Jon Wesick

If Cormac McCarthy Wrote the Grasshopper and the Ants

In the warm days of summer, Grasshopper woke from a bad drunk after crashing in an empty Lone Star beer can. He munched a clover leaf in an attempt to clear his head but it was no good so he picked up his fiddle. He was halfway through his warmup exercises when he saw a line of ants, each straining under fallen seeds and dried fruit six-times their weight.

Oy, what are you doing? Grasshopper asked.

Storing food for the winter, the first of two ants, struggling with an acorn, said. He wiped his brow with his five legs, the sixth being lost in a bar fight in Abilene. Summer isn’t going last forever, you know, the second ant said and the two resumed their journey.

Grasshopper picked up his fiddle. The conversation caused him a great deal of cognitive dissonance. He worried that he should prepare for winter but the ants were drones, who wouldn’t understand passion if it bit them on the thorax. Besides, he’d just about mastered the chords for The Devil Went Down to Georgia. He began to play and a centipede stopped to listen.

You hear about that lady bug? the centipede asked after Grasshopper completed Venus in Furs.

No, what happened?

She choked to death on some moldy rye, the centipede said.

That’s horrible! Grasshopper suppressed a grin. 

The tragedy reinforced his world view. Finally, he had an argument to shut those stodgy ants up. There was no point in preparing for winter because the food would spoil anyway. He played a few chords of the Ode to Joy and left to enlist Bullfrog’s help.

***

Bloody diarrhea! Projectile vomiting! Fever! Dehydration! Electrolyte loss! These are the dangers of old food, Bullfrog croaked at sunrise. The insects paid so much attention that he croaked his message three times a day.

The ants argued that May flies and June bugs died from natural causes but no one listened.  As a fresh-food advocate, Grasshopper’s career skyrocketed and he kicked back some of his profits to Bullfrog. At each sold-out concert, he played the theme from Schindler’s List in memory of the dead. And the groupies! Dozens of lady bugs lined up outside his dressing room eager for a few minutes of inspiration. Then he received his highest honor, an invitation to play at the High Council of Cockroaches.

***

We must act to prevent food poisoning. The head cockroach wobbled his greasy antennae. Play us a tune while we confer.

Grasshopper played Schindler while the cockroaches traded political favors.

A decision has been made, the head cockroach concluded. In the interest of saving lives, all stored food shall be banned under penalty of death. He turned to Grasshopper. As a reward for your civic virtue, I present you with this medal. Another cockroach whispered in his ear. What? We gave the medal to an assassin bug? A hum. As a reward from your civic virtue, I present you with this stale cracker.

***

Wasps fanned out across the land to confiscate stored food and stung anyone withholding. Being wasps, they stung many who turned in their food as well. Innocent and guilty alike died, gut stung, bloated, begging for water, and their carapaces withering under the brutal sun. In celebration, Grasshopper held a victory concert. Accompanied by a chorus of crickets, he played REM’s It’s the End of the World as We Know It to an audience of beetles, millipedes, earwigs, butterflies, and water striders.

***

When the hard frost came, the ants were first to go, a small mercy, really. At least, they didn’t live to witness the depravity their neighbors sunk into.  After weeks of hunger a mob of stink bugs gathered to raise a stink outside Grasshopper’s home.

You betrayed us!

What will our larvae eat now?

Grasshopper muscled through the crowd and ran to Bullfrog.

We have to tell everybody that it’s the ants’ fault, Grasshopper said.

What do you mean we? Bullfrog shot out his tongue and ate Grasshopper. It was a tasty appetizer but a growing frog needs protein so he turned to cannibalism. The tadpoles, tree frogs, and leopard frogs lasted through mid-December. Then Bullfrog died wracked with guilt and suffered eternal damnation as an entrée in a French restaurant. Each night a chef amputated Bullfrog’s legs and fried them in butter. They grew back the next morning to return on that night’s menu.

The other insects starved. Their bellies swelled, they grew weak, and had trouble concentrating until they hallucinated and died. Only cockroaches survived, fat and happy living off the food they’d confiscated from the others.

A toast to that fiddler who brought us this bounty! The head cockroach raised a glass of honey seized from bees who were by now dead. I couldn’t have thought of a better scam, myself. What was his name, again? No one remembered. Well, screw him, then. Let’s have another round of drinks.