Fire Ants and Other Stories. Gerald Duff

       Fire Ants

      She had kept the bottle stuck down inside a basket of clothes that needed ironing, and throughout the course of the day whenever she had a chance to walk through the back room where the basket was kept, she would stop for the odd sip or two. By the middle of the afternoon, she had stopped feeling the heat even though she had cooked three coconut pies, one for B. J.’s supper and two for the graveyard working, and had ironed dresses for her and Myrtle. And by suppertime with Myrtle and B. J. and Bubba and Barney Lee Richards all around the table waiting for her to bring in the dishes from the kitchen, MayBelle had reached the point that she couldn’t tell if she had put salt in the black-eyed peas or not even when she tasted them twice, a whole spoonful each time.

      “Aunt MayBelle,” B. J. was saying, looking up at her with a big grin on his face, “where’s that good cornbread? I bet old Barney Lee could eat some of that.” He reached over and punched at one of Barney Lee’s sides where it hid his belt. “He looks hungry to me, this boy does.”

      “Aw, B. J.,” said Barney Lee and hitched a little in his chair. “I shouldn’t be eating at all, but I save up just enough to eat over here at your Mama’s house.”

      “Well, you’re always welcome,” said Myrtle from the end of the table by the china cabinet. “We don’t see enough of you around here. Used to, you boys were always underfoot. I wish it was that way now.”

      “Barney Lee,” said MayBelle, and waited to hear what she was going to say, “your hair is going back real far on both sides of your head. Not as far as B. J.’s, but it’s getting on back there all right.” She moved over and set the pan of hot cornbread on a pad in the middle of the table. “You gonna be as bald as your old daddy in a few years.”

      MayBelle straightened up to go back to the kitchen for another dish, and the Bear-King winked at her and lifted a paw, making her not listen to what Myrtle was calling to her as she walked through the door of the dining room. Maybe I better go look at that clothes basket before I bring in that bowl of okra, she thought to herself, and made a little detour off the kitchen. The foreign bottle was safe where she had left it, and she adjusted the level of the vodka inside to where it came just to the neckline of the white bear on the label.

      When she came back into the dining room with the okra, everybody was waiting for B. J. to say grace, sitting quiet at the table and cutting eyes at the pastor at the head of it. “Sit down for a minute, Aunt MayBelle,” B. J. said in a composed voice and caught at her arm. “Let’s thank the Lord and then you can finish serving the table.”

      MayBelle dropped into her chair and looked at a flower in the middle of the plate in front of her. It was pounding like a heart beating, and it did so in perfect time to the song of a mockingbird calling outside the window. It’s the Texas State Bird, she thought, and Austin is the State Capital. The native bluebonnet is the

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