Tad Williams - A Stark And Wormy Knight

“So why do you want to pay an exterminator if you’re doing it yourself?” A good one. He laughs.

She slaps him stingingly on the arm. “You’re not funny, you mean bastard!”

For an instant — just an instant, but it rushes through him like a wildfire — he almost does hit her. Things go a little bit upside-down, like when he sometimes gets up too quick, gets dizzy, and almost falls. “Don’t…don’t you ever do that again,” he tells her, with enough of his true feelings in his voice that she backs away a few steps, like a dog trying to decide whether to bolt.

“I want those things out of here, Karl,” she says, but whining now like a stuck-up kid. “They’re disgusting.”

“Oh, they’re in the sink, isn’t that too bad,” he says, mocking her. “Did it ever occur to you, you lazy bitch, that all you have to do is turn on the water and wash ‘em down the drain?” He does, using the rinsing hose to send all the little leggy black creatures sliding and swooshing away to watery death. “Bye-bye, you little fuckers.” He turns to her. “See? Problem solved.”

She’s gone pale now, her face cold and hard. She hates it when he calls her “bitch” — as if it wasn’t the best possible name for someone like her, someone who was pretty damn cute in high school but has long since gone fat and mouthy, just like her chain-smoking, vodka-gargling mother, but who also puts on airs like she’s too good for him because she watches Oprah and reads an occasional book.

“Why are you so hateful, Karl? It’s not just ants in the sink.” Her voice starts to rise. “What about the ones on the floor? What about the ones on the counter, and in the damn cabinets, and in the goddamned sugar bowl, Karl? Huh? What about that?”

Why don’t they think, he wonders. Why can’t they think? Because all this Oprah, Dr. Phil, everything’s-about-feelings bullshit clouds their minds, that’s why. Not a one of them can think about things logically, make a plan, solve a problem… “Oh, Jesus, shut your mouth for just a minute, Norah — I know it’s hard for you, but try — and I’ll show you what to do with the goddamn sugar bowl.”

The ants trek across the table in a wavering line. You have to admire their focus, if nothing else, he thinks. They’re like him, in a way — small, maybe, but tough and strong and well-organized. They’re carrying little grains of sugar from the bowl across the table and down onto the floor, then off to their nest or hive or whatever they have. It’s kind of funny, really. If you’re an ant, finding that sugar bowl must be like winning the lottery.

He put his hand under the sugar bowl to lift it. The plastic table cover is sticky and it grabs at the hairs on the back of his hand. Something hot and red flares in him again. “No wonder we got ants everywhere. This place is filthy. Now, pay attention, stupid, and I’ll show you something. Ants in the sugar bowl, big problem? I don’t think so.” He goes to the sink and dumps out the sugar, stands for a moment, sweat on his face and his heart beating strangely as he watches the little black shapes dig out of the pile of white crystals on the floor of the basin. Then he sluices them away with the rinsing-hose.

“Empty the sugar bowl,” she said. “Real clever, Karl. God, it’s just like you always say, men are just smarter. I wonder why I never thought of it? And when I want to put sugar in my coffee, or on my cereal, why, I’ll just go scrape it out of the drain. Brilliant.”

He isn’t going to look at her because if he does he’s probably going to smack the shit out of her. He only ever did it once before, when they were first together. She came back from her mother’s after two weeks and they didn’t talk about it again. She hadn’t seen Oprah in those days.

“Just because you don’t use sugar doesn’t mean I don’t want to use it, Karl.” She was still using that voice, the one that made his hairs stand on end. “They’re into the sugar bag in the cabinet, too, but I’m sure you thought of that already with your superior male logical intelligence. So tell me, Mr. Spock, am I just supposed to give up sugar entirely?”

Wouldn’t do you any harm, you fat bitch, he thinks. His head hurts and he doesn’t really want to talk any more. He wants another beer, maybe two — shit, maybe four — and then he wants to go sit in the living room and watch the baseball game, or wrestling, or anything that means he won’t have to think about any of this.

“Shut up and look,” he tells her. “Just…shut up. I’m warning you.” Mr. Spock, huh? Compared to the crap that fills her head, he is an alien genius. His teeth are clenched so hard now that it’s making the headache worse. He rinses the sugar bowl, dries it off with a paper towel, then refills it from the sugar bag after flicking off a few six-legged explorers. It’s the hot weather. The ground gets dry and the little bastards come in looking for water, but then find out where all the good stuff is. Little shits. His moment of identification with the ants is long gone. Just somebody else who wants to rip him off.

When the clean, dry sugar bowl is full of clean, dry sugar, he takes it to the dishes cabinet and rummages around until he finds a bowl large enough for it to sit in comfortably. Then, with it nesting there like a small boat in a bigger boat, he fills the outer bowl with water and holds the whole arrangement out for Norah to see.

“Get it?” He points to the inch-wide span of water now ringing the sugar bowl. Karl is pleased to get the last word for once — he couldn’t have proved his case against her lazy thinking more completely if he’d had a chance to prepare in advance. There’s absolutely no way for her to refute this evidence. “It’s like a moat around a castle, see? The ants can’t get to the sugar bowl. They try to cross the water, they drown. No ants in the sugar. Get it, Norah? Get it?”

He’s about to set the sugar bowl back on the table when he remembers the stickiness that had sucked at his arm. He wipes the sweat from his forehead. Bad enough the heat, but the whole goddamn house is sticky, too. Ants? The way she cleans, they probably have roaches… Karl puts the sugar bowl up on top of the refrigerator, then pulls the plaid cover off the kitchen table and holds it out toward her. “Go on, make yourself useful. Clean this shit up, the ants won’t even want to get on the table. It’s only because you keep this place like a pigsty…”

He picks up his ax and starts toward the garage. The headache is beginning to ease.

“You…you bastard!” she shrieks. “You stupid, ignorant bastard! Those damn ants are everywhere! What am I supposed to do, bring in the hose and just fill the house with water? Is that what you’re saying?”

He’s not going to argue any more. He showed her — he shut her up — so why won’t she stay that way?

“Don’t walk out on me!” She’s screaming louder now, that voice like a dentist’s drill — he swears he can feel it buzzing in his fillings. “Don’t you dare!”

“Shut your damn mouth or I’ll slap you silly.” He tries to get the garage door open but she’s blocking his path. He grabs her arm and yanks her out of the way. The garage beckons like a cave, dark and cool, quiet and safe. Then he feels her fingernails in the skin of his neck, burning, sharp, and her other hand in a rude little fist, smacking away at the back of his head.

“Don’t you dare turn your back on me, Karl Eggar, you ignorant pig! Don’t you dare! Don’t you…!”

And suddenly something just expands inside him, a great, hot plume like the blast that leveled Hiroshima. He can feel it blaze up through the whole length of his upper body, out of his guts and up his spine and out the top of his head, rising like a mushroom cloud. He has the ax in his hand and suddenly everything has turned hot, the very air is blazing like an oven. Everything is flow, and noise, and movement, and all of it is glowing red — a single hot, moving, expanding thing with him helpless in its midst, helpless but laughing as the ax rises and falls, over and over again. Each time it strikes it makes a sound — skutch, skutch, skutch — as satisfying as sinking a steak knife into a thick porterhouse. He can’t stop laughing. Heat and the glorious pounding — the pounding! He feels like he is hammering the world in half.