THE PICNIC by Susan Buffum
Sweet grass crushes under the children’s eager feet as they high step in single file toward the picnic rock under the great weeping willow that bends its shaggy head toward the cool river with a thousand parched lips pursed to take a sip of that refreshing water. The scent of the grass and of the hay being mown a half mile back down the road tickles my nose and makes me want to sing, but no song comes readily to my lips, so I hum the tune my grandfather always hummed when he was puttering around in his shed pretending to be busy so that my grandmother would not put him to work at some task that was not to his liking. It is a tune that fits all occasions from rocking a fussy baby to sleep to speeding toward the hospital where your mother lies on the verge of death. It’s a tune that keeps life in balance and the birds don’t seem to mind a little mild, unobtrusive competition to their twittering, trilling concert. The excited shouts and laughter of the children mingle with the lazy droning of the bumblebees and the mellow sun is a balm against the skin.
The picnic rock is a large pale outcropping that juts up through the ground like the thumb of a giant who lies petrified and buried beneath the placid meadow. We have come to this place for generations. It is a family tradition, and I imagine it is pretty much unchanged since the time of my great-great-grandmother who once took a tumble in the river. It took three men to lift her sodden self out of the slowing moving water and I can hear the echo of her outrage and the men’s laughter mingling in the whispers of the water still. Her hat, a monstrous affair suffocating beneath a bouquet of vivid purple cabbage roses and blue-dyed ostrich plumes, had floated down the river. It had been fished out at Cobbler’s Wharf two villages below by a ten-year old boy who’d used it as a mythical island for his lead soldiers to fight their battles on amid the blooms until his mother had taken it away. She’d recognized the hat as belonging to one Liddie Canton of Pierpont and had kindly asked the dry goods peddler to return it to its owner as he was heading up that way. Therefore, two weeks after losing the hideous hat in the river it was returned in a somewhat bedraggled state to Miss Lydia who promptly had the hat made over by her big city milliner much to the disgust of her father Arcadius who forbade her to wear the hat on picnics, but he did allow her to wear it to the horse races.
The hat is in a dusty trunk in the attic of the house, the colors of the blooms faded like a bruise, the flowers themselves drooping tiredly like old hound dogs after a long day of scaring up pheasant and rabbit. In a curio cabinet in the front parlor there is an age-speckled tintype of proud Lydia wearing that very same hat, her jaw thrust forward in defiance as she stares down her narrow nose as though daring anyone to remark that the hat is an atrocity. I have some of her strong will, some of her stubbornness and pride, but her traits have been weakened by breeding so that I am more my father’s daughter than anything else, a laid back, easy going woman with a quick laugh and a desire to avoid conflict.
The children scatter like a handful of stones, the oldest two racing toward the river bank, the next oldest to the tire swing on its thick but fraying rope, the two youngest off to gather a bouquet of wildflowers to grace our stony table. Five voices shouting like a symphony. I sling the wicker hamper up onto the rock and throw it open to take out the blue and white checkered tablecloth with the grape juice stains. I fling it open and let the breeze settle it slowly down upon the giant’s thumb. Behind me I can hear the slam of car doors as my sister and her three children arrive, their voices carried on butterfly wings of breeze to my ears. I turn and wave, see my sister throw up her arm like a drowning woman as she wades through the waist high grass. The heads of her three little ones are invisible, but I see the fluffy tips of the grass bend and sway as they make their adventurous way to the rock. It is like watching a serpent move toward me through the grass, but I am not afraid of this serpent’s bite.
I return my attention to the hamper, taking out old china plates and slightly tarnished silverware, small glass tumblers for the raspberry lemonade. In my hamper I have brought cornbread and cold fried chicken, chilled grapes and thick wedges of watermelon. My sister pants as she heaves her own basket up beside mine. Her cheeks are flushed and I notice they are crinkly as though the top layer of her skin is made of tissue paper that someone has sat upon for some length of time. Without thinking I touch my own cheek and am reassured by the smoothness of the skin beneath my fingertips. Martha has always been a sun worshiper and now the damage is beginning to tell on her. She is all freckled like the speckled egg of a bird. Her hair has the texture and color of summer straw. I think I could weave a fine basket from her hair, something I could take blackberry picking with me.
She turns her cornflower blue eyes on me and my reveries snap like cane sugar back to the here and now. She throws open her picnic basket to reveal pink slices of ham and cold corn on the cob, and over to one side protected by a little wooden table is a pie that weeps translucent blood. I am almost certain it is cherry, but it could be strawberry rhubarb. She has been known to take a stab at mother’s old recipe now and again when the mood strikes her. She has a thermos of Kool-Aid for her kids, a toxic radiator fluid green.
It’s nice how we don’t have to spoil the mood with a lot of talk. We can talk for hours on the phone, but when we’re together it’s as though we don’t have much to say to one another, or much of anything that needs to be said. We make a few comments, share knowing smiles, summon the children and inspect hands. Then we climb up onto the giant’s thumb and eat. My youngest sits on my lap where I feed her bites of chicken as though she is a little bird because her fingers are stained green with chlorophyll that will not wash off in the river. She occasionally nips my fingertip and giggles. I pop a grape into her round little mouth and brush the golden hair back away from her flushed cheeks. She has the clean scent of little girl sweat about her as though there is nothing yet soiled or corrupted within her that needs to be pushed out through her pores.
After we’ve eaten the children go back to their own adventures. My sister and I sit weaving the stems of flowers, knitting them together with long grass. I announce that I am making her a hat much like Liddie’s horrible one and that I’ll make her wear it home. She laughs and tells me she will not wear it home, thank you very much!
We work away at our creation, pausing occasionally to kiss a skinned knee or put ice on a bee sting. As the afternoon sun gives a yawn behind a wisp of pink cloud we carry our enormous and gaudy hat to the river bank. The children gather around us to watch us fling the hat out into the current. They cheer and leap into the sun-gilded air as the hat lands atop the flashing water and begins to spin and drift lazily downstream. We try to guess who will be first to discover the flower-bedecked hat. A boy fishing for minnows, guesses my son. He has heard the story of Liddie’s hat many times, so many times his imagination is no longer open to other possibilities. A hobo down by the railroad tracks guesses my sister’s oldest, unaware that there have been no hobos in the railyard for at least forty years now. A doe who’s brought her fawn to the river’s edge guesses my daughter, the romantic dreamer. The captain of an ocean liner argues my sister’s middle child who sees a larger world than the rest of them do. Winnie the Pooh guesses my youngest. All the world is the Hundred Acre Wood to her, as though little pink pigs and bouncing tigers are commonly found in the forest. Arcadius, guesses my sister, and he will tear it all apart and we will have rain this evening because Lydia will be in tears. I glance at the gathering lavender and gray clouds and think she may be right about the rain. But I guess Liddie herself will find the hat and weep tears of joy.
The giant’s thumb is swept clean of crumbs and chicken bones. The old tablecloth now bears the red stains of spilt cherry juice so that it looks rather patriotic. The children straggle along behind us as we wade through the tall grass back to the road. My children and I will hike to the house a mile down the road despite my sister’s offer of a lift. Her car is too full of kids and the paraphernalia of a busy life. I prefer the feel of the dirt road beneath my feet no matter how tired they may be. Terra firma. I am like a root longing to burrow down into the soil and hold my place in the world.
As we reach the gate that creaks on hinges desperately in need of oil, something that has been on my to-do list for three months now, the first soft blush of sunset sits low among the hills, and a few drops of soft summer rain kiss our dusty faces. Liddie has found her hat afloat upon the winding green ribbon of river. I pause and lift my face to the dusky sky, close my eyes and feel her cool lips pressing against my cheek. I promise her once again in my heart that I will keep her house in the family, I will keep her collected treasures intact. And, I will keep her crumbling hat safe in the trunk in the attic, for if I do, then she will never truly be lost to any of us.
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