Spoons

The Gribbles family was known in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia as the poorest family in Lee County for generations. The hard, clay, lime-ridden dirt was richer than the Gribbles. Harley oft remembered having to share clothing, shoes, and silverware with his brothers and sisters. Thus, when he managed to make his own money as a welder instead of spending the better part of his days inside a moonshine bottle, a revolution in his genetic lineage, all he asked his godforsaken wife was to keep the dishes clean and lots of silverware on hand. Yet, time after time, his spoons would disappear one by one.

“Addie, how many times do I haf to ask ye. I have been out all day busting mah hump to earn us a good livin’, and the lest you can do is to make sure to haf dem spoons ready for our supper. Yet, I come home, and ah only seen the one spoon in the goddam drawer.”

Adele Rebecca McGuiness Gribbles always shrugged and swore up and down that she had no idea why the silverware kept disappearing.

“Do you ‘spect me to believe that someone broke into our house just to steal all of our spoons? How the hell am I s’posed to eat soup? I have nothin’ to eat my Crunchy O’s wit in the mornin’. How in blazes name am I gonna stir my coffee?” It got up in his craw to no end to stir his coffee with a butter knife.

He had to buy at least five sets of spoons over the years. One Christmas, family had come over for dinner, when he didn’t keep track of those goddam spoons, Addie had to set out forks for the goddam icecream, leaving Harley laughing uncomfortably and making a joke about the spoon burglar striking again.

That godforsaken woman. Addie, she was okay; she had a certain way. When they first married, she was easy on the eyes, she wasn’t on the bottle, and she didn’t smoke none of that weed the rest of the kids grew in the back mountains under the cover of the trees and forest. She was always thin and stayed that way, whereas Harley gained a gut like many men his age. Not from drinking beer like many of his buddies, but just slowing down. Adele, though, she was always small, petite, with gray eyes that never let on what she thought; either good or bad, happy or sad, those gray eyes always looked the same. Small nose on her face, small face. No one ever took much notice of her. If anyone sought out an answer from her, she always responded in the same way, same manner: the food was on the table for supper, she needed to go to the grocery store, and no, Harley, I did not steal your spoons.

It had to be her, he often reasoned. Where else could his spoons have gone? Didn’t she know how important it was for him to have enough spoons in the house?

Overall, he supposed Addie was a good wife. She always washed the clothing and kept the house clean. If it weren’t for this one thing, the thing with the goddam spoons, their marriage would have been as seamless and placid as the sun rising over the mountain as he waited for deer on his tree stand.

After he replaced the fifth set, he refused to buy Addie a new dress. “That’s it. Unless I get all of them spoons back, all sixty of ‘em, I ain’t buyin’ you a new dress. Oh, no, I will not.”

Addie still insisted that she did not steal his spoons, appealing to his sense of logic. Why in the world would she steal silverware, of all things? He’s not making any sense. She needed to eat as well. Where would she put them all? He’s the one who brought out the trash every night. Did he see any spoons in the garbage? Maybe that hound dog of yours buried them in the backyard, she reasoned. Maybe your family keeps stealing them.

Addie certainly had a way about her. She never raised her voice, never got upset. Every time he brought it up, she just sat there with her hands in her lap, and by the time he was ranting and raving about the godforsaken spoons, he reckoned he was the lunatic. Out of all of the things in his house, why would his family steal spoons when there were ample forks and knives too? How could the dog possibly get a hold of the spoons? Why just the spoons? It addled his head to think about it. Whenever he thought he got her this time, she would convince him otherwise and make him feel bad for asking.

She never yelled, never cried, never said anything about what a grumpy old louse he was for bringing it up again. He reckoned he should make it up to her. She did look happy when he bought her a new dress. And she did put up with him shooting his mouth off. She was the only company he had. They didn’t have any youngins. So, sure, he wound up buying her a new dress. Two, actually, to make up for his ornery constitution.

Over the years, he had gotten used to the spoons missing. Either way, he could never explain why the spoons went missing and stopped raising a fuss over it. After a while, he gave up even trying to explain why his spoons disappeared. When he thought about it, he had to agree, it was a silly notion. He knew where Addie lived, after all, so why in the world would she steal them?

In the process of marking years by missing spoons, Addie had gotten some sort of heart thing. Mumble? Murmur, that’s it. Something with her heart valves. When she had fainted the first few times, Harley accused her of just wanting some attention, but when she smacked her head good one day on the countertop, he brought her straight to the doctor, and the doc heard the murmur. Within a year, it got worse, and Addie wound up in the hospital. The doctor wanted her to take her heart medication, but she refused. She died while Harley was working on a trailer for a customer, work he took on after retiring. He found her on the floor, gone, like faded wallpaper decorated with dainty flowers.

Harley continued to live in the house Addie and he had made their home in for over 50 years, and he didn’t notice it at first, but several months after Addie’s passing, he could no longer deny it: one spoon remained. He sat at his kitchen table, staring at it, the last spoon standing. How in the world could he explain this? Maybe since he hurt his back and he had to give up welding, he had finally lost his mind. Maybe he lost all of the spoons all of these years and blamed Addie. Maybe his goddam dog did bury them all in the yard, even though it had been many years since the dog’s passing. Maybe his ghost-dog buried them in the yard. It couldn’t possibly be Addie, right? His no-good family hadn’t been over his house in years, so he couldn’t blame them. Determined not to give up the remaining spoon, he washed it after using it and put it in his pants pocket.

Maybe he should look around again, like he had so many times before. After all, what could it hurt? He looked for holes, any hole, that could explain the years of missing spoons. Even though his back ached, he moved the stove and the refrigerator out from the wall, and no spoons. He took out the bottom kitchen drawer where mysterious spare parts to things long-forgotten were laid to rest and looked underneath; no spoons. He looked again at all of the spots in his house that could provide an explanation, finding none contained any answers.

He held his hand to his back. He needed to rest it in his easy chair, and so he hobbled through the living room. Oh, that Addie. In that old photo of her hanging on the living room wall over the end table, when she was younger with a coquettish expression, it looked like she teased him even now. For some reason, he looked at that photo of her every day more than any other. There was something about the way she looked, like she was challenging him to figure her out. On that day, he surmised that she had won. He had never been able to break through her impenetrable placid gray eyes. He had no idea what went on in that head of hers.

He went to straighten the picture of his lost companion, and oddly enough, the picture would not sit flush to the wall. Frowning, he took off the photo. He didn’t remember patching a hole there. Such poor workmanship. The wall was uneven. He ran his hand over it, and it came loose with little effort. He shook his head. That godforsaken woman should have told him about the hole in the wall instead of trying to fix it herself. He could have fixed it proper. He accidentally put his hand through the plaster, and a jangle sounded when the plaster fell behind the wall.

Harley shook his head, and with many utterances of “No friggin’ way,” “Adele, I swear…,” and “Goddam you woman,” he retrieved  a hammer from the garage and pounded the wall. Was she haunting him? It would be just like that godforsaken woman to come back from the dead just to steal his spoons.

The plaster gave way, yielding the answer he had been seeking for half a century.

The spoons, with a jingle and a clatter, sung like church bells as they poured out from the wall and fell all around Harley, who laughed, sat down in the middle of their spoons, and then cried.

“Fine! Fine! I’ll say it, you godforsaken woman! I love ye. I miss ye!”

After a few more sobs, he croaked, “I do.”

END