Water Witches

by Chris Bohjalian

"What's a lesbian?" Miranda asks.

  "Ask me after church," Laura says patiently, no hint of exasperation in her voice. "I'll explain it then."

  Our receptionist's family showers with the drain closed, so that they are able to save the water. They then use that water to flush their toilet.

  Warren Birch had a new well drilled last week. Five hundred and twelve feet.

  An associate in our firm, a fellow who recently purchased an expensive new car, has been known to drive as far as Concord, New Hampshire, to find a car wash that is open.

  And Duane Hurley, the third partner in our firm, says that he and his wife now save the water in which they boil pasta or potatoes or peas, and then use it to douse the potted plants on their porch.

  "Flowers love carbohydrates," Duane insists. "They love carbohydrates and starch."

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  After I order a club soda and Liza Eastwick asks the waiter for "the tallest, coldest, most iced-down glass of cranberry juice you can find," the head of the local environmental commission turns to me and says, "I'm only here out of the goodness of my heart. I really shouldn't be talking to you at all."

  "I understand."

  "And I wouldn't have come if my mind wasn't already made up."

  "Is it?"

  "You betcha. So, that point noted: Is this going to be a Scottie Winston soft-sell lunch or a Scottie Winston hard-sell lunch?"

  "Which will be more effective?"

  "Too early to tell," she says, unfolding her napkin and

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  dropping it into her lap like an open parachute. Her tremendous mane of red hair is still wet, and it crosses my mind that the woman enjoyed a quick swim in what's left of the Lamoille River on her way to St. Johnsbury this morning. "Reedy McClure asked me to say hello."

  "Gee, that was nice of him. I haven't spoken to Reedy in the longest time. Since yesterday morning, as a matter of fact. Right after church."

  "He called me about an hour ago."

  "And he'll call you again this afternoon."

  "Nope. He thinks he's coming by my house tomorrow afternoon. Tuesday. I told him he can't, not on the day of the vote. That's going too far."

  "You've probably heard a lot from the Copper Project."

  "I've heard a lot from everybody. All of us on the commission have." She pauses briefly, shaking her head. "And the thing is, it's all wasted energy. No offense, Scottie, but it's all wasted breath."

  "In that case, why are you taking the time to see me now?"

  "Catch up on alumni gossip, see who you've heard from in our class. Enjoy a free lunch."

  "Liza Eastwick doesn't waste time on free lunches."

  "In the last two weeks, I have been asked to discuss this issue more times than I care to admit. I may as well get something to eat once in a while."

  The waiter returns with our drinks, and for the first time I glance at the restaurant's menu. "Who have you seen?" I ask.

  She rubs her eyes, thinking. "Let's see. I've met with representatives from the Copper Project. I've met with the Governor. I've met with Peter DuBois. I've met with at least six or seven state senators, andas you knowI've met with two young guns from your firm."

  "We call them associates."

  "And I made up my mind weeks ago."

  "What about the rest of the committee?"

  "They did too. Environmental politics is like every other

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  kind of politics. Everyone makes a lot of noise, and no one changes anyone's mind."

  The restaurant, a training site actually for the small culinary institute in St. Johnsbury, is staffed largely by students in their early twenties, eager young people who hover by the tables hoping to help. Liza chose this restaurant for the simple reason that it is unlikely she will be seen having lunch with me here. We make the waiter inordinately happy when we tell him that we would like the most complicated special on the menuwhatever that is.

  "As long as it's vegetarian," Liza adds quickly.

  "Does that mean no fish?" the waiter asks nervously.

  "Fish is fine."

  The waiter smiles, relieved, and rushes back to the kitchen with his news that there are a pair of enthusiastic guinea pigs at the table in the corner.

  "Okay, you've made your decision: Will Powder Peak receive its permit?"

  "I'm only one vote."

  I nod. Rightly or wrongly, this strikes me as an admission that she will vote in favor of the Powder Peak expansion. I press for confirmation.

  "You understand the importance of Powder Peak to our economy?"

  "More or less. But I'm only one part of the equation."

  "The Copper Project won't last forever. No grass roots organization does. I know that right now Reedy's itching to leave Vermont and head for British Columbia. He won't, not with his wedding in September. But we both know there will be other oil spills."

  "Well, Reedy's only one of many opponents, most of whom have no plans to leave."

  "Governor Webster isn't an opponent."

  "But Governor Webster won't be an ally either, at least until you receive your federal impact statement from the Forest Service."

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  "We'll have that by August. And I expect it to be favorable."

  "Doesn't matter. We vote tomorrow night. Besides, the Vermont Natural Resources Council is against your project"

  "It's not my project."

  Liza continues as if I never interrupted her. "Some state senators are against the project. Look at Reedy."

  "Reedy's a fanatic," I tell her, smiling.

  "So are you. Just a different kind."

  "Not really. I just happen to care more about people than fish," I tell her reflexively, trying to ignore the image that forms in my mind of my daughter whirling at night among the impatiens.

  "I just care about people having jobs. I just care about people having property taxes they can afford to pay," I insist.

  "Very commendable, Scottie Winston. As I've always said, you're a role model for us all."

  I push on, despite my best intentions to avoid polemics, despite my vows to myself to be truthful. "Sarcasm aside, Liza, you cannot dispute the fact that Vermont needs Powder Peak. And without the permits to make snow and expand the resort, someday the state may not have it."

  She pats the top of her head, wondering, perhaps, if her hair is still wet. "I probably understand the economic arguments for Powder Peak better than my two illustrious associates. But even I'm not going to give Powder Peak carte blanche to trash either Mount Republic or the Chittenden River."

  "It is not in the resort's interest to 'trash' its highest mountain or one of the state's key rivers. Obviously they don't want to do anything that harms either the mountain or the river. You know that," I tell her.

  Liza sighs. "There are ten environmental criteria to Act 250," she says, referring to the state's development control law, a law instituted for the sole purpose of preventing Vermont from becoming a land of condominiums and ski chalets. "Powder Peak's project meets about half of them. I think the best you can hope for is a permit with conditions."

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  ''What kinds of conditions?"

  From nowhere the waiter appears and places a basket of bread in the middle of our table. Another young woman whisks our water glasses away, refills them, and almost instantly returns them to their exact spots on the tablecloth.

  "You guys want to withdraw something like three hundred and seventy-five million gallons of water a season from the Chittenden, right?"

  " 'Us guys' don't, but the resort does. Yes."

  "Uh-huh. And the storage pond is supposed to hold about forty million gallons of water. I don't think we can approve a project that large. Not with water this scarce, and the Chittenden River as low as it is."

  "The drought won't last forever."

  "No, but it may leave scars on the river that will."

  "What about the new trails?"

  "
Aren't they contingent upon snowmaking?"

  "Most are. Not all."

  "Personally, the new parking spaces don't worry me. Three-and-a-half miles of underground water pipes don't worry me. Cutting down miles of forest for new trails on Mount Republic, however ... that does worry me. So does putting up one hundred and fifty high-voltage utility poles, and putting in one of those new high-speed gondolas."

  I reach for the bread and break off two slices. She shakes her head that she doesn't want one, and I drop both on my plate.

  "How many conditions are we talking about here?"

  "I don't know yet."

  "Okay. Will the permit be thinner than the Montpelier phone book, or fatter than the Manhattan phone book?"

  "I grew up in Maine. I've never seen the Manhattan phone book."

  "Small children sit on it so they can reach the dinner table."

  "Well." She thinks for a moment, smiling for the first time in what seems like a long time. "Personally, I think it'll be closer to Montpelier."

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  "That's helpful. Any chance we can get it as thin, say, as the Landaff Church directory?"

  "Not likely."

  "What would it take to get it that thin?"

  The waiter appears behind Liza, walking in slow motion so that he doesn't drop our lunch. Liza looks over her shoulder at him briefly, and then turns back to me. "Let me ask you a question: What would honestly happen if the permit were denied?"

  The waiter carefully places before each of us a plate with small clusters of immaculately shaped food. Grilled salmon with a spicy horseradish sauce. A coleslaw made with endive and pecans. Something that looks like a potato pancake, but I know is in actuality something much more glamorous.

  "Honestly," I repeat.

  I have been telling people for over a month now that if Powder Peak does not receive its permits, if it is not allowed to make snow and build new trails, it will be unable to compete with either the western ski resorts or the largest eastern resorts. It will, in all likelihood, go out of business. I have suggested so much today at lunch. It probably wouldn't go out of business this year, I have implied, and probably not next. But eventually it would. Consistently I have argued that without new trails and new snow, the resort will someday go belly up, taking with it jobs and tax revenue the state desperately needs.

  This is what I have told people, this is what I have been telling them for months.

  "Looks good, doesn't it?" I ask, nodding down at the food before us.

  "Enjoy your meal," the waiter says, grinning.

  "We will."

  "You're not answering my question," Liza says.

  I nod. I reach for my fork. If Powder Peak's permits were denied, some bank somewhere would lose a loan that it wanted to make to fund Powder Peak's expansion. Fifteen million dollars, a pretty good-sized loan. The resort's short-term prof-

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  its would probably be a little better, long-term a little worse. The resort would not create any new jobs on the mountain, or in the service industry around it. But do I honestly believe that the resort would go out of business without the proposed project?

  I don't think even Ian Rawls and Goddard Healy really believe that.

  "Off the record?" I ask.

  "Off the record."

  I open my mouth and start to speak, prepared to say the word nothingthe one word that I haven't uttered in the context of Powder Peak in years. I open my mouth with every intention of answering honestly, of telling Liza Eastwick, Nothing would happen. In the greater scheme of things, not a damn thing would happen if Powder Peak's permit requests were denied.

  But I am unable to say that one word, or to speak the sentences that I had planned. Instead I tell Liza, staring at the red halo that is her hair, "The economic strength of this area would be crippled for a very, very long time."

  And I am off and running. Again.

  "Good morning, Ian," I say into the speakerphone on my desk Wednesday morning.

  "Pick up the goddamn phone, will you?"

  I lift up the receiver. "Good morning, Ian."

  "That's better. Have you heard anything?"

  "About the commission's vote last night?"

  "Do you really think there could be anything else on my mind today?"

  "No," I answer, "I haven't heard anything. But I don't think I will. The commission will contact you first, not me."

  "I assumed that. It's just that it's almost nine o'clock, and no one's told me anything. So I thought maybe someone had spoken to you."

  "It's eight thirty-five, Ian. It's not almost nine o'clock."

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  "It feels like it's almost nine o'clock. Goddard has already called twice. He called me at my home last night about midnight, and he called here about ten minutes ago."

  "It's five thirty in the morning in San Francisco!"

  "That's Goddard. Have you read today's paper?"

  "I was just about to skim through it. Is Powder Peak in it?"

  I hear the sound of rustling newspaper over the telephone, the sound of Ian turning the pages in his office at the resort. "Go to page two of the front section. The national news wire."

  I lift my coffee cup up off the Sentinel, and turn to the first inside page. In the middle of two columns of short news briefs is one with the sub-head, "Eco-Terrorists Strike California Resort:"

  TAHOE CITY, CAVandals damaged a golf course and ski trail early Tuesday morning at Mystic Mountain, a four-season resort owned by the San Francisco-based Schuss Limited. According to Jason Belmont, resort general manager, the vandals destroyed four greens and three fairways with a chemical defoliant, spelling out the words "Screw Schuss!" on one green, and "Animal Rights Now!" on another.

  In addition, the resort says, the vandals left a note claiming that they had ruined the cable for a high-speed chair lift now under construction, by dousing it with a solvent that weakens metal.

  Although there are no suspects, the resort says that a number of former employees and environmental action groups will be investigated.

  "I suppose that's why Goddard called last night."

  "You bet."

  "Well, I wouldn't worry about that sort of thing happening at Powder Peak," I tell Ian, genuinely unconcerned.

  "Why? Because Reedy McClure is about to become your brother-in-law? Well, I got news for you. Reedy is only one nut among many. Did you read about those crazies over in Maine last April?"

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  "The ones in the animal costumes?"