This is a cluster, the state health department says. Or something else that may never be known. The uncertainty has forced the state to ask for help from national experts. While they look for answers, the residents worry. His granddaddy was mayor, and his uncle too.
People worry about each other a lot.
At the downtown Ideal Barber Shop, which doubles as a motorcycle parts shop, former police officer Lyndell Smiley mentions the water as he talks of the kids. Arsenic is a naturally occurring chemical that in high concentrations is poisonous. It's sometimes used as an insecticide or to kill weeds, but has never been linked to leukemia. A byproduct of the area's soil, the arsenic has been around so long that many doubt it would be making people sick now. The arsenic is so accepted that residents don't seem to mind.