The Picnic

He's gone now. He died at thirty-seven. Cancer. I met him when I was twelve; he was sixteen and an Elvis impersonator.  In his mind, though, he was not pretending to be someone he wasn't. He was Elvis.

He was my mother's boyfriend's son, and he just appeared one day on our front porch on Rawles Avenue.  He was dressed in all black, and his hair was piled high on top his head and slicked back into what looked like a duck's tail.  Dangling out of his mouth was an unlit cigarette.  He'd come for the blended family picnic.

THE PICNIC

It was a hot summer day in 1957, and the picnic was our parents' idea--a good way to introduce their children, her two and his three.  But only one of his showed up, and he was hanging out on the porch, being Elvis.

The baskets of food were already in the trunk, so once The King arrived, the five of us climbed into a 1954 Ford Fairline, and off we went for a day of swimming and picnicking at a lake somewhere in southern Indiana.

"Why is Elvis driving?" I wondered as he took the keys from his dad and slid into the driver's seat. That was just plain wrong.  Where's Hazel?  Hazel would have put a stop to this nonsense.  I was only twelve, but I felt the decision to put five souls in the hands of a sixteen-year-old hip-swiveling, rock'n roller was crazy.  However, as a child, it was not my place to be the smartest person in the car. Besides,  I was too scared to say anything.  For the hour it took to get to our destination, I refused to look at the road.  Instead, I stared at the person sitting next to me in the backseat: my fifteen-year-old sister, Judy.  If she was calm, I was calm. But my staring annoyed her and she smacked me, so I turned my attention to my mother. If she remained calm, then I was calm. Suddenly the car exploded with screams. What? What?  I looked at the road. Oh, Lord!  We were passing a car on a hill.  Everyone was hysterical, except the cool king. Then we were back in our lane after narrowly missing an on-coming car, and Elvis laughed.

On a grassy patch overlooking the lake we laid out several blankets, and my future dad retrieved the picnic baskets from the trunk.  But, there was something missing. "Where's the pop?" he asked my mother.  "I dunno," she said. "I thought you brought the pop." "No, remember, I brought the baskets.  You were supposed to bring the pop." "No, you said you were bringing the pop, too." After five minutes of desperate attempts to get the guilty party to come clean and just admit they were an idiot for forgetting the pop, Elvis calmly strolled by his father, lifted the car keys from his back pocket and said, "It's cool.  Carol Louise and I will run to town to get some pop."

Huh?  Me?  I was shocked, but at the same time pleased that Elvis chose me, not my pretty sister, so off we went, kicking up a cloud of dust as The King and I sped out of the parking lot and on to the country road to town.  The near-death experience from the previous hour? Forgotten.

The road was narrow, canopied by trees, and constantly changing directions, which concerned me but not Elvis.  He loved to drive fast he said.  He turned on the radio and began dancing in his seat and tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.  He pressed down on the accelerator and the back end of the Fairlane skidded off and then back on to the road. I grabbed for something, anything, to hold on to but there was nothing.  The King turned the radio up as loud as it would go, looked over at me and winked.

Neither one of us saw it coming. The other car was hidden by the trees and sharp turn in the road. The head-on impact produced one loud crash and then deafening silence.  Something wet ran down my face and dripped on to my brand new white pedal pushers.  Blood.  Dean looked over at me and asked if I was okay.  I felt no pain so I said I was.  Suddenly both cars were surrounded by strangers.  A teenage girl helped me out of the car and laid me down in the grass.  She said help was on the way and warned me not to go to sleep.  Dean was walking back and forth mumbling to himself.  Something about how mad his dad was going to be.

For the rest of The Picnic story, I'm afraid I don't remember.  I did go to sleep and slept for several days afterward.  There was no hospital visit or trip to the doctor.  It was just a cut on the head from breaking the windshield the adults said, so no need to seek medical help.  The severe pain in my chest?  Oh, that was just a bruise from hitting the dashboard the same adults said.  No need to check that out, either.

ONE YEAR LATER

The Fairlane was repaired (four years later it would become my first car), the last piece of glass finally worked its way out of my forehead, and my broken ribs had healed.  At seventeen, Dean was no longer playing The King and had turned into a mature and thoughtful young man.  His reckless behavior from just the year before was forgiven and never mentioned again, and our blended family (two adults, five teenagers) lived together in peace and harmony in our new home in the suburbs until peace and harmony left the building early--or should I say snuck out of the window--one morning at 2:00 a.m., but that's another blended-family story for a different time.