timed run. Bathsheba and Deborah were doing laundry about the house and screech-ily reenacting pieces of the newly released Sound of Music as they danced through the drying sheets. I fled from hearing, bumping along herky-jerky across the east field and to my racetrack.

There I was, cruising along at approximately five miles per hour, jarring the teeth out of my skull and grinning like a fool as I rumbled down to my appointed finish line in the clearing. But I'm not alone. A girl screams, and the grin flees. Twelve-year old Darling was frantically attempting to rein in a wide-eyed grey pony, brown curls flying and brow furrowed deeply. An angel in chaos. I had noticed her around town and at church, but she lived closer to Ashton and attended school thereabouts. The animal was backing into a tree at top speed, bumping into it, shooting forward, and reversing again while Darling kicked its sides so fast her legs almost blurred and continued to shout, "Whoa, Billy, Whoa!" It never took its very white eyes off my innocent red wagon. I tried to shout my sincere apologies, but she was rather diverted and only grimaced in return. Dad never would get me a horse of my own, and I wasn't sorry about it now, with my wagon sitting obediently underneath me, no rolling eyes and frantic reversing involved.

She got angry enough to shout at me, "Dang you and your stupid toy, Jehoshaphat Williamson!"

Wonder of wonders, she knew my name. But the name seemed to scare the pony more, and it almost reared.

"Can I help you?" I almost sung, on cloud nine.

"It'd be awfully helpful if you up and left instead of just staring like a fool!" she shouted.

I composed myself, dressing in my small measure of dignity and said, "Yes m'am," dismounting the wagon slowly and pulling it back up into the tree-lined trail. The pony gave a snort and a leap and made its escape down the opposite trail. As she was toted off, Darling turned her head and yelled, "Thanks!" Or more like "Thhhhaaannkkkkssss!!"

Darling would be my darling, I told myself that day in the Hollow. I was head over tennis shoes for her and made a pact in my heart to marry Darling Gibbs. At the time, I compared the meeting to the alighting of a rare butterfly on a common flower. I did not see her overmuch in that near future, but when I did, she would give me a small smile, and I would wink slyly and promptly blush. Foolish enough, but it all worked out in the end. The next time we would speak again was at the university across the Tennessee border. Divorced from our town, we found each other. When I proposed, she answered with "There's no ring in that case, but of course I will, JJ."

Truthful and sweet, that's Darling for you. But our relationship is a story for another time.

Shortly after the marriage, we settled down in this old clapboard farmhouse, sprawling on the hills to the east of my childhood home. We are slowly purchasing the place, the Shire, we call it, from Darling's uncle, Ravi. (The back door is round, like Bilbo's home. Ravi Gibbs is a strange character.) Ravi built it with his own two hands, but his children have grown, and the place spreads just too big and empty for him and Allison. We will own it within the year, as my oldest son, Jeremiah, reminded me last night.

I walk into the white paneled living room in the late afternoon, hauling six straining grocery bags, and I am about to shout for Darling and the kids. But I stop mid-thought. Pillows and children cover the floor, nestled between couches. Darling is napping back in a chair, eyes closed contentedly. Our last child, Zadie is sitting small in grandma's grand armchair, with a discarded book in her lap, just looking at her siblings. She puts a finger beside her nose and gives her head a shake, eyes twinkling.

It's not right to verbalize (or to think, I suppose) that you have a favorite child, but there is one of my offspring that sits in a special place in my heart. Zadie Beulah Williamson was born on a sunny day in May, but brighter than that sun is her smile to my soul. Birthed with useless legs, limp and fragile, she is both a forever baby and forever old. I'm not going to say that there haven't been struggles and sorrows because of those two limp legs. Darling and I cried for what could have been, and we are done. We love what she is. She says with a grin things that I should be teaching her, but am not wise enough to know. Every day, she surprises me. At the age of three, I was toting her to bed and muttering under my breathe about the bad farming weather of the past week when she cocked her bobbed head and said, "Doesn't God sen' the rain, Daddy? An' if the rain hadn't rained today, me an' you wouldn't haf read my book."

What a blessing are my tumbling, grumbling, laughing band of children to me and my Darling, like arrows in the quiver of a warrior, like creamer in my cup o' joe. Jeremiah is the oldest and boldest. He is forever making impertinent pronouncements to his elders and firmly commanding his juniors. His way or the highway, as Molly likes to say. He reprimanded Brother Jemison for an untucked shirt-tail last week at church. But he loves his work and this farm; he is excellent in all he does, and we are nurtured by it.

Molly, "Roly Poly," is second in line, often vying for authority and privileges with Jerry, often bustling in and ruining his sense of propriety and perfection, just for the amusement of it. She's got quite the spray of unruly freckles and is known, town-wide, for her cheerful cynicism. Always proclaiming the worst, always preparing for the worst, with a smile on her face, that child.

Laura is our reader, not a "bookworm." She's too angular for that. When not seen outside or in the kitchen, the study slash library in the front corner of the house is a good guess of her whereabouts. A mischievous boy at the school named Tom Purdy (whose sense of humor I highly but privately respect) remarked on her and to her, "Buried in books all her life, and probably buried with books at the end of it. A tall library shelf will be the end of her curious, reaching hand." She promptly hit him with her copy of Jane Eyre and was summoned to the principal's office.

Paul is the family sweetheart. Old ladies oftenest pinch his cheeks. He is the boy carrying the girl's books, or holding open the door for twenty people straight with a happy greeting. As a toddler, it seemed his aim to hug a stranger a day. But he has never met a stranger. I have never seen him sit beside someone, known or not, without striking up an insightful conversation and improving their day. Though he is young, he is usually the sibling emissary sent to us parents to ask for things like dessert with supper.

Abraham is the most creatively named, but unlike me, he revels in it. Abraham Lincoln and Abraham of the Bible are his heralded heroes. I am afraid we have turned him into a history buff. Letting him lose on a game of trivia is a dangerous act. People (the family) will come away belittled and bemoaning their serious lack of knowledge while Abraham looks crestfallen and disappointed. I'm teaching him to drive the tractor this summer. Maybe that'll give him something living to extemporize about. He once lulled an entire visiting family of neighbors asleep with a talk about the history of philosophical education in Illinois state schools. Like, they were drooling and snoring before he noticed.

The Shire takes quite a bit of work to run, with the livestock and the sloping pastures and three crop fields, extending green towards the mountains, but the family pitches in happily, most of the time. The kids complain about milking the cows so early, grumbling and almost rolling down the hill to the pasture, with their squinty eyes and fumbling limbs, but they secretly treasure it, or I do. It has me grinning like a bandit to always beat the sun to the day, to have seized the day and known its in and outs, its joys and mysteries, to maybe even be kicked by livestock, before that ball of fire even rises from its bed. The taste is sweet victory when ye' old sun comes cracking over the lumpy hill on our horizon and tumbles through the red barn doors, defeated. There we lounge, the winners of this continual delight, done with chores and chomping on chalky hay stalks.

I'll die here, preferably, on the Shire's split pine front porch, facing the setting sun, if the government and the various higher orders don't drag me away to a lonely room occupied by an ugly television set. I'll hold out against the powers that be and look to the highest power for my strength, to God. I want to divide this fruitful farm among my children, to root them to this land with love. And I'll leave this pine-split seat to Zadie, to look over this rolling horizon of awe that is the gift of life, and to rejoice.