And just then she felt a bite and looked down at her sandals. She had been standing less than a foot from a fire ant mound. She hopped back and felt another bright little pinch on her ankle. She pulled off her sandals and scanned below her knees for ants. Her ankle started to throb and a red welt was forming. Anne wanted to scream as she paced the yard barefoot as a savage, returning finally to the fire ant mound. The rain had flattened out its churn of earth and left it hidden under tendrils of Bermuda grass.

Goddamn it.

Anne marched into the house, put on sneakers, and pulled the twelve-quart stockpot out of the kitchen cabinet. She filled it to the lip with water and then set it on the biggest coil on the electric stove. I should have seen this coming, all of it. She stood there watching it, trying not to cry, the coil refusing to glow. He was sick, and I knew it. She scratched her ankle and went to the bathroom for calamine. It didn’t help—she had itched it into a weeping rash—and she could hear Pat snoring again. She returned to the kitchen, the coil now a coke-fire orange, and stood over the pot.

Lord, I’m not ready for whatever fresh hell this is.

As she stood there, her face flushed, waiting and watching for a pot of water to boil, Anne thought of her father, whose temper and trigger she had inherited. At night, he would escape into his radio plays.

“The security of mankind is guaranteed by the balance of nature. The law of the jungle is implacable.”

It had been five minutes, and the water was still cold to her touch. Anne had to be very quiet if she wanted to stay up and listen.

“You don’t understand. These are army ants. An elemental force. An act of God. Ants, nothing but ants.”

And Anne would stare at her father rapt in listening, a strange look in his eye, clouded and tired, and she made a wishful connection: He’s just like Leiningen versus the ants, stubbornness parading as resolution. Bless him or curse him for his anger and his fight. Despite the ants, despite everything, he won’t give up. So what if you’re driven mad by it? Anne spotted bubbles forming on the sides of the pot. Like her father, she would endure.

“I always knew the ants would come.”

A bubble floated to the top of the pot. She scratched her ankle again as it bled. She stood there sweating, upset at how long this was taking. She considered how much gas she had left in the can for the mower.

“They had me covered, and were devouring me. I couldn’t die like that.”