Ants

Ants I was thirteen and on a trip with my preacher's family to hold a revival in East Kentucky. One morning we woke early to drive for breakfast in a deep hollow far from town. At the end of a crooked road, a brace of mountain curs, ribs sculpting the sides of their chests, snarled at our car as we pulled beside the ancient cabin. The dogs slinked beneath the porch as a weathered man in overalls welcomed Reverend Beard. His arms balanced a child as wary as the curs. His wife was flushed from cooking on a smoky stove that smelled of kindling. The aroma of human sweat mixed with the food: eggs, scrambled and fried, tall scratch biscuits, milk gravy, and country bacon spotted with the crisp exoskeletons of ants like the forgotten husks of cicadas. The prayer was offered, and heaping plates were past around. I knew without looking, that Reverend Beard had trained his eyes on me, not because God would punish the squeamish stomach of a town boy, but because of the pride it took a poor family to offer a week's table at a sitting. I'm not certain why we never spoke of the ants. I remember crunching each one and mingling its bitterness with the sweet flavor of smoke house meat, much to the interest of the little girl who stared at me in wonder. Her green eyes held a fierce beauty as she trimmed the bugs off her bacon and flirted with the town boy in her kitchen who ate ants. —Bill Brown 71 ...