Water Witches

by Chris Bohjalian

  Finally, the Commission stipulated that all approvals become null and void if the U.S. Forest Service rules against the expansion, and none of the improvements may begin until the state's Environmental Board reviews the inevitable Copper Project appeal.

  The bottom line? This is excellent news for the resort: The new gondola will be up and running this season, and the new snowmaking system will be in place by next fall.

  The screen door slams shut on the porch. When I turn around I see Laura walking rapidly toward me, her arms wrapped tightly around her chest. I put down the ski resort's permit papers as she approaches.

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  ''My sister's a lunatic," she says standing over me, her voice clipped.

  I look up at her. "I know."

  "No. I mean she's really a lunatic," Laura continues, her tone void of humor. "Really and truly a lunatic. She has completely lost her mind. It's official."

  The grass is so dry that it hurts the palms of my hands when I lean back against it. The blades are sharp, parched, unbending. They inflict what feel like small paper cuts, invisible but no less painful, before snapping beneath my weight.

  "What did she do?"

  Laura shakes her head, disgusted. "She wants me and Miranda to help her divert the noxious rays beneath Elias's grave site."

  "Was she kidding?"

  "No!"

  "Then you're right. She's certifiable."

  Laura sits down beside me, seething. There is no humor for her in Patience's madness, not when that madness may affect our daughter.

  "What ... what makes her think there are noxious rays there?"

  "She went out there this morning, just to see what the spot was like. She said the place didn't feel right to her, so she dowsed it."

  "And there were noxious rays there."

  "Right. She said it was a real hot spot."

  Overhead are a half-dozen inconsequential cloudswhite, puffy, wholly ineffectual. They are the remains of yet another storm system from the west that dissipated before it arrived in Vermont. Laura and I notice them simultaneously, looking up when we hear the sound of a passenger jet miles above us.

  "Does it matter?" I ask.

  "That it's a hot spot? Personally, I don't think so."

  "But Patience thinks so."

  "She doesn't want him buried there tomorrow, pure and simple, unless the hot spot is cooled down."

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  "Why can't she do it herself?"

  "She says it's hugethe hot spotand very, very powerful."

  Laura curls her knees up to her chest, and rests her forehead upon them. Her shoulders are bare, and there are small drops of sweat on each.

  "I just don't get it. I don't mean to sound cold, but Elias is dead. Even if noxious rays exist"

  "They do," Laura say sharply, without looking up. "That's not the issue."

  "Fine, they exist," I continue. "But what difference will they make to Elias now? The man's already dead."

  "She's worried about his soul."

  "Oh, for God's sake."

  "I agree."

  "She just gets fucking stranger and crazier every year. Do you realize that?"

  I hear her sigh. "Uh-huh. I do."

  "I gather you said no."

  "Of course. She wanted me and Miranda to meet her at the cemetery right now, so the rays could be diverted before the funeral tomorrow. But I told her no. I told her absolutely not."

  "And what did she say?"

  Laura looks up and rubs the bridge of her nose. "She got mad."

  "She's already mad. She's crazy."

  "She got angry. She said I don't care about Elias."

  "She knows that's not true."

  "She said I would be stifling my daughter."

  "That's just crazy."

  "I know that! You don't have to keep saying it."

  "I certainly don't think you stifle Miranda. I certainly don't think we stifle her."

  "Even if we did, I told Patience I would rather we stifled Miranda than frightened her. Especially right now. I will not have my nine-year-old daughter dowsing hot spots in a cemetery. It's that simple."

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  "So what's she going to do?"

  "Patience? Who knows. But she won't sit still anymore. All that energy she stored up doing nothing the last two days has got to go somewhere."

  "She'll probably go to the cemetery."

  "Fine, that's just fine. Just so long as she goes there alone."

  "Scottie? Scottie! Wake up!"

  Laura is kneeling beside me on the bed when I open my eyes, her legs on top of the sheets. Her hair is an unbrushed mane that falls about my face as she leans over me, staring, wild-eyed. It is Sunday morning.

  "What time is it?"

  "Miranda's gone!" she says, taking both of my shoulders in her hands and squeezing them.

  "What?"

  "Miranda's gone! Get up!" she insists, sitting back on her legs.

  The sun is high and the light pours through the east window in our bedroom. The floor, a plane of gray-painted hardwoods, looks almost translucent.

  I roll out of bed, asking as I rise, "What do you mean she's gone?"

  "She just went somewhere with Patience! I heard a car engine start, and when I went to the window I saw the two of them driving away."

  "Oh, for Christ's sake. They've gone to the cemetery."

  "Yes!"

  I sit back down on the edge of the bed, and glance at the clock on the dresser. It is not quite eight thirty.

  "You made it sound like she was kidnapped or something."

  "She was kidnapped!"

  I reach for my pillow, and drop it into my lap. "Going a mile-and-a-half up the road to the cemetery with your aunt doesn't count as a kidnapping."

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  "I'm furious! I told Patience no, and she took Miranda anyway!"

  "Well, what do you want us to do?" I continue. "Do you want us to follow them to the cemetery? Do you want to confront Patience in front of Miranda?"

  "I just don't want Patience doing this! I don't want my daughter searching for evil emanations in a graveyard. Not now!"

  "I don't either. But I don't think it would do Miranda any good to fight with Patience in front of her."

  "We've got to stop them!"

  I lean my elbows into the pillow, and rest my head in my hands. Rarely is Laura as upset as she is now.

  "Scottie, we've got to stop them! Come on!"

  I take a deep breath, trying to wake myself up to deal with Patiencewith Patience, with Laura, with Mirandarationally. "This isn't about Miranda dowsing in the graveyard," I hear myself saying, aware as the words escape my mouth that at eight thirty on a Sunday morning I am about to say exactly the wrong thing. "This is about your sister ignoring you, and taking Miranda there anyway."

  "So what!"

  "So we've let our daughter do things that are a hell of a lot weirder. My God, your sister conducts her damn 'dowsing school' in our own yard on Saturday"

  "You make it sound like it's our fault!" Laura argues, cutting me off.

  "Well, on some level it probably is"

  "It's not! There's nothing wrong with dowsing, if ..."

  "If ..."

  "If you don't start dowsing graveyards!"

  "Fine."

  "Fine," Laura says, glaring at me. "I'll go alone."

  As she starts to roll off the bed, I reach for her arm and her hand. "You're angry. I'm angry. Maybe it's the heat."

  "This has nothing to do with the weather," she says, trying to keep her voice even.

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  "Heat does strange things to people," I continue. "I imagine droughts do too."

  She tries to leave once again, and so I climb over the bed until I am beside her. I hold her with both arms.

  "It's not the drought," she says.

  "Then maybe it's Elias's death," I tell Laura, an insight that strikes me as ludicrously obvious as soon as I say it. Of course, it's Elias's death. That's why P
atience is at the cemetery with my nine-year-old daughter right this second, that's why my wife is trying to escape from our bed and chase them. "Patience and you cared for him, you loved"

  "Let me go," she says, her voice so filled with anger that she sounds close to tears.

  "No," I insist, trying to muster reasons to keep her. "I don't think you should go to the cemetery. What Patience did was wrong, but"

  "I want to go!"

  "But if you go there now you'll only make it worse. You'll confuse Miranda."

  "Patience is already doing one hell of a good job of that!" She looks over at the clock, and then back at me. "Church begins in a little over an hour. If I don't bring them in by then, the whole congregation will see them out there!"

  "The congregation won't think anything of it. They expect this sort of thing from your sister."

  "But Miranda!"

  "This isn't about 'what the neighbors think.' You know that. It's about Patience ignoring you."

  "I am just furious," she says again, but her tone has begun to soften from rage to resignation.

  "I know you are."

  "I could kill her."

  "Probably."

  Her body relaxes, falls against mine, and she rests her head on my shoulder. "I could kill her. I really could."

  I nod my head so that she can feel the motion, a tacit but

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  physical peace offering. "Me too," I add. "And when we can get her alone, maybe we will."

  Patience may be insane, but she isn't stupid. She has the common sense not to return Miranda to our home before church.

  Consequently, when Laura and I leave for the nine forty-five service, it is clear to us both that we may not be able to speak with Patience for hours. First there is church, which will last until eleven o'clock. Then there is Sunday school, where Laura is substituting today for Susan Gray, one of Elias's granddaughters. And then there is Elias's funeral, with the memorial service at the church scheduled to begin at twelve thirty.

  "I'll get her right after Sunday school," Laura says, staring out the window of the truck. She is wearing this morning a black cocktail dress, an odd choice for one of today's Sunday school teachers. It is not particularly revealing, in that its sleeves reach to her wrists and the skirt falls almost to her knees. But it is tight and slinky and there is something seductive about the way its neck curves just below her collarbone.

  Unfortunately, it is already almost ninety degrees outside, and this was the only thing black and cotton in Laura's closet, the only dress that she felt she could wear to Elias's funeral. It is, in fact, the only summer dress that she owns that isn't determinedly bright and cheerful. Consequently, we both agreed that none of the six- and-seven-year-olds in her class this morning would be unduly scarred or confused by the sight of a Sunday school teacher in black.

  As we drive past the cemetery, we see no signs of Miranda or Patience.

  "She must have succeeded," Laura says, referring to her sister.

  "Think so?" There is a large pile of dirt next to the hole in the ground where Elias's body will be lain. It is a shady spot

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  surrounded by a pair of hydrangea bushes and a wrought iron bench, now rusted to a shade of red that will match the brightest maples come September.

  "She'd still be there if she hadn't." From the corner of my eye I can see her look away from Elias's burial plot, and wipe her eyes with the back of her hand.

  The church parking lot is already filled, so I coast to a stop in one of the vacant spaces beside the town clerk's office. As I climb out of the truck I wipe the sweat from my forehead one last time.

  Miranda is already seated in our pew when we arrive, pretending to skim a hymnal, but turning to scan the back of the room for us every few seconds. She knows she did something wrong.

  Laura scoots into the pew first, sitting beside her daughter. Before she or Miranda can say a word to each other, Jeanette Scutter turns around in the pew in front of us and says to Laura, "Musta been one late party. You musta gotten in pretty late if you didn't have time to change before comin' to church."

  "Do you like it?" Laura asks, referring to her dress.

  Jeanette shrugs. "It's cotton. I don't iron anymore."

  Without opening her mouth, Miranda hands her mother the program for this morning's service, and then looks down at her shoes. They're caked with dry dirt, no doubt from Elias's grave site.

  I lean across Laura, whispering to my daughter, "After church, we'll talk." I know I should not be annoyed with Miranda, I know I should be directing whatever fury there is inside me now at my sister-in-law. But the sight of that dirt, and what that dirt must be doing to Laura, angers me.

  Miranda flips the pages in the hymnal, and doesn't look up.

  "Did you hear your father?" Laura asks.

  She nods just the tiniest bit.

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  As the choir begins to file into the church Laura asks Miranda, "Where's your aunt?"

  Miranda shakes her head that she doesn't know.

  "Did you lose your vocal cords on the way to church this morning?" I ask sternly.

  "Scottie," Laura says, "that tone isn't necessary."

  After a short moment, Miranda murmurs, "No."

  "All right then. Your mother asked you a question. Why don't you try answering her this time with actual words."

  Both Scutter twins turn around now, surprised by the sound of my voice. Ignoring them, I stare at Miranda.

  "I don't know," she says quietly.

  "You don't know what?" I ask her.

  "I don't know where Aunt Patience is."

  "Thank you," I say, and sit back in the pew.

  "You know something?" Gertrude Scutter asks Jeanette.

  "What?"