He Only Had One Fork

Anne’s spurring me on.

HE ONLY HAD ONE FORK

The first time Zach took her to his sprawling railroad apartment, Erin explored the entire vicinity with the fascination of a little girl peeping into a doll house. Clues bombarded her from all sides. None of it really added up to anything, but every object was fraught with import.

Zach was in the kitchen, opening beers, muttering to himself, rummaging in the cupboards for food, while Erin stalked around, downloading everything into her brain without discrimination, things essential and trivial. This was where Zach lived. This was Zach’s stuff. She sat down in front of one of his bookcases and ferociously scanned the titles. Zach’s books. Zach had The Elements of Style? Zach had John Reed’s 10 Days That Shook the World? Zach enjoyed Jonathan Swift obviously, since he had the complete works. Jack London’s name was everywhere, too. Zach had three copies of To Build a Fire. Three copies? Why? All of the books were dog-eared to the point of utter disintegration. They were in no particular order, and had obviously been shoved haphazardly onto the shelves every which way. Erin could have sat in front of that bookcase for all of eternity.

Zach meandered back into the cluttered dingy living room, holding two beers, saying, “Here are some really really stale Triscuits –”

Erin wasn’t done exploring.

Zach turned on the TV and drank his beer, while Erin skulked about like a wraith. He had no pictures on his walls, no posters, the walls were just empty expanses of off-white. Weird and kind of bleak. But in contrast, his refrigerator was so covered with children’s drawings that when she opened the door for another beer, it was like handling a fragile papier-mache’d sculpture. Small magnets were not meant to clamp down an 18-page hand-drawn cartoon. Erin looked at the drawings, piled high on top of each other across the refrigerator. Who did these? Niece?

Zach called to her from the other room. “Hey — when you’re done snooping – you have to come in here. There’s this show on about woolly mammoths.”

“Okay.”

Erin pulled open one of the drawers in the kitchen, and saw a battered plastic silverware tray, and in it there was a mountain of spoons, four knives, and one fork. One fork. She checked the sink for more forks lying about, she checked the drying rack. No more forks. The solitary fork glowed with beauty and pathos. It seemed so small, so courageous. The spoons looked like they were ganging up, massing their strength. The four knives would be no help against that army. Erin stroked the lonely fork, in awe of Zachary, and finally dragged herself away to go watch the show about woolly mammoths.

But every time she was at Zachary’s place from then on, she had to go and “visit” the one fork. Zachary thought Erin was nuts. “How’s my one fork doing?” he would shout from the next room. “Is he all right???”