
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, September 3, 1995                   TAG: 9509020001
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: G-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SUZANNE STEWART KRUEGER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PRODIGALS

THERE'S A corner in my kitchen that the morning sun always finds at the end of August. Drowsing over my coffee, I'm uneasily aware of that sharp, strange light, generated by summer's shortening days. It heralds the inevitable approach of fall, and like a stabbing finger, it traces a message for me, reminding me of lists and phone calls to committees that will soon convene like flocking starlings.

But I flee the kitchen and the sun's moving finger to take my bull terrier for a walk in the fields. We're both giddy from the new, cool tang in the morning air. The dog plunges recklessly into a stand of knotweed, his course charted for me by the wildly thrashing stalks and the grasshoppers that spring up before us like gaily painted click toys.

Yet even out here, I'm restless with the forewarning that summer is running down, whirring softly like an unwound clock that cannot sound the hours. The long days with their lazy, leisured steps are ending, and to what purpose have I put them?

In my head I hear the voices of my ancestors, like whispers of scythes parting grass. They reproach me for squandering the summer days, reminding me that again I'm unprepared for fall, having neither preserved, jelled nor pickled summer's bounty.

These ancestors, Anglo-Saxon peasantry, knew August as Weod-Monath, when they gathered blossoms and leaves from plants, then distilled, dried, and pounded them into simples and syrups. They plucked nettles for sudden stitch, mugwort for infections, wergulu for the white poison. But I cross sun-crisped fields with the dog, collecting only wildflowers' names, fancifully preserving their leaves and racemes in metaphors and similes.

The weeds' names evolve into a jingle as I stride along railroad tracks that flash like a spider's filament. Evening primrose, sowthistle, moth mullein, butter-and-eggs ... suddenly, unexpectedly, I'm cheerful.

Like a child with a counting-out rhyme, I chant more names; morning glory, ragweed, loose-strife, heal all. My shins are scratched by Joe-Pye weed, Queen Anne's lace and bouncing Bet, all colorful as a gypsy's caravan, coarse as a gypsy's curse.

August's end was harvest's peak for my forebears, clans of Barneses, Biddingers, Stewarts; their names as rough and stubbled as the fields they sickled. They tied summer up in stooks, piled it in wains, hauled it away with carts and kegs. Families reaped away those golden afternoons with a watchful eye on the phase of the moon or the Saint of the Day, harvesting for existence, existing till harvest came again. Let in by Lammas-tide on the first of August, shut up by Michaelmas in September, it was a vital, anxious time, for gnawing winters took toll of those who didn't glean with industry and care.

I have a tiny garden I tend casually, forgetting tomatoes till they drop and split, overlooking zucchini till it engorges to gargantuan size. Here the crow and the cutworm forage unchecked, profiteers of my ease and idleness.

Still, these hot days and cool nights make me uneasy. A brooding atavism insists that this is tallying time, when June, July and August should be as tangible as bundles stacked in a loft. By a hereditary bend of my bones, a quirk of archaism, I'm compelled to scavenge these fields and carry something home.

So I stoop to collect wild plums, their bottoms thin and cool, tops rough and sun-priced, then irresolutely drop them along the way. I take note of places by the railroad track where wild asparagus has ripened and gone to seed. I run my fingers down a bronzed stalk of plantain, the tiny, hard beads clinging to the plum juice on my hand. Bo'sun puts up a covey of quail without the faintest idea of what he should do next. Feckless, improvident, we turn towards home.

Over our heads January's constellations are invisible. The Lion, the Lynx, the Great She-Bear pant and pace, caged by the bars of the August sun. I shade my eyes and watch swallows making trial flights while Bo'sun barks foolishly at kilideer teetering along the asphalt. Starlings, iridescent as oil slicks, clink querulously and whistle us home.

Once, laborers shouted "Ah Har" to signal the farmer that his harvest was in. Three times they'd whoop "Ah Har" and the farmer would hurry to pay them largess for their toil.

I've finally brought in my own harvest, tramping fields to gather the names of unprofitable weeds, restless birds, hidden stars. Summer's essence is distilled and preserved in my mind. My largess is the wild fruit juice and brown plantain seeds in the palms of my hands. I've hushed those ancestral whispers and stored provisions for myself till summer comes again.

"Ah Har," I shout to the dog as we cross the fields towards home.

Suzanne Stewart Krueger of Roanoke is a freelance writer whose work includes short stories published in Cricket magazine for children.

by CNB