Water Witches

by Chris Bohjalian

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  live in a colonial with gray shingles exactly one-point-seven miles from the colonial with beige shingles in which we lived as boys, and my father lives still. Our parents purchased that house thirty-five years ago, just after my brother was born, and my father shows no signs of leaving it now that my brother has moved his family nearby.

  My brother tries hard to entice Laura, Miranda, and me south from Vermont for as many holidays as he possibly can, using our father's proximity as his rationale. I know, however, that there is more to it than that: His own wife has told me on at least two occasions that she and my brother believe all of the Avery women are strange, and Patience is an absolute lunatic. ''Don't you think that six hours is a long time for our family to drive," she has said, "just to watch you and my husband be castrated?"

  When I return home from work one Friday evening, Laura and Miranda are hard at work in the garden. Miranda is in charge of the day's harvest: the early asparagus from a bed Laura has meticulously maintained for almost a decade now, and a variety of different kinds of leaves. Lettuce that is almost lime-green, and lettuce that is a dark ruby red. Spinach that grows in rich bouquets, with leaves on some plants as wide as ping-pong paddles. And while Miranda gently tears off the lettuce leaves and pulls up the spinach plants, placing them in a small wicker basket, Laura is thinning the long rows of carrots and beets she has planted this spring.

  Laura's gardenand it truly is Laura's garden, despite my assistance weeding and watering a few days each weekreflects much of Laura herself. It is a serene place that is endlessly giving, despite a climate that is harsh, unpredictable, and often unkind. It forgives the early frosts, prospers in the rockiest of soils. Every plant in it is less fragile than it looks.

  "The paintbrushes are up!" Miranda yells to me, referring to

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  the asparagus her mother has allowed her to harvest, as she hops over the mounds for our golden girl and aristocrat squash.

  Behind her Laura waves, and then tosses a handful of carrot plants she has thinned into the grass bordering the garden. I kneel to kiss Miranda, and coo over the asparagus in her basket.

  "Are those for dinner tonight?"

  "You bet!" Miranda says proudly. "Come look at the lettuce, it's everywhere!" She takes my hand and leads me to the side of the garden in which her mother is working. Indeed, despite all that Miranda has taken in this evening, she has made barely a dent into the row of Black Seeded Simpson threatening now to overrun a row of Swiss chard beside it.

  "Hi, sweetie," Laura says, wiping her hands on her jeans.

  "You've made a lot of progress," I tell her, pointing at the substantial pile of carrot and beet plants she has thinned.

  "Sophie's Choice," she says, shaking her head. "I hate this."

  She steps carefully over the rows of carrots and beets and lettuce between us, and joins me on the grass. "Do you mind if Patience comes by for dinner? She'll probably spend the night."

  "No, of course not. Anything special?"

  "She didn't say, but you never know with Patience. Of course, she might just be bored. Reedy's giving his slide show about the Caracas oil spill at the town hall tonight, and Patience might not want to sit through it one more time."

  "I can't say I blame her."

  Miranda races across the yard to the back porch, and trades her basket of vegetables for our huge metal watering can. By the way that she hoists it with both hands, and limps back to us under its weight, I can tell that the can is completely full. When she gets to the edge of the garden, she starts to pour some of the water on the first row of peas, and then stops. She looks concerned.

  "Miranda? Did you hurt yourself?" her mother asks, afraid that the can may have been too heavy for the child.

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  "No," she says, shaking her head almost violently back and forth.

  Together Laura and I walk to her.

  "Then what?" Laura asks. "Is something the matter?"

  She looks up at us sadly, and for a moment I am afraid she is about to cry. "There used to be an underground spring right below here," she says, her voice cracking. "And now it's all gone!"

  "I dowsed a house today," Patience says after dinner, sipping the last of her wine. She puts her feet up on the ottoman she has kicked with her foot into the kitchen, and watches me while I clean up the dishes.

  Patience likes nothing more than to watch me do dishes.

  Upstairs, Laura is putting Miranda to bed.

  "Anyone I know?" I ask.

  "Hope not. They're all going to die. It's going to be nasty."

  Patience might be tipsy from the wine that she, Laura, and I have polished off tonight, but it's hard to tell for sure. Patience says things cold sober that most people don't think when they're drunk.

  "Noxious rays?"

  "Don't be sarcastic, Scottie."

  She sounds almost hurt, so I look over my shoulder at her and frown, trying to convince her that I was completely serious. "Noxious rays are a deadly business," I add, trying to sound sincere. "I would never be sarcastic about them."

  "Oh, no, never," she says, shaking her head emphatically when she says the word never. "Never."

  Age has been kind to Patience, as it has to all of the Avery women. Evidently, mother nature looks out for her own. She is forty-two now, but a stranger to the community would guess she was much younger. Thirty-five, maybe. There is not a strand of gray in the mane of bayard-brown hair that frames her face or falls down her back, and her skin has survived four

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  decades of winters before a woodstove with extraordinary resilience. She is a big woman: not at all fat, only a tad tall, but nevertheless dominant. With her pronouncements, assurance, and occasional orneriness, she carries herself like a woman a foot taller and who knows how much stronger.

  "I'm serious," I continue, shutting the door of the dishwasher. Part of me wants desperately to turn the machine on and drown out this conversation, but Patience would see through my dishwasher ruse in a second. "I want to know about the noxious rays."

  "For your information, it wasn't noxious rays. Not in this case." She sounds almost petulant. "It was electromagnetic radiation."

  "So where was this?"

  "Near Sugarbush. Down on Route 100, in one of those new condos that went up two or three years ago by the ski resort."

  "A second home?"

  "Yup. In a complex called the Fortress. Or the Bastille, maybe."

  "You're thinking of the Armory."

  "It's called some such nonsense. Some completely moronic, militaristic male name. A family from Connecticut bought one of the places. Two-bedroom condo they're going to use as a weekend house."

  "And they asked you to dowse it?"

  "The woman's father did. Old guy from Bennington I know through the American Society of Dowsers."

  "Any special reason he didn't dowse it for them himself?" I ask, knowing full well the answer to this question.

  "He wanted the best for his family."

  "And you found electromagnetic radiation in the place?"

  "I found four separate hot spots. One in each bedroom, and two in the kitchen. I used both a Y rod and my L rods. The chrome ones, not the brass."

  "And you couldn't divert them?"

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  "Not unless I could convince New England Power to move about a dozen transformers and utility poles."

  I don't worry a whole lot about noxious rays, but I do about electromagnetic radiation. It doesn't, after all, take a dowser to find the presence of electromagnetic radiation. Even a scientist can do that.

  "What did the family say when you told them?" I ask Patience.

  "They didn't believe me."

  "Even the woman's father? The dowser?"

  "He believed me. But his daughter didn't, and neither did her husband. The only reason they even let me into their house was to pacify her dad."

  "So they're just going to stay there ..."

&n
bsp; "Yup. I'd guess it'll be leukemia that gets them. Maybe prostate cancer in the husband."

  Laura returns to the kitchen, and pours herself the last of the coffee.

  "So, did you and the world's greatest niece solve the problems of the world?" Patience asks her sister.

  "No. But we figured out why Seth Reston is so quiet around her in school, and so outgoing when he comes over here to play."

  "Because he has a crush on her?" I venture.

  "Because he has a penis," Patience offers. "Explains most every bit of lunacy, misbehavior, and unhappiness in this world."

  "Yes, Seth has a crush on Miranda," Laura says, ignoring her sister.

  "Well, I think Miranda likes Seth. He's a good kid. I watched him play a few games of little league last year."

  Patience rolls her eyes. "I hope you make sure my niece keeps a cool head when it comes to men. Cooler than her aunt, anyway."

  "I think you're pretty cool when it comes to men, Patience," I tell her.

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  "Usually. Not now," she says, taking her feet off the stool and sitting forward in her chair. She brings her empty wine glass to her lips, looks at it with disgust, and then continues, "The reason I wanted to come here tonight is that I have some news. It may surprise you, it may not. But here goes: Reedy McClure asked me to marry him today."

  "That's wonderful!" Laura says, reflexively going to her older sister and wrapping an arm around her shoulder. "I'm so happy for you! You said yes, didn't you?"

  "Not exactly."

  Laura removes her arm from her sister, and looks at her with concern. Laura shares my affection for Reedy, and would be thrilled to see him as a brother-in-law. "What did you say to him?"

  "I said I had to think about it."

  "Did you hurt his feelings?"

  "What do you think I am, some callous idiot? Of course I didn't!"

  "What did you say, Patience?" Laura asks again.

  "I said I didn't know if I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him."

  "And what did he say?"

  "He said he understood. But you know what's the damnedest thing? I think I'm going to say yes. Can't you just see it?" she asks, raising her eyebrows in wonderment, "Patience Avery, a possible three-time loser."

  Laura and I awaken Saturday morning to the sound of Miranda and Patience in the yard by the garden. Laughter and an occasional sentence filter up through the crisp spring air.

  I can tell that todaylike almost every day in recent memorythere is not a cloud in the sky.

  "Don't you daydream, Miranda Avery-Winston," Patience is saying. "Don't you let your mind wander ..."

  Sometime in the middle of the night, either Laura or I

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  kicked off the last blanket that had remained on the bed since winter. It's nice to wake up underneath only a sheet.

  "Visualize ... visualize what the water looks like ..."

  My hands roam underneath Laura's nightgown, and I begin to rub the small of her back and her tummy, pulling her gently across the bed to me.

  "Dowsing school," Laura murmurs lightly, her back to me. "Hear it?"

  "I do." I start to pull her nightgown up over her head, and still half-asleep she raises her arms to help me.

  "... what a vein looks like. Maybe it's trickling. Maybe it's pouring. But you need to picture it ..."

  Laura's neck and hair still smell of black currant, the scent from our bubble bath last night. She presses her bottom against me, as I kiss the side of her neck, her ear, then her lips.

  "Patience has never had a protégé like Miranda," Laura says softly, after we kiss.

  I lean on my elbow and smile. The black currant is sweet, fruity. It almost reminds me of Kool-Aid. "No, I don't think she has. Maybe you, once."

  Laura shakes her head. "Not really. I don't have anything like Miranda's ... aptitude. I wish I did."

  "It's a trickle," Miranda says. "That's what I'm thinking."

  "Good. Now concentrate ..."

  Laura rolls onto her back and looks up at me. She looks pensive. I start to kiss her again but she turns her face away, giving me only her cheek. "Sometimes," she says, "it makes me jealous."

  "Miranda's aptitude?"

  "No. Patience's. Sometimes I wish Patience would leave Miranda alone. At least when it comes to dowsing."

  I stretch my legs. I could suggest to Laura that she talk to her sister. But I know that she won't. Not about this.

  "How deep is the vein?" Patience is asking.

  "They spend so much time together," Laura continues, folding her arms across her chest.

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  "Don't be jealous," I murmur. "It gives them something to share."

  Laura turns to face me again. "Don't try to reason with me," she says, a touch of anger in her voice. "It sounds condescending."

  "I'm not trying to reason with you. Honest. I'm just trying to seduce you."

  "You sounded condescending."

  "I didn't mean to."

  "Condescension is a lousy way to seduce someone."

  I fall back into my pillow. I try to keep exasperation from creeping into my voice. "I'm sorry. But I figured your sister and Miranda were going to be out there awhile, and we may as well take advantage of the time."

  Laura sighs. "They will be out there awhile, won't they?"

  "Sure will."

  "That is a bright side."

  "I hope so."

  Her voice lightening, she says, "Sometimes, you're such a baby."

  I roll over and try to remove her hands to suck at her breasts, but she stops me.

  "Shut the window," she says, "so we don't have to hear them. And when you get back in bed, you better be naked."

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  6

  Patience was twelve years old when she discovered that she was not merely capable of finding underground water, she was able to divert it as well. And while it is not uncommon today to find dowsers who take great pride in their ability to move underground springs, when Patience was a child diversion was viewed by the dowsing community as barely a step beyond sorcery. And the last thing that any responsible dowser wanted was for the uninitiated to take the expression "water witching" too literally.

  As with many great discoveries, Patience realized that a vein could be diverted by accident. The Avery basement was flooding after a spring thaw, and Patience was watching the plumber try and install a sump pump in one of the corners. She was playing with her Y rod, watching it react to the streams trickling into the basement from different parts of the foundation.