“His mother got in and closed the door and the car began to move. Not until then did he ask, ‘Where are we going. Are we going on a picnic?’
He had a feeling that he knew where they were going, but he was not sure.
‘That’s right,’ his father said, ‘we’re going on a picnic. You won’t ever forget this picnic -!’”
Baldwin is more known for his novels than his short stories, publishing only one short collection in his lifetime. But this, the title story of that collection, does as much as longer works like Another Country (1962) with a fraction of the page-count.
The story begins with Jesse, a white deputy sheriff in a southern town, unable to get an erection in bed with his wife. Giving up, he lies down and begins to remember being eight years old and going on an outing with his mother and his father. At first, it seems to be a pleasant trip, maybe a picnic (food is mentioned), but it quickly becomes clear that it is something more sinister.
The family arrive to watch with their friends as a black man is tied by chains above a fire. The chains are lowered and raised, and the fire allowed to eat away at his flesh. While the white families watch, he is castrated and his penis falls into the flames.
Eventually the body is released, and the white families settle down to eat their picnic and spend time together as the body of the man smoulders on the ground, the proximity of racism to the lives of white Americans bluntly and unforgettably depicted. The endurance of the racism is further emphasised by the horrific final scene as Jesse comes back to the present and finds he is finally able to achieve an erection and have sex with his wife.
Baldwin is always skilled at helping the reader to empathise with his characters, and this talent is stretched to its limit in this story, finally breaking as the cold realisation of just what allowed Jesse to overcome his impotence becomes clear. Bleak and not to be missed.
First published in Going to Meet the Man, Dial Press, 1965
A Personal Anthology 