Red Ant House: Stories - Softcover

Cummins, Ann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0618269258 ISBN 13: 9780618269259

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2003

Synopsis

Denis Johnson meets Flannery O’Connor in this luminous collection of short stories about the collision of cultures, genders, and generations in the American Southwest. Set mainly amid Indian reservations and uranium mills, these twelve stories create a kaleidoscopic view of family, myth, love, landscape, and loss in a place where infinite skies and endless roads suggest a world of possibility, yet dreams are deceiving, like an oasis, just beyond reach. Whether it’s a young woman pushed quite literally to the edge on a desolate mountain pass, an orphaned brother and sister trying to patch together an existence one stitch at a time, a cop who suspects his kleptomaniac wife is stealing from other people — materially and emotionally — or a wily roadside hypnotist whose alleged power is both wonderful and strange, Ann Cummins’s characters want to transcend the circumstances of their lives, to believe in the eventuality of change.
Again and again, Ann Cummins generates imagery of white-hot intensity and pushes the limits of both the human spirit and the short story form. Gritty, seductive, and always daring, this unforgettable collection puts forth a haunting new vision of hope and heartache in contemporary America and confirms the arrival of an important new voice.

About this title

About the Author

Ann Cummins is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Arizona writing programs. She is the author of Red Ant House, a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and Best Book of the Year. She has had her stories published in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Quarterly West, and the Sonora Review, among other publications, as well as The Best American Short Stories 2002. The recipient of a Lannan fellowship, she divides her time between Oakland, California, where she lives with her husband, and Flagstaff, Arizona, where she teaches creative writing at Northern Arizona University.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Red Ant House
The first time I saw this girl she was
standing at the bottom of the coal pile.
I thought she was a little wrinkled
dwarf woman, with her sucked-in cheeks
and pointed chin. She had narrow legs
and yellow eyes. They had just
moved into the old Perino house on West
2nd. This was the red ant house.
"I"m having a birthday," the girl said.
She was going around the
neighborhood gathering up children she
didn"t know for her birthday party.
She told us they had a donkey on the
wall and beans in a jar.
"What kind of beans?" I asked her.
She shrugged.
"Hey, you guys," I said to my brothers.
"This bean wants us to go
to her birthday party."
"My name"s not Bean."
"What is it, then?"
"Theresa Mooney."
"You don"t look like a Theresa Mooney."
She shrugged.
"Hey, you guys. This girl named Bean
wants us to go to her
birthday party."
She didn"t say anything then. She
turned around and started down the street
toward her house. We followed her.
In her yard was a grease monkey. Her
yard was a junker yard with car parts and cars all over the
place, and a grease monkey was standing up against one
car, smoking a cigarette.
"Joe," the little dwarf girl said,
"what do you think of a name like
Bean?"
He considered it. The man was handsome,
with slick black hair and blue eyes, and he gave the dwarf a
sweet look. I couldn"t think of how
such a funny-looking child belonged to
such a handsome man. "It"s an odd
one," he said. The girl looked at me,
her eyes slant. "One thing about a
name like that," he said, "it"s unusual.
Everybody would remember it."
That idea she liked. She looked at me
with a little grin. She
said, "My name is Bean."
Just as if the whole thing was her idea.

Rosie Mooney was this Theresa"s mother.
When she moved in she had not
known there would be ants in the house.
These were the ants that had
invaded the Perinos" chickens two
summers before. Nobody wanted to eat
chicken after that.
The ants came through the cracks in the
walls. Rosie Mooney
had papered those walls with velveteen
flowered wallpaper. She had a red
room and a gold room. She had wicked
eyes to her, Rosie Mooney—could
look you through and through.
These were trashy people, I knew. They
had Christmas lights over
the sink. They had hodgepodge dishes,
and garlic on a string, and a book
of matches under one table leg to make
it sit straight. When the grease
monkey came in, he kissed Rosie Mooney
on the lips, a long wormy kiss,
and then he picked the birthday girl up
and swung her in a circle.
For us, he took off his thumbs.
"It is an optical illusion," the girl
told us.
He could also bend his thumbs all the
way back, tie his legs in a
knot, and roll his eyes back and look at
his brain.
"Your dad should be in the circus," I
told the girl.
"He"s not my dad."
"What is he?"
She shrugged.
The grease monkey laughed. It was a
shamefaced laugh.

There were two prizes for the bean jar
event: one for a boy, one for a girl.
The boy"s prize was a gumball bank. Put
a penny in, get a ball of gum.
When the gum was gone you"d have a bank full
of pennies. Either way, you"d have
something.
The girl"s prize was a music box. I had
never seen such a music
box. It was black with a white ivory top
made to look like a frozen pond, and
when you wound it up, a white ivory girl
skated over the top. It was nice.
We were all over that jar, counting the
beans. It was me, my
brothers, the Stillwell boys, the
Murpheys, and the Frietags. As I was
counting, I thought of something. I
thought, This jar is an optical illusion.
That was because there would be beans
behind the beans. It occurred to
me that there would be more beans than
could be seen, thousands more.
The grease monkey was the official
counter. He had written the
exact number on a piece of tape and
stuck it to the bottom of the jar. We
all had to write our numbers down and
sign our names. I wrote five
thousand. When Joe read that, everybody laughed.
"There are beans behind the beans," I
informed them.
"This one"s a shrewd one," the grease
monkey said. "She"s thinking." But when he turned the jar
over, the number on the tape said 730.
This Joe winked at me. "Don"t want to be
thinking too hard, though."
I just eyeballed him.
"You want to count them? You can count
them if you want," he said.
"I don"t care to."
He grinned. "Suit yourself."
And he awarded the music box to the
birthday girl, who had written 600. Then I knew the whole thing
had been rigged.
The birthday girl"s mother said,
"Theresa, I bet you"d like some
other little girl to have the music box
since you have birthday presents.
Wouldn"t you?"
She didn"t want to.
"That would be the polite thing," she
said. "Maybe you"d like to
give it to Leigh."
"I don"t want it," I said.
This Theresa looked at me. She looked
at the grease monkey. He
nodded, then she held the box out to me.
But I didn"t want it.

My mother was down sick all that summer.
The doctor had prescribed
complete bed rest so the baby would stay
in. For the last three years, she
had gone to bed again and again with
babies that didn"t take.
Up until that point, there were six of
us children.
There was Zip, named for my
grandmother, Ziphorah. Zippy loved
me until I could talk. "You used to be
such a sweet child," she would
say. "We used to dress you up and take
you on buggy rides and everybody
said what a sweet child you were.
Whatever happened to that sweet child?"
There was Wanda, named for my other
grandmother. Wanda was
bald until she was five, and my father
used to take every opportunity to
bounce a ball on her head.
There was me, Leigh Rachel, named by
the doctor because my
parents drew a blank. I"m the lucky one.
Once when I was a baby I jumped
out a window—this was the second-story
window over the rock cliff. My
mother, who was down sick at the time,
had a vision about it. I was already
gone. By the time she got herself out of
her bed and up the stairs, I was in
flight, but she leaped across the room,
stuck her arm out, and caught me
by the diaper, just as she"d seen it in
the vision.
Another time, I survived a tumble down
Bondad Hill in my grandpa"s Pontiac. We both rolled like
the drunk he was. Drunks I know
about. My dad"s dad was one, and my
mom"s dad was another. I never
knew my dad"s mom. She weighed three
hundred pounds and died of toxic
goiter. My mom"s mom weighed
seventy-five at the time of her death.
Turned her face to the sky and said, "I despise
you all." Irish like the rest of us.
There were the boys, Ronald Patrick,
Raymond Patrick, Carl
Patrick.
Then there were the ones who didn"t
take. One of these I saw, a
little blue baby on a bloody sheet. My
mother said, "Help me with these
sheets," to Wanda, but Wanda couldn"t
stop crying, so I helped pull the
sheet away from the mattress, and my
mother wadded the sheet up.
I said, "We should bury that sheet."
She said, "It"s a perfectly good sheet.
We"ll wash it."
Then she took a blanket and went into
the living room and
wrapped herself up in it. When my father
came home he found her half bled
to death.
My mother has Jewish blood in her. When
they took her to the
hospital, a Jewish man, Mr. Goldman,
gave blood. He was the only Jew in
town.

That summer my mother had cat visions.
She would begin yelling in the
middle of the night. She would come into
our dreams: "The cats have
chewed their paws off. They are under
the bed."
"Mother, there are no cats."
"Look under the bed. See for yourself."
But we didn"t want to.

Each day that summer I had to rub my
mother"s ankles and legs before I
could go out to see the shadow, Theresa
Mooney, who had started living in
my backyard. When I woke up in the
morning, there she was on the swing
or digging in the ground with a spoon.
Once out of the house, I didn"t like to
go back. If I sneaked back
in for any little thing, I had to rub
the legs again. This was my job. Zip"s job
was to clean the house.
Wanda cooked. Grilled cheese on
Mondays, frozen potpie on
Tuesdays, Chef Boyardee ravioli on
Wednesdays, frozen potpie on
Thursdays, and fish sticks on Fish
Fridays. Saturdays were hamburger and
pork-and-bean days, and Sundays, Sick
Slim brought trout that he caught
in the river. Sick Slim had a movable
Adam"s apple and finicky ways. He
used to exchange the fish for loaves of
my mom"s homemade bread until he
found out that she put her hands in the
dough. After that, he didn"t care for
bread, though he still brought the fish.
"I never thought she would have put
her hands in it," I heard him tell my father.
Slim was my dad"s army buddy. He built
his house on West 1st,
way back from the street, right up
against Smelter Mountain. Slim didn"t
want anybody at his back: that"s what my
dad said.
We knew a secret on him. My brother
Ronnie saw this with his
own eyes. A woman drove to West 1st
where Sick Slim lived. She had a
little blond girl with her, and when the
girl got out of the car, Ronnie saw
that
she was naked. The mother didn"t get out
of the car. The little girl walked up
that long sidewalk to the porch and up
the steps to Slim"s house and
knocked on the door, and Slim opened the
door, and he gave the girl
money.
Slim was a bachelor and didn"t have
anything to spend his money
on except naked children and worms for fish.
We all thought it would be a good idea
to try and get some of
Slim"s money. My brothers thought I
should take my clothes off and go up
to his door, though I didn"t care to.
But I thought Theresa might like to make
a little money, so I told her that there
was a rich man on West 1st who
would give us twenty dollars if she took her
clothes off and walked up the sidewalk
and knocked on his door. She didn"t know
about that. She was not
accustomed to taking off her clothes
outside.
I said, "Do you know how much twenty
dollars is?"
She didn"t know. She was as poor as a rat.
"You go first, then I"ll go," she said.
"It"s my idea." I figured if it was her
idea—but she never had any—
then she could say who went first.
"Mama says not to get chilled," she
said. She was prone to sore
throats and earaches and whispering
bones. Without notice, she would go
glassy-eyed and stiff, and would lose
her breath. When she caught it again,
she"d say, "My bones are whispering."
"What are they saying?" I"d ask.
"They don"t talk," she said. "They
don"t have words. Just wind."
"You are a delicate flower," I said to
butter her up.
She liked that.
"I bet we could get thirty dollars for
you. You"re better-looking than
me."
She looked at me slant.
"It"s easy," I said. "Don"t think about
it. You just think, I am
running through the sprinklers. You
don"t think, I am naked. If you don"t
think about it, it"s easy."
She told me she"d get beat if she took
her clothes off outside.
"Maybe even forty dollars," I said,
"because this particular
gentleman likes itty-bitty things.
Twenty for you, twenty for me. That"s a lot
of money. We could go places on that
much money."
She thought about that. "I don"t think
we could go far on forty
dollars."
"You got to look on the bright side.
You"re always looking on the
dark side."
"No, I"m not."
"You are doom and gloom and whispering
bones. Just ask your
whispering bones. They"ll say you"re
doom and gloom."
"You go first," she said. "Then I"ll go."
"Maybe I will."
"Okay," she said.
"Okay then."

My mother was curious about Theresa and
her mother. "Where does little
Terry go when her mama"s working?" my
mother asked me. "If we had any
room at all, I"d have that child here.
If we weren"t doubled up already."
"Hang her on a hook," I said.
"Don"t smart-mouth. Do you think she
would like to come here?"
Mother thought all children should like
to come to our house
because it was so pleasant to have a big
family. To have children to do the
cooking, and cleaning, and leg rubbing.
Her legs were yellow logs. I didn"t
like to touch them, and so I would think
of them as yellow logs at Cherry
Creek—the dried logs split by lightning,
with worm silk inside. I would close
my eyes and rub the cold legs.
Sometimes, if my mother didn"t talk to me,
if she only closed her eyes and
breathed, I would forget I was in her
room. I would put myself someplace else, Cherry
Creek or Jesus Rock, and I would
think of running my hands through soft
things, the sand below Jesus Rock,
or worm silk.
But, mostly, she talked. She wanted to
know about Mooney and
Joe. She wanted to know about Theresa.
When she talked she would sit propped
up on pillows, her belly a
world under the sheet. Her eyes were all
glitter.
"She doesn"t stay with that man, does she?"
"Joe Martin is his name."
"I don"t care to know his name."
"I don"t know where she stays."
My mother sighed. Except for the belly,
she couldn"t put weight
on. She had trouble keeping food down,
and she didn"t have the strength to
wash her hair so she kept it in a
bandanna, one that bore the grease of her
head.
"He has a wife and children, you know.
Over in Dolores. I
understand he has two little children.
You mustn"t say anything to the little
girl, though. I"m sure she doesn"t know.
I understand," my mother said,
"that he abandoned his family. I don"t
know how they make do.
"Now just look." She laughed and held
her hands out to me. Her
fingers were thick. The one ring finger
was especially plumped out, and her
wedding ring had sunk to the bone. "I
have no circulation," she said, and
she laughed again. They were cold, the
fingers. "I"ll be glad when this is
over, Leigh. I guess we"ll all be glad, won"t
we. Let"s get some soap and get this
ring off," she said.
I went for the soap and water. We
soaped her hands good, and I
started working the ring. She leaned
back and closed her eyes. "Don"t you
love the sound?" she said.
"What sound?"
"Of the children playing. Listen to
them." My brothers were kicking
the can in the street. "You should be
out, Leigh. Your poor old mom is all
laid up, but you should be out. Why
don"t you go on out, now?"
"Shall I tell Mr. Richter he has to
come and cut this ring off your
finger?"
"Go on out," she said, "and tell little
Terry what I told you."
She opened her eyes and smiled. "I know
you want to." An ugly
smile.
"I"m not going to say anything."
She shook her head. "I was wrong to
tell you. I don"t know why I
told you. It was very, very wrong of me.
I would not have told you if I were
myself. You understand that?"
"Yes."
She frowned and shook her head. "It"s
only natural that you
should go tell her now. A child cannot
keep such a secret."
"You want me to tell her?"
"Of course I ...

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0618269258
• ISBN 13: 9780618269259
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 179