Water Witches

by Chris Bohjalian

"I got a feeling today's gonna last forever."

  As we sing our final hymn and the end of the service approaches, I realize that Laura, Miranda, and I will each leave in a different direction. Laura and Miranda are expected downstairsLaura as a teacher in the classroom for first, second, and third-graders, and Miranda as a student in the room reserved for the fourth through sixth grades. There is nowhere I need to be between now and the funeral, so I decide I will probably head home.

  The moment Reverend Taylor completes the benediction and the congregation begins to move, Miranda flies past Laura and me.

  "Bye mom, bye dad," she babbles, once she has escaped the pew and is standing in the aisle. "See you later."

  Laura takes hold of her shoulder and bends toward her. "It's your aunt who's in the doghouse," she says, "not you. What you did was wrong, and we'll talk about that later. But don't

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  let your father's or my tone frighten you: It's Aunt Patience who's in trouble."

  She nods, but the moment Laura loosens her grip she takes off up the aisle.

  Laura then turns to me and whispers, "If you see Patience in the next hour, you still have my permission to kill her. An hour in church didn't make me any more forgiving."

  "Really?"

  "Absolutely. And feel free to take your time about it."

  I squeeze her hand and start toward the back of the sanctuary.

  The inside of the truck feels like the inside of a toaster oven that has been on overnight. I pry myself free of my sports jacket, and toss it onto the passenger side of the cab.

  I start the engine and switch on the radio, and it crosses my mind that I might have time between now and the funeral to put the second coat of paint on the porch chairs Laura brought home the other day. It would be a nice surprise for her.

  As I round the wide bend that circles the front of the cemetery, I see Patience's car parked beside the line of sugar maples at the entrance. I consider driving on, and letting Laura deal with her sister later today. But Miranda is as much my daughter as she is Laura's; moreover, there is an undeniable feeling of protectiveness inside me, a feeling that Laura has somehow been slighted. Undermined by her sister. I too coast to a stop beside the sugar maples.

  Patience is sitting, arms crossed, on the wrought iron bench before Elias's grave. She's wearing white tennis shorts, a pair that I believe belong to Reedy.

  She says nothing to me as I approach, stomping flat a patch of dead brown grass between us. She doesn't even look up from the hole in the ground into which Elias will be placed for eternity in less than two hours. I stand before her for a long moment, saying nothing, unsure how to begin. Patience has no

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  fear of silence, and I know would be content to sit here and stare for hours without saying a single word to me. Silence, for Patience, is an extremely potent and unnerving weapon.

  "You should have listened to your sister," I begin, forcing the confrontation that I know is inevitable.

  There are two elaborate rows of steel bars and pulleys spanning the burial plot, with a pair of canvas straps between them. Elias's casket will be rested on those straps, and then lowered gently into the ground.

  "You should have listened to your sister," I tell her again when she ignores me, as I sit beside her on the bench. The hydrangeas, which will become a bright pink in the fall, are still dirty white puffs that cause the branches to droop. And like virtually every other plant in northern Vermont, they too have been affected by the drought, and the petals on each flower look dry, transparent, and sickly.

  She looks over at me, angry at me for sitting beside her. This has been her bench, probably since church began over an hour ago.

  "Don't you have someplace you have to be?" she asks.

  "Nope. Don't you think you ought to change for the funeral?"

  She turns away from me, disgusted. "There's time."

  "Where's Reedy?"

  "Home. He had the decency to give me some space this morning. Unlike some other people in this town."

  "I'd be happy to leave you alone, if you'd leave my daughter alone."

  "Whose daughter?"

  "Laura's and my daughter. Your sister's and my daughter."

  I hadn't noticed it before, but leaning against one of the legs of the bench are a half-dozen chrome L rods.

  "You two don't know what you have," she says.

  "No, I think we do. We have a lovely nine-year-old daughter, who happens to have a lunatic for an aunt." I smile as I say the word lunatic, hoping to cushion the remark.

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  ''You two are stifling her," she continues, ignoring my comment.

  "Oh, come on, Patience. Do you really think it's healthy for a nine-year-old girl to wander through a graveyard looking for evil spirits?"

  "We were not looking for evil spirits. You know that." She shakes her head. "I would have expected this kind of behavior from you, but not from Laura."

  "We're in complete agreement on this one."

  "It's like that time when I was Miranda's age, and the Governor himself asked me to find his son. Can you imagine what would have happened if my mother had prevented me from trying? Can you imagine?"

  "You were eleven. Miranda is nine."

  "I had just turned eleven, and Miranda will soon turn ten. The parallel is ... perfect."

  One of Michael Terry's flatbeds rumbles by, the drills and towers and hydraulic pumps glistening in the sun.

  "The parallel is far from perfect. Speaking as an attorneynot an irate fatherI can tell you that it's far from perfect. You were safe at home in your kitchen"

  "Miranda was safe with her aunt, on a beautiful morning in July!"

  "You were helping to find a missing person, an inherently good"

  "Miranda was helping to look out for a man's soul! Where's the damn harm in that!"

  "You crossed the line, Patience! You went from the slightly peculiar to the downright weird! We're talking about ... we're talking about witchcraft, for God's sake!"

  "We are not! This has nothing to do with witchcraft!"

  "Do you think a nine-year-old knows that? Do you think a nine-year-old knows the difference between an evil spirit and something you call a 'hot spot'? Do you honestly believe she knows the difference between your 'noxious rays' and ghosts or goblins?"

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  "They are not 'my' noxious rays."

  "Fine. Anyone's noxious rays."

  "Noxious rays are real. Hot spots are real."

  "You're missing the point."

  "Some are the man-made toxins and poisons we put into the world. Chemicals. Carcinogens. Dumps," she says, hissing out the "s" in dumps. "Nuclear radiation. Electromagnetic radiation. Natural radiation"

  "What are you saying, there's a nuclear waste dump right over there?" I ask facetiously, pointing at Elias's burial plot. "And you and my nine-year-old daughter made it go away with your coat hangers? Poof, no more waste dump. God, you're good, Patience, you are really good."

  She sighs. "The source of the emissions right here was a geopathogenic zone. Perfectly natural, in this case. Probably caused by"

  "Satan," I offer.

  "Probably caused by intersecting water veins. Or a geologic fault. Orless likely, but possibledecaying natural gas. It doesn't really matter. What mattered to me was diverting the emissions, because they were concentrated in a narrow band right underneath Elias's tombstone."

  My first instinct is to tell Patience sarcastically that I'm sure Elias's corpse will rest easier now. Less chance of sickness, better appetite. It'll even sleep better. But I restrain myself. As angry as I am with Patience, I can't bring myself to hurt her by verbalizing those two words, Elias's corpse.

  "And you just had to have Miranda's help," I say instead, trying to focus on what is for me the real issue: taking my daughter against her mother's and my wishes.

  "The emissions were projecting negative, unwholesome energy into Elias Gray's eternal resting place. They had
to be diverted, and I wasn't succeeding on my own yesterday afternoon. At least not to my satisfaction."

  "And your satisfaction is everything in this world, isn't it?"

  "How dare you make me sound selfish!" she says, her voice

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  breaking just the slightest bit. "This isn't about me, this is about Elias Gray's soul!"

  "No, it's actually about my daughter. A little girl who's scared to death right now that half the state is about to burn down"

  "Then you should be grateful to me for taking her mind off it!" she says, jumping to her feet and grabbing the pile of L rods in both of her hands, the wires dangling in every direction.

  "Oh, please, Patience. This stunt was many things, but therapy for my daughter wasn't one of them."

  "Your daughtermy sister's daughtermade this spot right here a little nicer! That's what this 'stunt' was all about. It made this spot of earth a better place. Maybe for Elias, maybe not. But certainly for me and Laura and Miranda and everyone else in this town who comes here to visit him from now on! So maybe in that regard this is about Mirandabut only in that regard."

  She holds the L rods before me, continuing, "If you could have seen that little girl at work. If you could have seen her ..."

  I rub the back of my head where a dull ache has begun.

  "It was Miranda who diluted the rays, not me. It was Miranda who used these very rods to disperse them. You should have seen her. In five, maybe ten minutes, she had the rods in the ground exactly where she wanted 'em, and she had the rays spread over a nice, wide area."

  "I'm sure she was wonderful. That's not my point."

  "She was wonderful!" Patience insists, as small tears begin to form in her eyes. She looks down at the L rods as she says, "She was using 'em like lightning rods, Scottie, only backwards! They were working just like lightning rods, picking the rays right out of the ground, and ..."

  She shakes her head as the tears start to fall faster, and her voice becomes lost in her sniffles. I stand up and start toward her, but reflexively she turns away. "I won't let you stifle

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  Miranda," she says, crying. "She has too much potential. She's too strong."

  I put my hands on her shoulders and hold her. "We won't," I tell her, not quite sure what I'm saying, not quite sure what I mean. "We won't."

  Slowly she turns to face me, her body relaxing against mine, its strength lost in her sobs. "Oh, God," she cries, "I'll miss Elias so. You don't realize. I'll just miss him so much."

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  19

  Even at Elias's burial in the cemetery, where no fewer than one hundred and fifty of us stand in a wide and deep semicircle around the casket, suspended over a hole in the ground as if part of a magic trick, we pray for rain. This morning we prayed for rain at the regular nine forty-five service, and the children prayed in Sunday school; we prayed again at the memorial service for Elias in the church, and now, underneath a largely cloudless blue sky, as a congregation we petition the heavens above us once more to open up.

  Reverend Taylor, our minister, is a man my age who looks ten years younger. Inner peace, people tell me. After the first of what I assume will be three or four different scriptural readings, he turns to Anna Avery, and motions for her to speak. Laura reaches for my hand discreetly, entwining her small fingers in mine. Miranda, standing on the other side of Laura,

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  notices the gesture, and instinctively, nervously, leans against her mother.

  With dignity and assurance, with just a trace of sadness in her voice, Anna says, "Elias taught meElias taught many of usto pray before dowsing. He often began with something called the Dowser's Prayer. It's short, butfor Eliasevery word in it had a good deal of meaning. It was written by Josefa Rivera."

  She pauses for a brief moment, glancing once at Elias's casket, before continuing simply, "This is it, the Dowser's Prayer: 'Lord, Guide my hands, enhance my sensitivity, and bless my purpose, that I may be an instrument of Your power and glory in locating what is searched for.' "

  She steps back from the minister, and then looks over at her older daughter, still wearing Reedy's white tennis shorts, her face buried deep in Reedy's arms and chest, and says, "May Elias find now all the peace that there is in heaven."

  On Monday, Ian Rawls and I have lunch together in Barre, in a diner that offers a special every Monday of pea soup, tater tots, and a grilled cheese sandwich. I go there for the tater tots, Ian for the pea soup. Even in July. Barre is a town just south of Montpelier that grew up around some of Vermont's deepest, richest, most abundant granite quarrieshence the name of our softball team, the Quarry Men. And while most of those quarries are no longer active, and many Barre residents now drive to Montpelier and even Burlington to work, the city itself still feels like a mining town, surrounded as it is by tombstone factories on one side, and the quarries themselves on another.

  Consequently, Barre is a great place for diners.

  "Goddard's taking an earlier plane on Wednesday," Ian says, "so he should be in town by six thirty or seven. Are you and Laura free for dinner?"

  "Maybe."

  "You'll ask her?"

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  "Oh, I know we don't have other plans," I tell him, smiling.

  "Okay: What will it take to get you to the restaurant Wednesday night?"

  "A sunset ride on the chair lift tonight. For Miranda and me."

  "Not Laura?"

  "I doubt it. Divine Lights of Vermont has a huge order from a department store in Montreal. So I would guess tonight it will just be Miranda and me."

  "You drive a hard bargain, Scottie."

  I skewer a tater tot with a tin fork. "I'm one hell of a mean lawyer."

  I wonder how much Miranda understands her powers, especially now, the day after her aunt absconded with her to the cemetery. Although she is only nine, I cannot believe the fact that her teacher brought her to Elias's grave Sunday morning to accomplish what she herself felt incapable of doing was lost on her. The pupil became, essentially, the teacher; dowsing was no longer an issue of potential for Miranda, but became instead one of practice.

  Since yesterday morning, when she diverted the hot spot Patience said ran underneath Elias's tombstone, she has not said one word about forest fires or the drought. Not a single word. She has expressed no concerns, asked for no reassurances. Whether it is because she has concluded that her mother's and my comforting words were made meaningless by the fire that killed Elias and destroyed his sugar house, or whether she has a new faith in nature as a result of her apparent dowsing success, I do not know.

  I know only that Patience, for all the wrong reasons, may have been right about her escapade with my daughter: It just may have taken her mind off her worst fears.

  Miranda is especially quiet tonight as we ride a slow-motion chair lift to the top of Mount Republic. She rests her chin on

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  the safety bar, staring straight up the mountain, as the sun bounces off her little-girl yellow hair: hair that is thin, transparent, weightless and soft.