THE FOURTH TINE

A page of praise for the fork that is not where we put it.

What Happened, and Why It Is Wonderful

On the ninth of March, 1991, at an ordinary Saturday supper of chicken and rice, the fourth fork of my grandmother's set of six did not come to the table. I want to say at the very top of this page, in the biggest letters the machine will give me, that this is the finest thing that has ever happened to this house.

Understand me. Nothing broke. Nobody was hurt. A fork left the tray where the spoons sleep and went somewhere else in a house of eleven hundred square feet, and it has not come back, and every single day since has been a day with something in it.

A thing that is lost inside a house is not gone. It is distributed. It is under the stove and behind the radiator and inside the green chair and down the register grate all at once, and it stays that way, shining in every room, until somebody finds it and it collapses into one boring place again.

Do you see? For four and a half years my whole house has been full of fork. The hallway has fork in it. The step down to the porch has fork in it. When I mop, I am mopping around a glory. When I move the couch in April I am not cleaning. I am attending a service.

Some people have written to say I should simply buy a fork. Friends: you cannot buy this. Five forks and one everywhere is a richer set than six forks in a tray.

Fig. 1 — NOT the fork. A fork of the common kind, scanned at the library on a Tuesday, provided here for visitors who have somehow never met one. Ours is heavier and has a nick in the second tine.

The Bell

There is a small brass bell on the windowsill above the sink. My grandmother rang it to call people in from the yard. We ring it now for a different reason: every ring is a person somewhere agreeing that the fork exists. That is all faith is around here. It is not complicated and it is free.

The Search — Walk It Yourself

Ronnie Pike, who is fifteen and better at these machines than the rest of us put together, made the search into something you can do from wherever you are sitting. Use the arrow keys. If your machine has no arrow keys, or if you are on one of the little ones, use the buttons under the picture.

You are the round white light. The fork is the Ψ, and it is somewhere in there, and yes, it is really reachable, and yes, somebody really does find it every time.

The floor you have already walked stays a lighter color. That is not a game feature. That is just how a house works after you have been at it a while.

What Turns Up While You Are Not Finding It

This is the part nobody warns you about, and it is the whole reason I made this page. Below is what four and a half years of looking has actually put in my hands. Each room you clear above adds one more from the list I keep by the phone.

• One dime, 1968, standing on its edge in the gap beside the baseboard like it had been waiting to be photographed.
• My mother's reading glasses, one lens, and I did not know I still had a single piece of her eyesight in this house.
• A child's tooth in an envelope marked KEITH — TOP FRONT — DO NOT LOSE. Keith is forty-one.

A Hymn for the Middle of the Afternoon

We sing this one flat and too loud, all of us on different notes, which is the correct way.

1. It was six and now it is five and the five are singing.
2. Whatever is under the stove is under the stove on purpose.
3. Praise the seam of the green chair, praise the register grate, praise the two inches behind the icebox where the warm dust lives.
4. Blessed is the person who moves the heavy thing without being asked.
5. Blessed twice is the person who moves it back.
6. We do not want it found today. We want it found someday. Those are different prayers and only one of them is any fun.
7. And when it comes back — and it will come back, they always come back, they come back the week after you stop — we will set it at the head of the table and eat nothing with it at all.
8. Amen, amen, and get the flashlight.

Fig. 2 — A setting, for reference. At this house we lay five and leave the sixth place bare with nothing on it but a folded napkin. Guests assume somebody is coming. Somebody is.

How to Keep the Practice at Your House

People write in asking how to begin. You do not begin. Something goes missing and you simply decide to be delighted instead of annoyed. But if you want the order of service, here it is.

Letters From People Who Also Look

Things We Have Ruled Out

• The garbage of March 1991 — gone to the county, gone past praying about.
• The pocket of the brown coat — checked eleven times. Twelfth check scheduled for October.
• Keith — questioned gently, cleared entirely, and has himself looked more than anyone.
• The dog — passed on in '93, loved, and never once ate metal in his life, whatever the neighbors say.
• The space between the counter and the stove — ruled out four separate times, and I do not believe a single one of those four rulings.

Go look under something today.
You will not find the fork.
You will find something.