Only two years ago, I enjoyed Sides’ collection of stories “Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood.” Those stories were whimsical, partook of science fiction, involved vampires and a roadside monster attraction. Several involved the apocalypse which might come in many different forms.
This very short novel, “The Volcano Keeper,” is more directly done as a fable or as magical realism: that is, the physically impossible—like human levitation in “One Hundred Years of Solitude”—is presented straight, as fact.
There are seventy individual vignettes, each one a chapter, ranging in length from 11 words to three pages. Each entry is dated. The first is September 14, 1962, the last October 2, 1982.
In these little chapters, we follow the fortunes of a small, tight-knit rural family as it moves through the years. They attend church, celebrate holidays and, sadly, cope with the losses which, finally, we all must cope with.
In the first chapter young Charlie is eating watermelon with “the man he loves most of all,” his grandfather. Clarence tells his grandson he is sick, “dying sick.” Charlie replies: “Ain’t that when you leave and I don’t get to see you no more?” Clarence responds: “You’ll see me again one day, here on this very same land.”
On October 5th, grandfather dies, and on that same day, they are all awakened by a rumbling. Out in their pasture a volcano, 150 acres in size, has arisen, the peak above the clouds. It is not an hallucination. It is a real volcano and for years to come, Charlie is the volcano keeper. He hauls away rocks that roll down onto the pastures.
The volcano sometimes rumbles. From time to time the rumblings match the passing of other old folks. The family endure painful, inexplicable hardships that might shake their belief in God or in the volcano, but they continue to believe in both: that is what faith is.
Time passes. On June 11, 1963, on television, they watch a man stand in a nearby schoolhouse door. Granny declares him to be “Pure meanness from the devil himself.”
On June 21, 1969, they discuss the moon landing: was it real? Based on their own unlikely situation, they are inclined to think so since “who would believe the volcano just sprouted up from the ground one day.”
As the years go by, the volcano grows larger, but the end has not come. It becomes clearer to the reader that the eruption, when it happens, will be a kind of apocalypse, the end time, but in the best possible way.
This novella is brief, sparse and moving. Three writers I admire—George Singleton, Marlin Barton and Caleb Johnson—all recommended it and they are right.
