Grandpa's Secret Stash and the Granddaughter Who Found It

My doctor is a nice young man named Dr. Pruitt who wears sneakers to work and calls me “my friend.” In March he looked at my blood work for a long time and said, “My friend, we need to talk about sugar.”

We did not talk. He talked. I nodded. Marlene, who came along to make sure I told the truth, took notes.

By supper the cookie jar was full of rice cakes. The ice cream in the freezer had been replaced by something called frozen yogurt bark. I have been married forty-six years. I know when a decision has been made.

So I went underground.

In the garage, on the second shelf above the workbench, there is a coffee can marked DRYWALL SCREWS in black marker. Nobody in the history of this family has ever wanted a drywall screw. Inside that can were two pounds of chocolate-covered peanuts.

I had a system. Two in the morning when I checked the mower. Two in the afternoon when I checked the mower again. That mower has never been so well checked.

For thirty-one years I was a claims adjuster for an insurance company. I have negotiated with roofers, flood victims and a man in Tolliver County who insisted a moose had sat on his Buick. There are no moose in Tolliver County. He still got a partial settlement out of me.

I mention this only so you understand that I am not a pushover. I am a professional.

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In June our granddaughter Josie came to stay for a week while her parents went to a conference about something. Josie is eight. She has her mother’s freckles and her grandmother’s way of looking at you until you hear yourself.

On Tuesday she wanted to build a birdhouse. I said that was a fine idea. We went out to the garage, and she looked over the shelves like a foreman.

“We need screws,” she said, and reached for the can.

“Not those,” I said.

She looked at the can. She looked at me. She took off the lid.

There was a long silence in that garage. Somewhere down the street a lawn mower started up, and I envied it.

“These are not screws, Grandpa.”

“They’re a kind of screw,” I said. “A peanut screw.”

She ate one. She chewed it slowly, the way a judge reads a document. “Does Grandma know about the peanut screws?”

I offered her one chocolate peanut for her discretion. She countered with two peanuts, plus she picked the TV show every night that week. I countered with one and a half. She asked how you split a peanut. I could not tell her. We settled at two and the remote.

The moose man had more trouble with me.

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On Wednesday at breakfast, Josie buttered her toast and said, to nobody in particular, “Grandpa, how many drywall screws does one person need?”

Marlene looked up from the crossword.

“It depends on the project,” I said.

“What project are you doing?” Marlene asked.

“A big one,” I said. “Very big. Lots of screws.”

After breakfast I took Josie to the Dairy Dip out on Route 9. She had a large twist cone dipped in cherry. I had a black coffee and watched her eat it. She said thank you very nicely. Josie has excellent manners. That was part of the problem.

On Thursday she explained the arrangement. “It’s called a retainer,” she said. “You pay it so I’m ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“Ready not to say anything.”

I asked where she learned a word like retainer. She said her daddy says it on the phone when he thinks she’s watching cartoons. Her father is a lawyer. He should keep his voice down.

That afternoon I moved the peanuts. I put them in my tackle box under the bobbers, in a sandwich bag inside another sandwich bag. She found them in nineteen minutes. I know because I timed her. She charged me a relocation fee of one root beer float.

The moose man, you’ll recall, settled for half.

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By Friday I had paid out three ice cream cones, a root beer float, a new jump rope, two dollars cash, nineteen chocolate peanuts and every evening of television. I had watched a program about teenagers who bake cakes shaped like other things. I now know more about fondant than any retired man should.

I did the math. I was spending more to hide the peanuts than the peanuts cost. There was only one way out. I would confess.

I found Marlene on the back porch shelling peas. I sat down across from her. I cleared my throat like a man about to propose, which I had not done since 1978, and that time I was less nervous.

“Marlene,” I said. “I have something to tell you about drywall screws.”

She didn’t look up. “The peanuts?”

I said nothing. Nothing seemed to cover it.

“Since April,” she said. “You hum when you come in from the garage. You never hummed a day in your life before April.”

She split a pod with her thumb. “I count them every Sunday. You’ve been very good, actually. Two in the morning, two in the afternoon. Dr. Pruitt said a little was all right. I just wanted you to have something to look forward to.”

I sat there a while. Then I asked the question a claims adjuster always asks.

“So who told you about the tackle box?”

Marlene dropped a handful of peas in the bowl. “Josie,” she said. “Fifty cents a report. She’s very thorough.”

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Josie went home on Sunday. She hugged us both at the car. She had a jump rope, a sunburned nose and, by my estimate, about eleven dollars, collected from both ends of the same house.

Her father asked if she had behaved herself.

“She was wonderful,” Marlene said.

“She was,” I said, and I meant it, which is the worst part.

At the car window Josie crooked her finger at me. I leaned down.

“Next summer,” she whispered, “use a cereal box. Nobody checks cereal boxes.”

That afternoon I drove to the hardware store and bought a box of real drywall screws. I poured them into the coffee can. Then I bought a bag of chocolate peanuts off the rack by the register, carried it home and handed it to Marlene.

She put it somewhere. I didn’t ask where. I figure next June I can get the location from Josie for fifty cents.

That’s a fair price. I once paid a good deal more for a moose that never existed.