To Africa and Beyond

To Africa and Beyond Four years later I wake in the pitch dark to the sound of my dad hopping up and down in the hallway just outside my room making no attempt to be quiet. I glance at the clock: 3:00 A.M. “Annabelle. Get out of bed!” I hear the sound of more hopping, now slapping, hard slapping. My agile but dignified father is hitting himself, skin on skin. I am in high school. I decide to humor my father by hauling myself out of bed to speak with him. I am also a little more than curious. I turn the corner into the hall. “There’s one in my ear! Where’s the light?” I flip it on. There is my reliable father ripping his clothes off and dancing a jig. “Ouch!” His face winces with real pain. “Jim, there’s one in my ear. Can you help me? Where’s the flashlight?” Then I see the little demons. They are crawling all over my dad. It’s insidious and dark and primal. I snap into action. I run to the desk in my room. From my model building supplies I grab my tiniest tweezers. On the way by my bed I snatch the flashlight that always lays beside it -- power outages are frequent in West Africa. Seconds later I am back in the hallway. My diminutive mother appears. She is busy brushing driver ants off my dad’s now naked body. He is picking them out of his flesh, following the pain to find and decapitate the most invasive predators. They crawl and bite into sensitive areas. My dad leans sideways. “Jim. This ear.” I shine the flashlight into his ear canal. I see the nasty creature, not quite out of sight, its pincers dug in deep. “Here goes, Dad. Hold still!” My father’s calm kicks in. He falls still as scores of ants continue to eat his flesh. “This is useless” my mother exclaims. “I am going for the spray gun.” It’s the bazooka of pest control, a two-handed pump weapon. She disappears. I probe my father’s ear canal with the tweezers, attempting to avoid his ear drum. I grapple-hook the little black beast from the base of its pincers through its thorax, tighten and pull. My father experiences instant relief. Suddenly my mother, the health enthusiast, reappears before us. She crouches ready, stalks my father. With focused fury, both hands on her weapon, she pumps away at his lower extremities -- all of them. The noxious fumes of a potent third world insecticide overwhelm us, but she won’t stop! We flee, my father and I. My mother continues her mission into her bedroom where her floor is richly carpeted with a pulsing community of tiny carnivores. She sprays and sweeps and sprays and sweeps with a vigor that matches her foes. Once free of ants my father and I quickly step outside. A two-foot wide path of ants encircles our home, goes up the wall and through the window of my parents’ bedroom. The large path encircling our home is fed by seven or eight trails, each a foot wide all heading from the jungle across our large rural lawn. Our lawn is a hill, and lower down, near the jungle’s edge, many, many smaller pathways, each two-to-three inches wide exit the rainforest at scores of points to combine and feed into the larger traversing thoroughfares. From a mysterious subterranean origin veiled beneath the rainforest loam, the minions of a highly organized biological community emerge in the night to surround their prey. My father, my mother, their beating hearts and my own, are now awake and fighting back. Kerosene is my father’s weapon of choice -- inert, but with a steady burn rate. With flashlights and buckets and empty tin cans we carefully pour generous portions of the liquid down the middle of each driver ant avenue. They do not like it but maintain discipline and keep marching into our home. Despite their amazing neural systems, they do not know what is coming next. Well after 4:00 A.M. my father lights his match and touches it to the ground. A soft fire encircles the base of our concrete home, then low licks of flame spread along the maze of trails interlacing our grassy hill. Our ground glows into the night. I feel a quiet exultation, standing there, beside my father, watching our handiwork. I stand beside my father and listen to the surf pound from just beyond the coconut palms. I ponder the unrequited death of my favorite bird -- brave and fast and young -- now requited. An odd monkey chatters from the trees as if to mock the justice in my youthful soul. Inside my head I hear the cooing of a young bird, see him cock his neck towards me, bravely look me in the eye. My exultation settles. I become quiet and sure, standing there, beside my father.