Water Witches

by Chris Bohjalian

  "Your daddy and I will be with you," Laura tells her. "We'll be right beside you the whole time."

  "You're going to tell them about the catamounts too, right?" she asks.

  "Yup."

  Laura places her empty dish on the table beside her. "How many people will be there?" she asks me. "Just a couple, right?"

  "Absolutely. There will be the star witness here," I begin, gesturing toward Miranda. "There will be the star witness's parents. That makes three. There will be John Bussey, the man who works for Powder Peak these days, and the attorney Reedy has been using from Boston. I think her name is Dawn. That's five. And I'd expect a clerk or administrative assistant from John's firm. How many is that? Six?"

  Miranda nods. "Yup. Six."

  The phone rings, and Laura stands up. "I'll get it," she says.

  "Don't bother," I tell her quickly. "It's just the Sentinel."

  The phone rings again, and Miranda looks first at her mother, and then at me, concerned. "How come you don't want to answer the phone?"

  "Because we'd rather talk to you," I tell her smiling.

  Miranda puts her ice cream dish down beside her mother's, and watches as her mother sits down beside her.

  "What about the trial? The thing you said would happen in September?" Miranda asks, as the phone is caught by the answering machine.

  Laura wraps her arm around Miranda's small shoulder. "There's no trial, sweetheart. It's just a ... a hearing."

  "What's the difference?"

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  "A hearing is a lot less scary," I tell my daughter, on at least one level lying. That hearing could be every bit as frightening to a child as a trial. "There's no judge in a black robe, and there's no jury. There's just a group of adults who want to hear your story."

  "How big a group?"

  "Nine people."

  "What if they just read the newspapers?" she wonders, almost the very same question Duane Hurley asked me. "I must have been in most of them." There is no arrogance or vanity in her statement. She is simply probing for excuses not to testify.

  "They want to hear it directly from you. They want to hear it in your words, not some reporter's."

  "Other than those nine people, will there be anyone else at the ... the hearing?"

  Miranda has asked a good question. If an adult had asked it I would probably answer, There will be as many people as will fit in the room. Environmental Board hearings are open to the public, and this one has the potential to draw hundreds and hundreds of people, every single one of them with a stake in the decison.

  "What do you think," Laura asks me, her voice filled with hope, "a couple dozen, maybe?"

  "That's hard to say," I admit to my wife and my daughter. "I'd say we should see how next week goes, and then we'll take it from there."

  "We saw Anson Gray today," Laura tells me, trying to change the subject. "He couldn't be happier with the place Miranda chose for the sugar house. He and some friends are going to start work on it tomorrow."

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  I sit back in my chair at the end of the day, another week, another Friday behind me.

  This morning, Warren Birch was asked to have lunch with Governor Webster one day next week. He is one of a dozen lobbyists and resort presidents whom she asked to join her to discuss the ski industry in Vermont. I was not invited, a fact which surprised me, but probably no one else.

  This afternoon, Peter DuBois, the Governor's administration secretary, asked Duane Hurley to join the Governor's emergency task force on the drought. The task force, which includes agricultural experts, state senators, and select business people, will hold its first meeting next Tuesday.

  I doubt I would know now that Duane had been asked to join the task force if the two of us hadn't wandered into our firm's lobby at the same moment a few hours ago.

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  I spent part of today examining a list of new business prospects. It included three of Powder Peak's primary competitors, as well as Vermont's seven largest consumer product companies. All of them will need a significant lobbying presence when the legislature convenes next January.

  A month ago, I believe all of the resorts and companies on the list would have been flattered to hear from me. No longer. I doubt that today they would even have taken my calls. A lobbyist with no clout, no connections, no inside information is not particularly valuable.

  Of course, that assumes that I even wanted to approach these companies in the first place. And I realized as I stared at the list today and envisioned each companyits products, its philosophy, its senior managementthat I really didn't give a damn if these people wanted to talk to me or not. Because I didn't want to talk to them. I didn't want to work for them.

  One by one, I turned the question marks I had scribbled by each company into an X, my symbol to myself not to call them. I have no idea where my billable hours will come from, but I am sure that I do not want them to come from companies that pump dioxin into Lake Champlain, or clear-cut whole forests for condominiums.

  I wish I knew whether my born-again environmentalism was the result of a deep and real philosophic conversion, or a simple product of a childish oversensitivity. My fear is that I have become sensitive. My feelings have been hurt by people like Ian Rawls and Peter DuBois. I have been snubbed by people I thought were my friends. Suddenly, because my little girl and I saw three rare and beautiful animals, I am an institutional pariah. No one in Vermont phoned me today, and I phoned no one.

  The only call I received was from Massachusetts: It was from the Copper Project attorney, a woman with a thick Boston accent named Dawn Ciandella. Dawn will arrive in Montpelier next week to meet Miranda and me, along with her other witnesses.

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  At four thirty, when I decide to go home for the weekend, the only thing I have accomplished all day is that I have laid off a junior associate. Duane and Warren agreed that we shouldn't postpone the inevitable. And because our financial fortunes have changed because of me, I alone told Alice LaBlanc that two weeks from today would be her last day at our firm.

  "I think our well's about to go."

  Laura says the words evenly, as we stroll up our driveway Friday night. We can see the light on in the den, where Miranda is watching a video.

  I imagine if I were not married to a dowser, I would probably ask her how she knows. I might wonder if the tap water looked brown or rust-colored today, whether the pump in the basement had sounded as if it were straining. But because I am married to a dowser, because I am married to a woman with the Avery gene, I simply nod.

  "Gone for good?" I ask. "Or gone until we get some rain?"

  "We should probably get on Michael Terry's calendar."

  I sigh. "Gone for good."

  "I think so."

  "How long do we have?"

  "There's no rain in the forecast. So I'd say a week, maybe."

  The Vermont sky is magnificent tonight, a black umbrella dotted with diamonds.

  "Have you dowsed a new vein?"

  "No. I thought I might let Miranda do that tomorrow. It might make our need for a new well less frightening to her."

  "That's a nice idea," I agree. I am unable to resist, however, one small jab: "After all, just because our entire life is falling apart, there's no need to be frightened."

  Laura is wearing a cardigan sweater that I bought her this past Christmas in Boston. "Our life is not falling apart," she says.

  "Okay. Just my career."

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  "You're being ridiculous. You know you're doing the right thing."

  "Sure, I do," I tell her, wrapping my arm around her shoulder, savoring the feel of the cashmere. I hold her close as I land one more punch, speaking in a voice that is sickeningly sweet: "If worse comes to worse, we'll live off your candles. We'll live on candles and cake."

  "You'll like Dawn," Reedy says to me Saturday afternoon. "She's like you. She's slick as ice, and just as hard."

  The s
ails on the boats on Lake Champlain, bright yellows and reds and one that is purple and green, almost in unison whip over the small boats below them as the wind changes. The boats are racing south to Burlington, passing by the spot we have chosen for a picnic on a beach perhaps five miles north of the city.

  No one is allowed to swim in Lake Champlain today. People are allowed to boat on the lake, but no one may swim or ride their sailboards upon it until it rains. Until it rains a lot. The water level is seventy-nine feet at the marker by the city boathouse, ten feet below normal for this time of year. Consequently, the discharge from Burlington's antiquated sewage system represents too great a portion of the lake, the percentage of coliform bacillus in the water is too high for people to swim without becoming ill.

  Although we knew we would be unable to swim, Laura, Miranda, and I decided to come to the lake for a picnic today anywayas did many Vermonters. The beach itself is crowded this morning, especially since no one is allowed in the water.

  When Patience heard we were going to Lake Champlain, she asked if she and Reedy could join us. Of course, we said, that would be fine. None of us have gotten to the lake this entire summer, and I know I have felt a desperate need to sit beside the closest thing we have in northern Vermont to a body of water where you can't see the entire shore from one spot.

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  "Slick as ice," I repeat. "Can I assume that's a compliment?"

  Reedy nods. "Sure can. I don't want my doctors to be particularly slippery, but my lawyers? You bet."

  Down at the edge of the water, Laura and Miranda are carving something into the sand. It looks like they've built a series of small ducts and gullies to collect the murky lake water, and are using it as some sort of moat.

  They are both still wearing their sneakers.

  "When she called," I tell Reedy, referring to his attorney, "we only spoke for about five minutes. But she sounded competent."

  "Competent? She's a barracuda. About twenty-eight, twenty-nine years old. The kind of person whom you just know has worked her butt off every second of her life to get where she is."

  Patience rolls onto her stomach, and lowers the straps of her bathing suit off her shoulders. Speaking away from her fiance she grumbles, "I don't see any reason to describe an especially hard-working woman in the context of her bottom."

  When Patience took off her shorts at the beach this morning, I was struck by how old her legs looked. There were small pockets of fat forming along the back of her thighs, and the skin had begun to sag over her knees. Patience, now forty-two, is finally beginning to look forty-two.

  Reedy pats the back of those thighs good-naturedly. "I would have said Dawn worked her butt off if she were a man too. Honest."

  "Is she pretty?" Patience asks. I can tell that the woman's age hit a nerve with my sister-in-law. It did, on some level, with me too.

  "I won't lie to you, Patience. She is."

  Patience turns her head to us, and raises an eyebrow angrily. Speaking very slowly, she asks, "Just how pretty, Mr. McClure?"

  I stand up and brush the sand off my legs. "I'm going to go see how the construction project is going down at the shore. Either of you want to join me?"

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  "I will," Reedy says. "Come on with us," he says to Patience.

  "I want to know how pretty this woman is whose butt you seem to have become obsessed with," my sister-in-law says firmly, and so alone I start down to the water.

  Sunday afternoon Miranda walks across our yard with her Y rod before her, its tip aimed up at the sky, whispering to herself short questions. Small August breezes blow her bangs into her eyes, but most of the time she doesn't seem to notice.

  Most of the time her eyes are closed.

  Her mother walks a few steps behind her, occasionally reminding her of a question or two she should be asking. They are probably questions of depth, questions of potability.

  This morning, the water pump in our basement began to strain. When I turned on the kitchen sink for a glass of water, the pump came on and hummed for at least thirty seconds. It reminded me of the sound the truck makes when I try starting it in January, after a night when the temperature has fallen far below zero.

  As Miranda wanders into our croquet court, she stops just inside one edge of the wickets. The tip of the Y rod abruptly swings down, aiming almost straight into the ground. She opens her eyes and raises the rod back into the air. Laura kneels beside her and places one hand on Miranda's shoulder. She whispers something into her small ear, and Miranda nods. She asks something else, and my daughter giggles.

  If the spot for our new well will indeed be where Miranda is standing, there will be no more croquet this year. Deep trenches will be cut through that area of our yard, as if we expect an invasion by some unhappy neighbor. And next year it will mean finding a new place for the croquet court, because at that spot there will be a well cap extending about eighteen inches aboveground.

  I stand up and walk toward the dowsers until I can hear what

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  they're saying. Miranda smiles at me, her face full of accomplishment and pride.

  "How deep?" I ask. It has crossed my mind that because my daughter is smiling, the vein is fairly close to the surface. I remind myself that the water table is low, and I should not get my hopes up. I doubt that Miranda understands the vast difference in cost between a deep well and a shallow one. Her pride may be founded simply upon finding a rich vein that is filled with good water. In all likelihood, the well will be deep, and it will be expensive.

  Moreover, given the fact that my testimony could jeopardize Powder Peak's expansion, it could cost Michael Terry a major contract with the resort as well. We, the Winston family, could pay dearly for this well.

  "Two hundred and twenty-five feet!" Miranda says. "Maybe two hundred and thirty."

  Two hundred and twenty-five feet is much shallower than I expected; it is barely half as deep as the vein Patience found for the Scutters. It is almost too good to be true.

  "Really?" I ask, looking to Laura for confirmation.

  Laura nods her head. She believes that her daughter is correct.

  "Well, that's something," I murmur.

  Miranda swings her Y rod at my legs, gently hitting my knees. "Daddy, what did you expect?"

  "I expected a much deeper well."

  She rolls her eyes at me, a little girl's way of chastising her father for his skepticism. She is right to do so. As Patience has said to me any number of times, any number of ways, there may be no dowser in the world with the gifts of Miranda.

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  Miranda sits between her mother and me on one side of a long table in the conference room of Fletcher, McCoy, Bussey, and Brown. The conference room feels more like a dining room to me than a business office. The overhead fixture has so many small lights in it that it looks like a chandelier, and the table is an immaculately preserved antique.

  ''There were three of them," Miranda says, answering Dawn Ciandella's question. "I think it was a mom and two cubs."

  Dawn nods at Miranda, acknowledging that she has provided the correct answer.

  Reedy was right about Dawn. I don't believe she is as merciless a barracuda as he does, but it is clear that she has always been driven. In my mind's eye, I can see her struggling as a teenager to find a way out of some old mill town in central Massachusetts. Ware or Worcester or Lowell. I can imagine