by Tony Robles
I first felt it as I lie in bed. It was a slight tingle on my wrist. I woke—having been in a half-sleep stupor—to find an ant crawling up my hand and onto my wrist. I watched the ant as it crawled the circumference of my wrist before settling in one spot. In the last couple of months there has been an influx of ants in my house in Western North Carolina. My house is not a palace by any means; it is a mobile home made for 1-2 people. Outside is a yard with trees, squirrels, light bugs and the melodious sounds of leaf blowers and lawnmowers in spring and summer. When darkness hits, the sounds of cicadas and crickets overtake the landscape, their sounds like outer space signals emitting from trees, bushes, and ten thousand hidden places.
This new environment was a welcome change from San Francisco where I lived most of my life, where rents were insane—among the highest in the country—which lead to a severe eviction crisis leaving hundreds, thousands living in fear of an eviction notice which was just another version of a wanted poster where what was wanted was the floor under your feet—and the rug, if you were fortunate enough to have one. I knew a guy who paid 2000.00 a month to sleep in a walk-in closet. Problem was that there was no room to walk. With real estate speculators crawling about like termites leaving a rash of homeless in their wake, I fled. I had a better chance of fighting off ants than landlords, so I looked on my mobile home with its low monthly lot fee as a refuge. Rather than get turned down trying to rent a walk-in closet, I walked away from my city—a 3000 plus mile walk.
“What’s your name?” a voice squeaked.
“What?” I asked.
I looked at my wrist. It was the little ant. It stood up like a little man.
“My name is Anthony,” I said. “They call me “Ant” for short.”
The ant looked at me for a moment then lie on its back, as if on a beach.
“You’re the ugliest ant I’ve ever seen.” The ant said.
“You ain’t nothin’ to look at either.” I replied.
“How much you pay for this trailer?” the ant asked.
“I paid 5000 dollars for this mobile home,” I replied. “It’s not a trailer.
The ant snickered while continuing to rest on my wrist.
“It’s a trailer park.” The ant said with a wave of its little ant hand.
“It’s a mobile home community.” I responded, bringing my wrist and the ant mere inches from my eyes.
I rubbed my forefinger and thumb together.
“I know what you’re thinking.” The ant said, turning over on its Ant abdomen.
“What’s that?”
“You’re thinking I can rub this little ant out of existence.”
“Yeah, somethin’ like that.” I replied.
I looked at the ant. It moved its little ant arms. It was still on my wrist.
“Why are you on my wrist?” I asked.
“I want to make sure you still have a pulse.”
The ant was little, but it wasn’t that little as far as ants go. As a kid I had been a bit of a sadist, drowning ants in hot water in my great-grandmother’s pill bottles (Rest in peace). The ant on my wrist looked to be half of the size of a small paper clip. It had fallen asleep. I could hear its faint ant snoring. I could squash it but maybe I shouldn’t; maybe I should let it be—to make amends for my past transgressions towards the species. But I too was a little ant. I was named after my Uncle Anthony. We were known as Big Ant and Little Ant. Big Ant still lives in San Francisco. He calls me on the phone. Sometimes I pick up, sometimes I let it ring. As I’ve gotten older I seem to have acquired an aversion to phone calls. They seem to be an intrusion on my privacy. I shouldn’t feel that way but working for an insurance company for 7 years answering phones will alter your perception of the sound of a ringing phone.
I fall asleep, wake. I look at my wrist. The ant is gone. I look around my house. I’ve been here only a year. I hadn’t thought much about wildlife or nature prior to my relocating. But when I arrived a few local critters approached me in kind of a welcoming committee. A fluffy squirrel with a bushy tail flew through the air as if launched from the blowhole of a whale. It landed a few feet away from my screen door.
“Are you going to invite me in?” the squirrel asked.
“Do I know you?”
“Don’t you know a squirrel when you see one?”
I looked at the squirrel. Its eyes looked like blueberries.
“I guess you’re a squirrel.” I said.
And with its squirrel claws it touched its mouth, blowing, making a high-pitched whistling sound that caused a thick branch to fall from the tree standing close by, landing on the roof. A few creatures appeared—a bird with a sharp red crown landed on a bush followed by something resembling a ground hog. We stood together taking in the atmosphere for a while. Soon it was all quiet. It seemed that the cars passing on the nearby Greenville Highway had even disappeared.
“What about that noise I hear at night?” I asked.
“What noise?” the ground hog look-alike asked.
“I don’t know, kinda sounds like a lot of small flying saucers.”
“Oh, those are cicadas.” said the squirrel. “They only come around at night. They think they’re aristocrats.”
“I see.” I said.
“By the way,” the bird said. “What’s your name?”
“My name is Anthony. People call me ant.”
The squirrel and others chuckled.
“There’s plenty of those around.” said the squirrel.
“Plenty of what?”
“Never mind.” the squirrel said, its head twitching every which way before leaping into a bush and onto a tree. Then the ground hog and bird disappeared.
Damn these ants are big, I thought as I was at the kitchen sink washing dishes. A large ant was crawling across the countertop with a grain of rice on its back. Another ant crawling on the countertop stopped.
“Hey partner,” the ant said. “You got any more rice. Or maybe a sugar cube?”
As I was about to answer, the annoying ringtone of my cell phone went off. I look at the cell phone screen. It reads: Big Ant.
“Hello?”
“What’s happening baby boy?”
“I’m ok. How you doin’ Uncle Ant?”
“Well, you know, getting’ older. This prostate thing got me running to the toilet at every commercial break.”
“You go to the doctor?”
“Yeah, they gave me some pills. But anyway, how you doin’ baby boy? You run into the KKK down there?”
“Not yet. But I’ve been running into ants. There’s a lot of them down here. One of them stopped by; made itself right at home.”
“You kiddin’?”
“I’m serious.”
There was a pause on the phone. I looked at the countertop. More ants, a whole line of them traveling upwards and downwards as if on a mission.
“Ant, you still there?”
“Yeah Uncle Ant.”
“I gotta go. Another bathroom run. You take care of yourself down there. Watch out for the KKK, confederate flags and the republican army.”
“I will Uncle Ant.”
“Love you baby boy.”
I’m still holding the phone to my ear. I hear rustling sounds. My uncle hasn’t shut his phone off. I hear his voice as he walks to the bathroom, the phone picking up everything. Maybe I should hang up, I think. If I listen, is it sort of an invasion of privacy? I hear my uncle’s voice.
“Oh shit!” Son of a bitch! Damn!”
I hear water splashing. He’s peeing, a good thing. But is the pee hitting the bowl, the wall—the floor? I push the off button on my phone and slip it into my pocket. I look at the kitchen counter. A lone ant is there.
“Sounds like your uncle is pissed off.” The ant says followed by a high-pitched ant laugh.
Stealing rice grains from me is one thing but making fun of my uncle is another. I pick up the ant and hold it between my forefinger and thumb.
“Wait, you’re the ant that I talked to the other night, the one on my wrist.”
The ant looked at me from between my fingers.
“No shit. Damn right it was me. I had you under awrist…heh, heh, heh.”
“Wise ass ant, huh?”
I squeezed my thumb and forefinger together. I’ll squash this smart assed ant, I thought. I squeezed, hard. But my fingers slowly separated. The ant had pushed them apart as if bench pressing a barbell.
“Heh, heh, heh.” The ant laughed.
I put the ant down on the kitchen counter. It crawled over to a grain of rice, lifted it onto its back, gave me the finger and hauled it away.
Over the next couple of months, the ant grew in size, from several inches to a foot. It spent days inside my house while I was at work at the public library. I came home one evening to find the ant on my couch. It had grown to what looked to be 3 feet.
“How was your day?” the ant asked.
“The usual.” I replied, taking off my jacket.
I opened the refrigerator.
“What happened to all the food?” I asked
I looked at the ant who shrugged his little ant shoulders then burped. I looked at the cupboard. Little ants were crawling up the side, each carrying a crumb of something. I walked over, ready to smash my palm into their microscopic caravan. I stopped when my phone rang. I picked up.
“Hello?”
“Can I speak to Ant?” a voice asked.
“This is Ant speaking.” I said.
“No, not you.” The voice answered. “The real ant.”
I looked at the ant on the couch.
“For you.” I said, handing the phone over.
The ant took the phone and with an ant voice that sounded as if it were being spoken through a tin can said, “No, that’s not what I ordered. I wanted an extra large with pepperoni, sausage and mushrooms.”
The ant then put his ant hand over the receiver and looked at me.
“What’s your credit card number?”
I couldn’t believe it. The ant was ordering pizza and putting it on my credit card.
“I sure am hungry.” The ant said, handing the phone back to me.
I looked at it, speechless.
I sat in my porch looking out at the trees. The welcome committee squirrel scurried down a tree and scrambled over.
“What’s wrong?” the squirrel asked.
“Do I look depressed?”
“You don’t look happy”
“It’s the ant. He’s living with me now. He started off small now he’s grown to over 3 feet. He’s eating everything. He’s ordering take-out food and has ant buddies leaving the house a mess.”
“What’cha gonna do?”
“What can I do?”
The squirrel twitched its nose and stood in a frozen position for several minutes, contemplating. His pose looked a bit like Rodin’s The Thinker while, at the same time, resembling a dog taking a crap.
“Maybe you should get some ant baits, you know, the ones that they sell at the hardware store.”
“You mean poison?”
“Yeah, the ants eat ‘em and they go to sleep…for good.”
“Good idea.”
I bought the baits. They were quite small, designed for small ants. How they’d work on a large ant was another story. I bought a large bagful. I came home. The ant was out doing ant things I supposed. I ordered an extra large pizza. The pizza arrived and I sprinkled ant bait on it like parmesan cheese. I placed the pizza on the coffee table in the living room and waited for the ant to arrive.
An hour went by. No ant. I left the bait laced pizza and went out for a walk. I passed rows of trees and took in the sweet air. I looked at each tree; those standing alone and in clusters. I thought of the air I breathed and how the trees made it possible. And then, for the first time in my life, I said thank you—to the trees and to whoever created the trees. I thought of the creatures; those insects, the bees that pollinate. I thought of the ants that…
Ants were workers, weren’t they? They had jobs. They had communities. They needed to eat just like me. I thought of the ants I had killed. I’d killed them as a kid, drowning them in boiling water and, from time to time, putting them in the refrigerator freezer and watching them freeze like statues.
I rushed back home. I needed to get to that pizza before the ant did. I didn’t want it to die. I ran fast until I reached the door panting. Outside was the squirrel, the bird and the groundhog.
“What are you doing here?” I asked
“We heard a noise, a high-pitched scream from your house.” said the groundhog.
“What?”
“We thought maybe you were in trouble.” said the bird.
I opened the door and saw the ant. It lay on the floor next to the box of pizza, half of which had been eaten.
“You actually did it?” the squirrel asked.
“Did what?”
“Used ant bait.”
“Yeah, just like you told me to.”
The ant was on its back; its legs pointing upwards towards the ceiling.
“Man, I was kidding about that!” cried the squirrel.
I looked at the squirrel. We stood over the ant as if it was a crime scene. The squirrel, bird and ground hog walked out the door.
“Where you going?” I asked.
They didn’t answer.
I looked down at the ant. The pizza sat cold in the box. I sat on the couching thinking. I looked out the window. The sky began to darken. My house was silent. I listened for the sounds of the night, the cicadas, and crickets. No sounds. I looked out the window. Maybe I’d see a light bug but not a light flickered. I sat thinking of what I’d done and what I’d do next. I sat alone in the darkness when the phone rang. It rang several times before I picked up.
“Hello?” I said.
“Ant, hey Ant!” A voice called out.
It was my Uncle Ant—Big Ant. I felt a little less alone.
Tony Robles is the author of the poetry/short story collections, Cool Don’t Live Here No More–A Letter to San Francisco and Fingerprints of a Hunger Strike. He was a short-list nominee for poet laureate of San Francisco in 2017. He is currently an MFA candidate at Vermont College of Fine Arts where he is working on his first novel, Fillmore Flip.