A Constant HumItll all be okay, my mother said, and I remember the way her familiar face scrunched, afterwards reflected back at me, in the fogged bathroom mirror, when she thought I couldnt see. Before the fire before the front of flames roars over the hillsthe ridge is thick with gums. After the fire, all the birds have gone. There is only ash and melted metal, the blackened husks of cars. And the lost people: on the TV news in borrowed clothes, in temporary