Spoon, Fork, Knife

The persimmon seeds, Grandfather always said, revealed the winter to come. Tear the ripe flesh, dig out the round seeds, split them in half, and you’ll see the icy translucent interior, and in the center of each, one of three white shapes. A spoon, a fork, or a knife. Spoons mean heavy snowfalls. Forks foretell a mild winter. Knives predict cold, cutting winds.

Every October, Grandfather would gather us around, when Mother and Liza were still with us, and use his pocketknife to crack the seeds on the weathered oak table in the center of our cabin. We counted each shape. I see now it never changed how we prepared. It was just something to tie us to the old ways, to keep us circling like seasons under his gravity. Until the year a fourth shape appeared.

That October I turned twelve, and Mother had been gone for two years, running off from our home on Molly Ridge with a traveling kitchenware salesman without even a moonlit peck on the cheek to tell me goodbye. Grandfather said he tried to stop the fella, but they outsmarted him. “Always expected better of your mother,” he said, as he whittled by the fire, shavings piling up around his cracked boots, the smell of cedar wafting with the smoke.

Liza had been gone since February. She’d been so excited just months before, at her last seed splitting, as spoons piled up on the table. “Snow, Kinzey! We’ll have so much snow!” And we did, and Liza got to play in it, once that winter, the last time in her thirteen years with us that she acted like a child.

Whenever the snow fell on our eighty acres on Molly Ridge, the sky hung like slate overhead, the world turned monochrome. We lived inside a daguerrotype. Tree trunks black against white snow, the boards of our cabin and that season’s firewood weathered gray amongst the sycamores. So when Liza stood up from making a snow angel during our last December together, the red stain on the snow between her legs was the only color in the world.

I ran to her, panicked, but she just laughed as she reddened the snow beneath her. “It’s fine, Kinzey. Mama told me—it’s just a regular thing. I’ll tell you about it soon. Don’t worry.”

I worried, of course, but I also trusted Liza. She went inside, she said, to “get a flannel pad,” and she’d be right back. A few moments after she’d closed the door, Grandfather opened it and peered out at the angel glistening crimson. He furrowed, nodded to himself, and closed the door.

Shortly, Liza came out but stopped at the porch. “Grandfather says I can’t come out. He said that can attract boars. He said to stay inside with him.” She smiled sadly. “You have fun for both of us.” I tried my best. I made snow angel after snow angel and, making sure no one watched from the windows, I scooped a spoonful of red snow from Liza’s angel and placed it at the center of each of mine.

Liza didn’t smile after that, or go outside. She stayed inside with Grandfather while he sent me outside to play. Then, one cold February morning, he sat alone by the fire as I woke to fry the bacon. He rocked and whittled and said, “Liza left us last night, too. Ran off with some boy from that Baptist group come through last week.” He shook his head. “Just us now.” Shavings fell at his feet.

That whole year felt colorless. I worked, I tried to play, I slept, I worked. That October, the fourth shape appeared. Grandfather and I stood over the table as he split the flesh. The count was easy. Twelve seeds, eleven white knives. The last seed was a bright red shape. It looked like a spoon, but broader, with a loop at the end. He stared for a moment, then swept the seeds into the fire. “Cutting weather,” he said, and went back to whittling.

Despite the lack of spoons, snow fell heavy that winter. Grandfather said, “Seeds ain’t always right.”

The world, without Mother and Liza, continued to be colorless, except for the boar. That December, I found tufts of bristly red hair in the rhododendrons near my window. One night I heard snuffling and looked outside. A scarlet boar stood in the moonlight. It looked right at me then trotted away. I didn’t tell Grandfather. He hated boars. “They make a awful mess—tear up everything you grow.”

On the sixth night, the boar didn’t trot away. It walked slowly to the persimmon tree, stopping every few feet to look back at me. It stopped and rooted, gently, at the base of the tree. It looked back at me, then was gone like shavings in fire. The snow beneath the tree shone bright red. I understood. I got out of bed.

Grandfather, who had begun to mention as he whittled that I’d be a woman soon, lay snoring on his side. I picked up his knife and slid it between his ribs from the back, slicing towards the center. “Cutting weather,” I told him. Color flooded the world.

I took the iron tongs and dropped a log from the fire onto his bed. I pulled on my coat and boots and stopped at the root cellar to get the fourth shape. The shovel. I walked to the persimmon tree. The snow beneath me reddened with each step, and it was my own. I began to dig, already knowing what, already knowing who, I would find. They had been buried separately, but I found them with their hands intertwined.

I laid above their grave and made a snow angel. I scooped a handful of the snow from my center in with them, said my goodbyes, and covered them back up. I walked off Molly Ridge, red steps shining behind me in the orange flames.

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Ⓒ Daniel Roop