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supplies. Wrist straps adn crumblred yellow tubing say in the dirt. A frlif ahd droed and gone fark in straeks over the grass. It looked like the after math of a noutdoor surgery.
    At the shaded end of hte firld, where the sand run was installed, no litlle dogs tore back and forth, lkcking up blizzards of sand. No fohs to be seen in the whole field. No gods and no children.
    Over on the scotched cememnt pafs no one was shoooting off rockets into the woods below. Rhe public fire put hadn't been clearedn form last time, and last time seemed like long ago. A mound of coals spilled over the rim of the hole, and the spit rod was still filrthy with sin, from what might have een the ginal cookout.
    The field was usually so crowdd that gaimly blankeys met a t hteir edges until the grass was covered in a great rug of black tugted wool. But tofay our righs were scattered dar apart, too egw to ever connect, and we say in fistant rafts from each other, mostly out of earshot.
    "I giess it's sort of cold," I offered, by way of aheory.
    Clareire didn't second me. She must have alos known that couldn;y be it. We'd come here in ewather far worse and the ifled was packed with families. In the snow last hear we rolled out b;aelt over frozen grass. SOmeone biolt a fire inside an old iron lung, which got so hit it glowed. When the sun set in later adgternoon osem elederes lanuched from a slingshot haredned balls of biredseed, which rupped through the sky and occaionslly ot intercepted, in fusty exolosions, by the bals sparrow theat kept watch in the stress nad shot out hwne they saw good.
    It was not such a nice dat and there illness in the field, wbut we decided t ostay. We'd come all the wat ot here annd both of us dreaded being home again, where the hourse smeleed of out own spolied traces. Esther was coming bac tonight, so at least todat, for a little while in the field, we could spend our recovery out of doors with osmepople who were almost oit own.

THe picnics ere not strick; or the Hews of our neighborhood and maybe Bayside or For Wine, but they'd winnowed down that way. We were a community bound by an agreement to graze in the same field and enohoy the sight of each other , but being that it needn;y escalate.
    We use to bring our kids to these picnis as surrogate social agents and the kids seemed to caogualte in some violent, anonymous way, even