A grandfather would, I’m told, stand before the mound made by those big red ants.

Black loafers, white socks, pleated slacks his nice pants, a cotton white short sleeve t, slicked black hair, a pack of cigarettes in his right pocket, a book of matches left.

Having siphoned gasoline from the Plymouth through a cut length of garden hose cut right from that garden hose coiled up to the garden wall so that garden hose was too short for all the gardening and having spit out what came up too far and having transferred the Plymouth’s gasoline to a used milk carton, a grandfather would, I’m told, stand before the red ant hill disrupting the plane of green. Peer into the hole, holding a carton of gasoline.

One need not fill it to the mound’s lip: it’s the fumes after all. Half carton’d do.

Five pretty big steps back from the mound he’d stand, expertly, there like a nuclear scientist or military like Lt. James Whitmore in Them!, big-bug-picture of 1954: they’d seen it at the Oceanside drive in where the swap meet was later and nothing is now. He’d light the match. He’d light the cigarette. He’d toss the lit match into the hole. A little blast of flame and a grandfather would stand there smoking and watching for a while.

Clamorous then, the need to explore: outer space, underground, deep sea, nothing would remain unfathomable. Beneath the kitchen sink, with that gray tape and baling wire, he’d craft labyrinthine repair. Over and over, it’d do. That gray tape and baling wire, fix anything. TV remote, leaky pipes, severed garden hose. One should keep such essential tools handy. Shelves and shelves over the Plymouth, everything in its place.

The ants, of course, return from somewhere deep, somewhere else.