Onion Songs

PICNIC

Each day of fair weather they gather along the edge of the park: to eat and talk, heat their sluggish bodies under the sun, watch animals creeping through the woods beyond, exclamations of pleasure with each new sighting, holding up the kids, making them look. “Kitty!” his youngest cries. At two, every animal is kitty. “Kitty!” patting the iron squirrel holding up one of the many barbecue grills the park provides. “Kitty!”

“When I was a kid we ate squirrels my daddy shot: two, three times a month. But he still thought they were beautiful, and never killed when we could afford better. I don’t know, maybe that made it okay.”

“Bob…” his wife warned, looking at the kids, but only Julie was listening, eyes big above her clutched hamburger.

“No, it’s true. It didn’t taste bad, a little strong. Dark meat, heavy with blood. An honest taste, I think.”

“I don’t think the kids…”

“I think about the kids all the time, these past few weeks. They should get out and see more animals, get to know them. Everything isn’t a kitty. Now when they see one it’s this big surprise—shouldn’t be like that. Animals are invisible to us—when they appear it’s this big magic trick. Then at night, their eyes shining in the dark, and in our dreams.”

“We take the kids to the zoo.”

“That’s not what I mean. Julie? That hamburger you’re eating was made in a slaughterhouse, honey.”

“Bob!”

“They’ve got this gun, and it shoots a steel bolt into the cow’s brain, and almost before it falls there’s a hook and a knife in it, oh, and sometimes they use a hammer to finish it, but not always. I don’t think the animal’s always dead.”

“Bob, that’s enough!” His wife had Julie up in her arms, and Julie was sobbing, and their little boy too. Their eldest, Richie, the sullen teenager, sat at another table, a look of entertained surprise on his face. Bob stared at the half-chewed hamburger that had dropped out of Julie’s little mouth. He couldn’t take his eyes off it.

“I’m not saying she shouldn’t eat meat. I’m not saying any of us shouldn’t. I just don’t think we should be blind to the suffering is all, turning our heads all the time. And not just the suffering—we just don’t see them, we make them so goddamn invisible. We don’t want to be touched, we don’t want their eyes on us, we don’t want to look into their eyes.”

“Bob, you’re scaring them.” Not completely true, he thought, because although he couldn’t look at Richie right now, he could still hear him laughing over there, so hard his voice was cracking. “Could we just go home, please?”

He gazed at both of his youngest in her arms, crying. “I don’t want them to be scared,” he said softly. “I get scared. Each day I get scared. The doctor doesn’t know when, sweetheart. I see him twice a week and still he doesn’t know. Maybe I’m lucky—at least my when has a range. Three months, a year. I feel bad for you with no idea when your time’s going to be up. Like all those animals. They never know.”

She looked away, her crying sparking another round of tears in their children. Richie had stopped laughing, had sullenly turned his back.

“The main thing is… we look away. All of us. We won’t see. We pretend it doesn’t touch us, this messy thing. Our kids need to know about that, how life is this messy thing, but okay because that’s the way it is for all of us, we’re all in this messy thing. Don’t turn away. Look into our eyes.”

After a time the air cools and families leave the park. Few words are said in the car. In their fatigue they settle on takeout in front of the TV and an early bedtime.

In the park, small animals come out of the woods for abandoned scraps. They forage around the grill with no apparent recognition of the figure sculpted in metal. Other animals stay back in their lairs, alone, quietly licking at miscellaneous wounds.