THE TORN SIEVE

The ants came out of the crack under the cabinet in two lines, then in four, each one carrying a white grain bigger than its head. Renan knelt in the corridor before he understood they were larvae. They were abandoning the dry yard and entering through the plate without screws, looking for the moisture the purge had left in the gutter. Luzia appeared with the bowl of stones against her chest. The security screw was still among the seeds. Careful with the bowl, she said. The first row reached the ventilation opening. Renan swept his sleeve across the floor, tried to push them away, and the ants spread over the fabric, climbed to his wrist, went into the crook of his hardened forearm. He shook his hand, but did not kill any. He had seen whole colonies move like this when the earth received the vibration of drilling. Before, the insects went down to the bank of the Lajes. Now they chose the gaps heated by the machines. Ilva came from the kitchen with a farinha sieve. The mesh had a tear near the rim, wide enough to let bran through and too small for an ant carrying brood. Renan took the sieve, set it against the ventilation opening and saw that the sheet did not close. The bent plate held up their path. If I tighten it, I jam the purge again, he said. If you leave it, they get into the cabinet, said Ilva. Outside, Nael rested his hand on the porch wall and followed the trail that came from the yard. He did not enter the corridor. He stood looking at the cracked earth near the dead seedling. When he was a young man, he knew the month of the ants by the sound of them striking the buriti leaves. Here there was only the ground knocking dry against the hooves of the village. Renan pulled the plate two fingers out. The ants sped up. Luzia set the bowl on the floor and knelt, using a wooden spoon to collect the larvae that had already crossed the corridor threshold. She put them in an empty bowl, one by one, counting aloud. Sixteen, seventeen, nineteen. You skipped one, said Nael. I gave one to them so they'd go back. The service call opened in the field projected beside Renan's wrist. A workshop of the mining operation needed someone to clean dust filters before a cargo departed. The shift paid enough for three meals. He looked at the time, then at the sieve held against the ventilation. The ants were arriving along the sides. Renan received the call the way one receives an open door in a narrow corridor. Go, said Ilva. He did not get up. Instead, he asked Nael for a piece of fallen taipa by the porch. The old man brought two fragments. Renan broke them against the floor and wedged the pieces under the edge of the plate, raising it just enough for the sieve to cover the whole entrance. Ilva held the mesh while he pressed the pieces in. The ventilation kept breathing through smaller holes. The call expired without sound. Renan picked up Luzia's bowl and crossed the yard with his hardened forearm. He set the larvae down in a narrow shade behind the empty tank, where the earth still held moisture under the roots of a buriti.