Red Ant House

by Ann Cummins

  “What?” Pete took more fish that Charlie held out to him.

  “I come on an accident. A real bad one. Somebody died, that bad. I’m the first car there. And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “If I hadn’t slowed down it would’ve been me in that accident. What do you think of that?”

  “You were lucky.”

  “No luck about it. The albino coyote warned me. But you gotta be able to see ‘em. Most people can’t.”

  Pete picked a chunk of fish from the paper with his fingers and ate it. His stomach wanted more and so did his mouth. He ate chunk after chunk and so did Charlie Alexander. The fish was better than good, like it always was when you cooked it on a grill. He and his dad had cooked fish and deer and rabbit on spits over campfires lots of times.

  Far away where the sun had gone down, the ocean gleamed like a dime or a spaceship. A tiny little one-man spaceship. Sometimes when he woke in the middle of the night he thought of what it would be like if spacemen did come and choose a special few, and if he was one of the chosen. He could put himself to sleep thinking of what it would be like on an alien spaceship.

  Down the beach somebody had made a campfire and people walked around it, just dark shadows, five or six people, probably roasting wieners. “You know what? You know what somebody did in this apartment?” Pete said.

  “What?”

  “Built a fire. Somebody went in there and built a campfire in the middle of the floor.”

  “No,” the man said.

  “Yes, they did. They put a rug over it, but if you move the rug you can see where they built it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I saw it. I’m telling you. You can look. There’s no hole but the wood floor’s all burned in this one place.”

  “And what were you doing in there?”

  Pete looked off down toward the people.

  “I bet I know who did it. I bet it was you.”

  “No, sir.”

  He pushed Pete in the side of the head. “I’ll just bet it was you,” he said, and Pete grinned, though he hadn’t done it.

  “No, sir,” he said again, but he couldn’t stop grinning.

  “Smiley,” the man said. “That your name? Smiley McGee?” He laughed. “Smiley, Smiley, Smiley McGee.” He pushed Pete in the shoulder, pushed him hard, and Pete lost his balance. He caught himself with his hand, and the man pushed him again, and he was laughing—Pete could see the roof of his mouth—and he could smell, suddenly, beer, beer and this man’s sweat, which he hadn’t noticed before. “There now, don’t cry,” the man said when Pete stood up.

  “I’m not crying.” He backed up to the edge of the porch railing.

  “That’s a funny way to laugh.”

  “I’m not crying,” Pete said. He wasn’t.

  He stared hard at the place where the flying saucer had disappeared. The ocean there was black and slick, and the whitecaps were wiping out over and over again.

  He could feel the man, Charlie Alexander, staring at his face. Pete didn’t look at him. After a long time, he heard the crumpling of a beer can, and the man yawned loudly. He threw the smashed can on the pile. Altogether, there were six. Out of the corner of his eye, Pete saw the man stretch his arms over his head. “Boy, I’m bushed,” he said. “You bushed? I’m bushed.” He got up, put his hand over the grill. “I think this will be okay,” he said. He winked at Pete. Then he put his finger on the grill, right on it. He held it there, grinning, then he held it up to Pete. He said, “Am I burning? You got to tell me if I’m burning or not because I got no feeling in my extremities.” Pete could see a brown crease in his finger like a guitar player would have. This man had deliberately burned his finger. The man held his fingers to his nose. He said, “I’m burning. I think I am.” Then he threw back his head and laughed.

  Pete sat sideways on the porch, one foot on the top step, one on the next. He looked at the dark window in the downstairs apartment. The man hadn’t turned any lights on. Not even the bathroom light, unless he was in there with the door closed. The lights worked. Pete’s mom complained about how the electric bill was supposed to be divided between the two apartments, but there was no way to divide it when there was nobody downstairs to pay.

  Pete picked up the leftover fish on the bag and threw it out beyond the grill. Cats would come and eat it, or coyotes. Pete had never heard of such a thing as an albino coyote. He’d like to see one, though. He wondered if he had the eye.

  The apartment door was open, the screen closed. Pete couldn’t hear Charlie moving around in there.

  “This man,” his mom would say, “is not in control of his circumstances. Keep an eye out.”

  Pete wanted good night vision. You had to practice to get it. When he and his dad used to go camping, his dad made him walk without a flashlight so he would learn how to listen. His dad had good night vision. Pete wondered if he’d ever seen an albino coyote. His dad would probably say that was hocus-pocus.

  Once they were walking in a field and had come on something. His dad knew. Pete didn’t. His dad put his hand on Pete’s shoulder and they stopped, and then all around them the ground stood up. They had walked into the middle of a circle of wild horses. His dad said, “At night, you got to learn to listen with your ears and your eyes. When it’s dark, people rely too much on their eyes and they don’t hear everything.” Later, though, when Pete was lying in his sleeping bag staring at the stars, he heard what his father had heard, the circle of horses breathing, and it was funny how he could remember hearing it but didn’t hear it at the time. He was much younger then, though.

  Last year he had seen a cat eating a skunk. He had woken in the middle of the night, had heard something—his father hadn’t heard it. He got his flashlight and shone it on the sand, and there was a cat eating a skunk. He woke his parents up to show them. His mom said that the cat was sick and couldn’t help itself. Something had made it crazy. She said that there were all kinds of circumstances that could cause people and animals to do unnatural things—like the people who had built a fire in the downstairs apartment. His mom said they were not in control of their circumstances, that they were probably hungry and cold and had been driven indoors by the weather, but his dad said that was nonsense. He said people didn’t have license to destroy property because they were cold and hungry. He said people had to learn how to exercise a little control, but his mom said there were some things over which there was no control. They had fought about it. This was just before Pete’s dad went north.

  He’d said he was coming back with a bundle of money in case Pete’s mom needed another operation, but his mom saidhis father would never come back, said it right to his face. “You won’t come back because you can’t stand to be around illness,” she said.

  His dad said that wasn’t true. He told Pete he’d be back with a bundle, and that he’d call every Sunday, but yesterday was Sunday, and he didn’t call.

  Pete guessed that was hocus-pocus, too.

  The fire down the beach had died to almost nothing, but the driftwood in the grill still glowed. He scooted down the steps to the bottom one, leaned out stretching his hand over the grill. He touched the very edge with his index finger but drew away before he could tell if it was hot or not. He touched it again—

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  Pete jerked back and stood up. The man stood in the doorway behind the screen. He wasn’t wearing a shirt.

  “Shouldn’t you be in bed?” he said.

  Pete stuck his hands in his pockets and looked out toward the ocean.

  “I think you probably should.”

  Pete kicked at the sand, kicked it hard so it spread onto the grill. He looked quickly at the man. The bottom half of the screen door was solid. He could see only his naked upper half. The man’s eyes were tiny dark buttonholes in his face. Pete thought the bottom half was probably naked, too. His heart was thudding.

  He took a step, then another. He had not hea
rd him. How had this man sneaked up on him? Charlie Alexander. Pete’s back prickled. “Hey, where you going?” the man said, his voice low, gruff—teasing.

  Pete walked out beyond the grill, his neck and back prickling.

  “Hey! Don’t go!” Charlie Alexander laughed. “I don’t bite.”

  Pete’s shadow stretched before him on the sand, then suddenly disappeared. Too suddenly. The light behind him had gone off. This man, this Charlie Alexander, had come out his door, had opened the door at the bottom of the stairs, the door that led to the upstairs apartment—their apartment—where the light switch was, and turned the porch light out. Pete listened behind him. He tried to hear movement, feet on the porch, but this man who was not in control of his circumstances could probably move as silently as a cat because crazy people can sneak up on you, and Pete tried not to listen too hard because if you listen too hard, your ears will play tricks on you.

  He walked toward the water, his flip-flops quacking against his heels like ducks. He wanted to ran, but crazy people can always outran you. As gently as he could, he kicked one shoe off, didn’t break stride, then the other, and left the ducks behind—he, grinning like a crazy person, too, couldn’t help it.

  At the place where the loose sand turned hard and sloped down toward the water, he turned around and looked back toward the dark house. He could see nobody. He squatted. He swiveled his head, looking along the line of trees behind his house. He could see no human shape among the trees, no one standing, no animal, either. He was pretty sure he could not be seen. He was a head in the sand. He knew the exact point where he disappeared, where he could squat in the sand and see the house but not be seen. He had been a head in the sand many times, watching his mom look for him. He could see nothing on the shadowy porch, or in the house. Charlie Alexander could be on the porch or in the stairway. He could be in their apartment, but there was no light on up there.

  When they had smelled smoke from the campfire in the downstairs apartment, his mom had called the beach patrol, who came and put the fire out and arrested the people. Afterward, his mom told Pete if he was ever trapped in the apartment and there was fire on the stairs, he should take his chances and jump out the window because the sand was soft and he was a monkey. He would survive a fall but not a fire. His mom told him he had to be prepared for any eventuality.

  A phone was ringing. It was a tiny little mouse ring from the tiny little upstairs in the tiny little house. It would be her, his mother. She would be mad that he didn’t answer. She would call Lynn. That was a certain eventuality. Lynn would come in her truck and—he thought suddenly that Charlie Alexander could be on the stairs listening to his mom’s voice, and blood rushed through him, made him hot.

  He wanted to run back, to shoot the man—if he had a gun he would. Invisible baby fish flipped in his hands. He dug his fingers hard into his palms until he thought he could puncture himself, and then dug harder and gritted his teeth. He thought, I have feeling in my extremities.

  His leg bones ached, so he dropped from his squat, kneeling in the wet sand, feeling the wetness seep into him. He knew a trick for staying awake. Cold water. Cold ocean water. Nobody falls asleep in cold water, his dad had told him. Once his dad threw cold water in Pete’s face to get him out of bed. But Pete wasn’t lazy anymore. He could stay awake all night.

  This was a good distance. From here he could see just about everything, and nobody could sneak up on him because he had the cold ocean at his back. He would just watch until he saw Lynn’s truck lights. Lynn would come. He knew his mother had called her, as sure as he knew his own name. When he saw headlights turn down their road from the highway, he would run hard and head his aunt off before she reached the house. He would run low, like a soldier. He would stay below the loose sand where Charlie Alexander couldn’t see. If he was watching, he wouldn’t know where Pete would come up. Even Pete didn’t know. He knelt there, watching and listening, thinking about what he would do when he knew what must be done.

  Headhunter

  The truck was climbing steadily onto ledges of sand, each one looking like the last. Ginny had seen few cars on this road and no animals, though she kept passing signs that cautioned her to watch for them. The inside of the cab felt like sand, and so did the inside of her mouth. The tops of her arms had separated into hundreds of little lines, and her hand, when she touched it to her tongue, tasted like salt. She had developed a twitch below her left eye, and her eyes were dry. The absence of moisture gave the landscape an edge, like glass.

  She rolled down the window and let the air blow her hair. A white sign told her she was entering the largest antelope reserve in the United States. On the yellow caution signs the antelope had its front legs folded under it, very graceful in silhouette. There were blond rocks in the distance that could be animals wisely resting in the heat of the day. In places, the road had buckled and warped from the heat so the truck dipped and rose as it moved along.

  Without looking, she reached for the water bottle beside her and twisted off the lid. The water was warm. She shifted legs, using her left for the gas, resting her right on the passenger’s side. The little shrunken head hanging from her key chain knocked against her thigh. When she was eight, her father threw a nickel into a carnival dish and won the head for her. He said, “Now you’ll always have something uglier than you.”

  She looked him in the eye and said, “This is my own sweet-faced friend.”

  While he threw the nickels she watched the Ferris wheel spin. She narrowed her eyes and made it spin off its axle. She made the people dangle out. She told her father that she wasn’t afraid to ride, even though it might spin off, and he laughed.

  “Bolted down pretty good,” he said.

  “God could make it,” she told him.

  “Well, yes,” her father said, “but probably not tonight.”

  “Do not presume upon the Lord,” she trilled in her high, sassy voice, and her father laughed; he spun her around and waltzed her through the crowd to the wheel.

  Her father would be seventy years old on Saturday. The last time she had seen him, she watched him get up when her stepmother, Nan, left for a five-minute errand, pull his portable oxygen tank to the picture window, and stand there, rocking on his feet, until he saw Nan return. On the phone last week Nan had said, “He wants to be with me every minute of the day.”

  Ginny took another drink of water. Tonight she’d be in Medford. She’d sleep in her cousin’s trailer. Tomorrow she’d drive north. On Saturday they would celebrate her father’s birthday. She would be the surprise.

  The plain suddenly dropped into a vast shadow on the left side of the road, and Ginny swerved hard to the right, then back, trying to correct. “Sweet Jesus!” she said. She tapped the brake with her left foot, twisted, and pulled her right foot back across the gearshift. She had been on a plateau. She hadn’t realized. The cliff had come up so fast, and now she was driving down a mountain. She started to cross into the left lane. She wanted to see just how deep the canyon was, but a horn blasted, and she swerved back into her lane. He was around her before she could think. She hadn’t known anybody was behind her.

  She was shaking. She sat very straight, gripping the steering wheel, and her foot jerked on the brake. The land on her right was now a wall of shale that flaked and peeled; small blue-veined cracks cut into the wall, and fine desert sand ran from some of the cracks. At the base of the wall, sand hills nestled up against the shale, and they spread onto the highway, drifting across in a pink film.

  The car ahead of her was green, an older model Ford Fairlane. The man driving had dark hair. He was a smallish man, only his head and the top of his shoulders visible from the rear. He was taking the curves more slowly now. Many of the curves were not marked, and those that were were marked with signs that had faded and cracked. The map legend showed this to be a regular state road, but clearly it was not maintained. In another ten years the pavement would be gravel or brush.

  She downshifted to
second. His brake lights glared, and she could smell her own brakes burning from the labored ride down the mountain. A thin line of blue smoke rose from his exhaust pipe. He began motioning for her to pass. He waved his arm slowly, as if directing traffic. She couldn’t see, but he must be able to, so she pulled out, shifting to third. When she was even with him she looked at him. He was grinning at her.

  She shifted to fourth, pulled in front of him, checked her rearview. He was waving, and now he put his hands together as if praying. She laughed. She knew his type. Her father used to tease her about such boys, even when she was too young to know what he meant. Each evening after supper she and her father used to walk to the train station, and they’d see the Mexican boys in their waxed-up cars, slicked-back hair, driving down Main, driving two fingered, the windows all open, and her father would say, “You want to watch out for joes like that,” and she’d say, “Hubba, hubba.”