Volcano Watch

by Toni Dwiggins

  I started back to the lab, no longer wanting to witness this accident.

  At the intersection of 203 and Minaret, I ran into Krom. His blue Blazer was stopped at right angles to the stalled Guard convoy, its uniformed crew looking ready to stampede. The driver’s door of the Blazer was open and Krom stood in the road with a cell phone to his ear. “Calm it down,” he was saying to someone. He held his big frame straight and wore the heavy parka and thick corded pants like a pelt. Calm, sure of himself.

  I listened to the sirens scream.

  He lowered the phone and told me to go home.

  “What happened?”

  “It’s under control. Go home and be ready to evac.”

  The yellow fire truck careened by and then an ambulance and I glimpsed inside something blackened, and I turned to watch, I’d become an accident junkie, and then from another direction an amplified voice rose over the sirens. Remain calm, proceed to your homes in an orderly fashion, tune in to KMMT for further instructions.

  Krom got in his Blazer and peeled off.

  I ran.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  “Where you been?” Jimbo swung the door wide and pulled me inside.

  He was white. His eyes, which like Mom’s are the color of lichen that grows on the north-facing shank of tree bark, were showing the whites. He wore his portable radio with the earphones around his neck and I could hear its tinny voice.

  “Traffic’s a mess,” I said. “There was an explosion.”

  He nodded.

  I felt the hairs rise on my forearms. I stared at the radio. “It’s on the news?” The radio in my Soob doesn’t work. Hasn’t for a year. Should have gotten it fixed. “What happened?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I don’t know.”

  My brother said, “Somebody blew up 203.”

  I could no longer hear the radio’s tinny whisper because blood was pounding in my ears. I’d thought it was an accident. Guard truck carrying explosives. Something like that.

  “You know the bridge? Over the culvert? It’s gone. Whole thing went.” He bounced a fist against his thigh. “You know what that means? Means we’re not getting out that way.”

  I could only nod.

  “But it’s gonna be okay.” His eyes pinned me. “Pika’s okay. Explosives there didn’t go off.”

  “There?”

  “Yeah, there too.”

  “There too?”

  He grinned, a ghastly pleading grin. “But they said it’s gonna be okay. On the radio. Said it was all ready to blow only it was, like, wired wrong. Said they’re going over it with dogs to be sure it’s okay.”

  I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t take this in.

  “We still got a way out. So it takes a little longer.”

  A little longer? How about three times as long—it’s a one-lane road. I said, “Who did it?”

  “They’re not saying.” He raked back his hair. “What do you think?

  I couldn’t think.

  He said, “I think it was Mike.”

  “Mike?”

  “Hey, he’s been a real case ever since Stobie. He thinks we all blame him. He thinks everybody’s against him. He’s sure had access to explosives on the road crew, I mean, we all have, but shit nobody but Mike’s crazy enough to do something like this.” Jimbo stared at me. “You think it could be Mike?”

  Yes. And then I was thinking of Krom, the way I think of him every time we plunge deeper into shit. But it couldn’t be Krom, Krom’s drilled this evac into us for weeks—it’s his plan—and if we don’t get out in time his rep’s gone. And the man I saw in the street half an hour ago was scrambling to hold it together. Calm it down. I felt a surge, the drill-reflex kicking in. It’s okay, we can do it. Would have been better to have two evacuation routes, sure. But we don’t need 203—in fact, ever since Krom’s simulation of a pyroclastic flow taking out that highway I’d considered Krom’s route, Pika, as the safer way out. We’ve drilled on Pika and even though we’ve never gone all the way and emptied the town, we’ve gone far enough that we know what to do. It works. The drill works. Just follow the arrows, just do what you’re told. Do it in your sleep. We can get out Pika. Hasn’t snowed for a week. Nothing’s erupting. Krom can do it. I’m on his side today.

  Jimbo said, “Cass?”

  I focused on my brother. “You do a good job on Pika, Jimbo?”

  He nodded.

  “Then it’s going to be okay. What time do we go?”

  He searched my face. “Radio said keep listening for revised times.” He clapped the phones back to his ears. Half-on, half-off, a jet jockey dividing his attention.

  I headed for the stairs.

  He was on my heels. “Where you going?”

  “See if we missed anything important.” Keep moving. Focus. Be ready.

  “We got it. Stuff to go’s in the garage so let’s get down there. You said you got room? My heap’s full.”

  I took the stairs, snapped on the hallway light, wove in and out of rooms. We’re not taking everything. We’ve prioritized. Mom and Dad are trusting us to take care of things. They’ve picked up a cartooning gig in Scotland and they can’t afford to fly home and then return. And what if they fly home and nothing happens? We’ve e-mailed packing lists back and forth. Dad wanted us to take it all but Mom prioritized. Take the good china, leave the Sears set. The good china’s in Bishop now.

  I dropped to my knees and looked under my parents’ bed. The safe was gone.

  “I got it.” Jimbo checked his watch. “Come on.”

  “All right let’s go.” I moved along the hallway, whose walls were now bare of photos, thinking this is what this room looks like and this is what that room looks like, thinking I might forget. I passed the laundry room that used to be Henry’s room, where I was babysitting my little brother and staring out the window, and that was one room I would not miss. I snapped off the hall light and followed Jimbo down the stairs and through the family room and into the garage.

  The garage runs half again the length of our house. Three cars can park in here, with room left over for Dad’s workshop. There are walls of shelves and a loft jury-rigged from the rafters. The unshelved wall is planked with pegboard and hung with hoses, lawn furniture, flashlights, power cords in orange braids. Half the space is devoted to old sports gear: skis, snowboards, bikes, camping stuff, ropes, pitons, and at least a dozen helmets that look like giant shellacked insect heads. A lot of it’s junk. Mom had e-mailed if it’s worth over $500, take it. Leave the rest. She’s expecting to return.

  Jimbo’s Fiat, as promised, was full. Seven cartons sat in front of his car.

  “My Soob’s in the driveway.” I hit the garage door opener. “I can fit these boxes.” The Lindsay and Georgia evidence boxes, which I’d packed in my car instead of Walter’s Explorer, didn’t use much room.

  And then there was a shudder like logs rolling beneath the concrete, and the stuff hanging from the walls set up a racket and a box shimmied off the loft and split open on the floor, spilling old baby quilts. I held my ground.

  “Shake and bake,” Jimbo said, grinning. White.

  Across the street, Richard Precourt gave us the thumbs-up then went back to securing a tarpaulin over the mountain of stuff in the back of his pickup.

  Richard’s hanging in there, I saw. Okay, we can do it.

  Jimbo and I carried the cartons to the driveway and loaded my Subaru. It looked like I was embarking on a truly bizarre trip: roof racked with skis, tail hung with mountain bike, interior filled with field gear and boxes. In my passenger seat was a porcelain doll in a glass case that Lindsay brought me from Argentina. The Cerro Galan caldera.

  I got a lawn chair from the pegboard and Dad’s workshop radio and took a seat on the driveway, returning the waves of my neighbors.

  It was unreal.

  Like a block party, only instead of Buddy Precourt’s garage band there were packed cars and radios blasting KMMT. I focused on my street.
Looked exposed, hanging on the edge of the bluff. Houses looked unstable, piled three and four stories like cake tiers. I’ve had a meal in every house on the street, I’ve gathered cones for the fireplace from every pine, I remember what the Maser’s place looked like before the propane tank explosion. I know everybody on the street, I remember everybody who moved away, and I can guess who would and who would not return to rebuild.

  Jimbo said, “You think it’s gonna blow?” He was behind me, hands on my chair, which vibrated from his incessant jiggling.

  I shrugged. People evacuated the towns around Rainier and it didn’t blow.

  Jimbo came around to face me. “You don’t act scared.”

  “I’m scared. I’ve been scared so long it’s second nature. You’re used to seeing me this way.” I scuffed my boot, peeling a layer of snow. “It’s been a nightmare so long I have a hard time accepting it’s real. In the dream the ground’s rotting but it never gets to the eruption. I wake up first. You don’t die in dreams, do you?”

  “Shit I don’t know.” He went into the garage and got a chair and sat beside me. “So. You never said if you think it’s Mike.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He holds a grudge, you know?”

  “I know, but… Grudge enough to sabotage the evac?”

  “Look what Mike did to Georgia.”

  It took me a moment, to make the leap to Gold Dust. I said, slowly, “You saying Mike killed Georgia?”

  “I’m just saying maybe he did. You know?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well didn’t Eric …?”

  Very slowly, I came alert. “Didn’t Eric what?”

  “Aw shit,” my brother said. “Shit.”

  “Tell me,” I said, “what you know. What Eric knows. Tell me, Jimbo.”

  “Okay, but only because I’m through covering for Mike. If Mike did 203…” Jimbo gripped the arms of his chair. “Look, I know you know all about Georgia and Krom, and Mike and Krom, and all that. Eric told me he told you. Guess he left me out of it. That’s Eric, the go-to guy, taking it all on himself. You know?”

  I nodded. That I knew.

  “So after Georgia disappeared, Eric and I were talking about Hot Creek, about Mike and Krom and Georgia seeing that. And we thought maybe that might have set Mike and Georgia off, against each other. And Eric said to keep it between us, that he’d bird-dog it. He’d take care of things. And then after you guys found her in the glacier—only you figured that’s not where she died—I mean, Eric told me that. Anyway, so when you found out there was gunpowder in the evidence and, uh, you wanted a cartridge from me…” He expelled a biathlete breath.

  “You suspected the evidence powder was biathlon powder?”

  “Shit yeah. And I thought Gold Dust, right away. Sorry Cass but I didn’t want you finding it. I mean, not until Eric had the chance to get up there and check it out and find out if anything there nailed Mike.”

  I took that in. “Eric went to Gold Dust?”

  “Yeah, couple days after the race. And he didn’t find anything that pointed to Mike. So we kind of breathed easier.”

  “Easier? Shit, Jimbo, we’re talking murder and you were content that Mike wouldn’t be nailed?”

  “No Cass, we hoped we were wrong about Mike.”

  I recalled Eric in the cottage, trying to talk me into his version of Mike—misunderstood, mistreated. I thought about Eric, bearing the burden of Mike, going up to Gold Dust to find out if his fears were justified. And then I suddenly stiffened. “Wait a minute. I asked Eric about the hot spring at Gold Dust, where it was, and he stonewalled me. But now you tell me he’d already been there, so he must have seen the spring was gone. He must have seen the rockfall that blocked it. And the fissure…”

  “No Cass, come on, he didn’t find that thing. And the rockfall was nothing new—we saw that way back when we used to hang there. The spring was right in front of it. So when Eric didn’t see the spring this time, he figured it was dead, under the snow.”

  “You’re saying he didn’t notice there’d been new exfoliation, which would explain why the spring that used to be in front of the rockfall was now behind it?”

  “Why would he? You’re the geologist. He’s not.”

  I relaxed. Jimbo was right. Eric wouldn’t have noticed. If he’d noticed, he would have gone straight to Lindsay or Krom. Just as I had, when I found the fissure.

  Jimbo said, “So we clear now?”

  “Partly. I think I get what took Georgia to Gold Dust. Seeing Mike and Krom together. Jealousy. So she goes to check out the spring she remembers—Mike’s old spring. She’s going to bring Adrian there, trump Mike. But I still don’t know the how and the when of it. Since you think Mike killed her, care to explain that?”

  “Um.” Jimbo popped his fist on the chair arm. “Eric and I kicked around a few ideas.”

  I waited.

  “Okay, so she goes up there to find the spring, like you said. And I think when she found it—and it turns out to be more than a spring—she’s really hyped and she comes back to report it to Krom. I mean, cops found her car in the Community Center lot. But she runs into Mike inside. And she can’t help it, she puts it to him. Or maybe he puts two and two together and figures where she’s been. And he wonders why she’s so cranked about it. And he says he’s gonna go check it out. And she takes charge, you know, like she does, and says Mike’s not going without her. Gets her gear from her car, and they drive up to Lake Mary, and from there…”

  There was a rumbling, a throat clearing, shivering our chairs.

  Jimbo said, white, “So what do you think?”

  I said, slow, “Why do you think it was Mike she ran into? Instead of Adrian?”

  “It was a Sunday.”

  “So?”

  “She disappeared on a Sunday. Didn’t you look it up?” Jimbo shook his head. “You make a lousy cop.”

  “What’s so special about Sunday?”

  “Mike mans the office for Krom on Sundays. Krom takes the day off. You didn’t know?”

  I stared at my brother. “I didn’t know.”

  “Hey, no sweat. And you’re not such a lousy cop. I mean, man, when you started in that night about powder in the evidence… Wish I gave you that cartridge. Wish you’d figured out about Mike and Georgia—then he’d be in jail and we could evac out both roads.”

  “Wish you’d told me about Gold Dust.”

  “That was Eric’s call. Anyway, I figured you’d figure it out eventually.” Jimbo slumped in his chair until his butt was on the edge and his legs bridged out over the snow.

  I glanced at my brother. Let somebody else do the damn dishes. Our world’s about to come undone, but Jimbo’s still Jimbo. It was, oddly, comforting.

  *****

  It wasn’t until three twenty-five that we heard a sound like garbage trucks waking the neighborhood. Jimbo snaked up from his chair and shouted across the street to the Precourts, who were already piling into their pickup, “Gentlemen start your engines!”

  My legs were rubber.

  Jimbo hooted. A police Jeep was turning the corner, followed by a Guard truck and then a line of cars I recognized from the next street over. The Jeep slowed and Eric rolled down the window and yelled, “Let’s go, Oldfields.”

  Jimbo was already in his Fiat and it peeled out of the garage and backed into the driveway beside my Subaru. Somehow, I was in my car with the engine on. Somehow, I was backing down the drive. My arm was hooked on the windowsill. I saw the minute hand on my watch leap from three twenty-nine to three thirty.

  Two hours left of daylight.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  I was choking. That’s what made it real.

  This was no dream, no drill, this was the real thing and I knew it because our fleeing neighborhood—and the neighborhood that fled before us and the neighborhood coming behind us—filled the air with exhaust that seeped in through the vents, in through the nose and mouth and eyes and burned the message
into the tissues. It’s real.

  Jimbo’s Fiat was in front of me and the Precourts’ pickup was behind me and the high Pika walls flanked me. That was the immediate neighborhood.

  We crawled. Twenty-five miles per hour. Safe and sane.

  My second hand leaped to four o’clock.

  Jimbo’s radio fed me a steady whisper of advice. Stay calm. Keep moving. Leave two car-lengths between your vehicle and the vehicle in front. I wore the phones, like Jimbo, half-on and half-off my ears so I would not miss the onset of an eruption.

  Up ahead, someone honked.

  Another honk, and then another.

  Jimbo slowed and I gained on him and then I slowed too, and I watched the rearview to be sure Rich Precourt was going to slow. We were doing fifteen, and holding our two-car-lengths-pace beautifully, when Jimbo’s brake lights went on and his Fiat squirreled into the right-hand snowbank. I slammed on my brakes and the Subaru’s nose slid left, and up ahead I heard nonstop honking and in the earphones stay calm leave two car-lengths and then all I heard was the screeching of brakes up and down the line and somewhere far behind the Precourts, like distant thunder, a crumpling of metal on metal, time after time.

  Jimbo was already out when I got out, both of us choking on the haze of exhaust. And then mercifully people began to shut off their engines.

  I killed the Soob.

  Now, there were screams. I braced for an explosion. No explosion came—just nonstop screaming. It came from up ahead.

  The Precourts were crowding behind me, and behind them the Robinsons and the Wargos and the Ruiz’s, the whole damn block. They swept me up and we engulfed Jimbo and in front of him the Werneckes, and like the accident junkies we’d all become, we surged forward toward the screams.

  Some twenty vehicles up the line the crowd stopped and swelled like an aneurysm and I was squeezed against a little sedan. I’d lost Jimbo. I wormed along the sedan and then suddenly I got a clear view and saw why we had stopped our flight.

  Between our crowd and another crowd plugging the canyon up ahead was an unpopulated stretch of road. Vehicles were stopped at odd angles, doors open. Roaming this no-man’s-land was a bear. Big as a truck, within a paw’s swipe of someone’s Taurus. It reared as if trying to see over the crowd, and the screamers who had not once let up screamed even harder. The bear froze. Ears went flat. The ground gave a little jolt, and nobody in the crowd noticed or cared about one more shake, but the bear did. It launched itself backward, landing on its belly, then lumbered up with a howl of anguish like the snow’s on fire. It shook itself and snow crystals popped off the cinnamon fur.