Volcano Watch

PROLOGUE

Twice, the mayor of my hometown gave me advice.

The first time was when she joined my third-grade class on a snowshoeing trip to chop a Christmas tree. She was nobody’s mom — just the town’s busybody mayor who volunteered for everything. Her name was Georgette Simonies. Call me Georgia she’d boom to any kid who addressed her otherwise, and since she was barely five feet tall, kid-size, we could do that. Out in the wilderness that day, I got myself lost. Trees suddenly thick, shrouded. That snow-blanket silence. Georgia was the one who found me. Next time wear a bell, she boomed.

The second time Georgia Simonies advised me, I was eleven. My little brother Henry had recently died. He had hemophilia, wherein the blood refuses to clot. He’d gotten sicker that year, bleeding out again and again, and my parents stockpiled pressure bandages and I fed him pureed broccoli to replace the lost iron, but his luck ran out when he bumped his head and bled into his brain.

I had night terrors for weeks until my parents, cartoonists, did the only thing they really knew how to do. My mother drew me a cartoon-brother snugly dead in his box. My father wrote the caption: death by God.

My older brother added a comma: death, by God.

I knew better.

A week later Georgia dropped by our house and studied the cartoon and then took me aside. She asked: You feeling guilty? I nodded. You couldn’t watch him every minute. But I was in charge. Nobody blames you. Nobody lets me say I’m sorry. She went and picked up the cartoon and put it on the table in front of me. Gave me a pencil. Say it that way.

It took me over a week, and an hour with a thesaurus, but I finally added my own caption: death by inattention.

When I turned thirty, it was halfway through Georgia’s fifth mayoral term. She’d been in and out of office for twenty-five years, mostly in.

She’s been missing almost five weeks.

I’ve been catching the talk around town. People grumble that she can’t disappear on us now, when it’s a question of the town’s survival. A couple of jerks have made bets: accident, or foul play? A couple of wits say she’ll be back, she wants a sixth term.

As for me, I’m paying relentless attention.