Water Witches

by Chris Bohjalian

  He waves an arm across our backyard. "Then walk with me, my son," he says, trying to make a joke of the fact that he wants to speak to me alone.

  Reedy and I stroll toward the vegetable garden, and the perfectly straight rows of small sickly corn. Like friendships between most men, Reedy's and mine revolves largely around

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  our work. We talk mostly about business, rarely raising issues that might force us to reveal emotions more pronounced than irony, anger, or satisfaction. We might skirt select, softer subjectsmy feelings for Laura, his involvement with Patiencebut we approach them tentatively, and usually retreat before either of us has exposed more than we'd like.

  "Did you file your appeal yet with the state Environmental Board?" I ask Reedy, trying to find something to say.

  "Nope."

  "I didn't think so. I figured I would have heard." I bend over to examine the bean plants, surprised to discover that there are actually drops of moisture on the leaves. I would have thought they would have evaporated by now, or been absorbed.

  "Will you be filing this week?" I continue.

  "Probably not."

  There are spotted bugs I've never seen before climbing among the eggplants. "Well, I have to assume you are going to appeal. I can't imagine you're already prepared to throw in the towel."

  He chuckles, a laugh that sounds strange and forced. "Oh, no. I think this one is far from over."

  "Good. I'd hate to think you were going to give it to me," I tell him, as I stand up and wander toward the carrots. "Can I ask when?"

  "A few weeks."

  At the end of our driveway Cynthia Woolf's car is approaching. "A few weeks?"

  "We've got thirty days."

  I nod, understanding his plan. "And you're going to wait until the last possible moment."

  "That's right," he says, pushing around some of the dirt at the edge of our garden with the toe of his hiking boot. "I have enormous faith in this drought. I really do. The way I figure it, the longer we wait, the lower the river. The lower the river, the worse the aquatic environment."

  "And the better your chances of winning the appeal."

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  "Right. I'll probably wait until August eleventh to file, which means the hearing won't occur until sometime in Septemberat the earliest."

  I pull up some of the weeds surrounding the carrots' green tops. There aren't many weeds this year, perhaps the only good thing about droughts. Even weeds suffer. "It's probably a good strategy," I admit. "If I were a betting man, I think I'd bet on this drought lasting a while longer."

  "You know, I didn't suggest we walk out here to talk about Powder Peak," Reedy says. Then, quickly, he adds, "I think next spring Patience and I'll have a garden."

  "Averys are excellent gardeners."

  "I would expect that."

  Miranda climbs out of the backseat of the Woolfs' car and runs to her mother and her aunt, then waves good-bye to her friend.

  I ask Reedy, "How go the wedding plans?"

  "Fine. I'm pretty sure the invitations will be ready Thursday or Friday. We'll spend Saturday or Sunday afternoon addressing them."

  "Sounds like an exciting weekend."

  "I said Saturday or Sunday. I don't expect this to be a weekend-long project. God, I hope it isn't."

  "What's the final count?"

  "One hundred and forty."

  "How many dowsers?"

  He smiles. "One hundred and forty."

  Miranda glances over at us, and it looks as if she wants to run over and join us. Her mother says something to her, however, and she races inside the house instead.

  "I wanted to talk about the other day," Reedy says suddenly. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

  "What about it?"

  "'What about it?'" he says, imitating me. "Listen to you. You sound like you have no idea what I'm talking about."

  "Look, Reedy, I said I was sorry. What more am I supposed to do?"

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  "And I said I was sorry too. That's not the point."

  I sigh. "As long as you and your group are opposing"

  "I've opposed your projects before. There's something different about this one."

  "The word 'rape' maybe?"

  "Is that what this is all about? The fact I got carried away when I named the group? Well if that's all it is, I'm sorry about that too. I really am."

  "Yeah, there is something different about this one," I agree. An image of the three catamounts atop the ravine, magnificent wheat-colored mountain lions, flashes briefly before me, but that wasn't what I meant when I concurred with Reedy.

  "I think it's the drought," I continue. "The heat. We're not used to it."

  "Or we're scared."

  "Scared?"

  "Yes, scared," he repeats patiently. "Frightened. There's something unnerving about it all. It's like the weather and the environment are conspiring against us. I know that's not really true. But it feels that way, doesn't it?"

  I envision my little girl dowsing for underground springs by this very garden, and crying at night over forest fires. I have sat this summer in hearings in which experts babbled on about global warming and wind currents, and I have sat around conference tables and been nonplussed by the sound of running tap water in the next room.

  "Come on, Scottie, admit it."

  On some instinctive, atavistic level, Reedy is probably right. This drought feels more serious than most, it feels more significant than others I've lived through. And it has felt this way for a month. But when I think about the drought rationally, however, I am able to push those fears from my mind, reminding myself quickly that droughts come and go; that they don't last forever; and that there are explanations for diminished snowfall far less frightening than global warming.

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  Besides, it rained today. Not a lot. But it did rain. There are drops on the bean plants to prove it.

  "The drought's an annoyance," I tell him. "But it's not all that frightening."

  He shakes his head, smirking. "Not all that frightening, or not at all frightening?"

  "Shouldn't you and Patience be leaving for Burlington?"

  "Just a teeny bit frightened, Scottie? Just a teeny-weeny bit?" he says, holding his index finger and thumb perhaps one inch apart.

  "If I say yes," I ask, trying hard not to smile, "are you out of here?"

  "Like the rain. I'll be gone like the rain."

  "Then, fine. There have been moments this summer when the drought has seemed a little bit scary to me. How was that?"

  He punches me lightly on my shoulder. "You are a big man, Scottie Winston. You aren't one-half the macho asshole you pretend to be."

  "I'll take that as a sincere and well-intentioned compliment."

  As we start back toward the barn, he continues, "We have to try not to take all this stuff so seriously." He looks straight ahead as he speaks, as if staring at Patience and Laura. "We have to try not to let it become personal."

  "The expansion," I add.

  "Right, the expansion. After all, we've known each other an awful lot longer than you've worked for Powder Peak. Besides, resorts come and go."

  "Oh, I hope not," I tell Reedy, shaking my head. "I sure hope not."

  In the heat of this summer, Miranda sleeps most nights in one of her mother's tee-shirts. Her light is already off when I wander upstairs to tuck her in, and she has pulled one sheet up to her elbows.

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  Nevertheless, in the moonlight that pours through the screen window I can see that tonight Miranda has chosen to wear instead a white Quarry Men jersey from two seasons past, before we decided to change our colors to neon yellow and red.

  Her eyes are shut. Without sitting on the side of the bed I reach over and pull the sheet up to her chin.

  "I'm awake," she says.

  "You fooled me."

  She rolls over and opens her eyes. "I tried falling asleep, but I couldn't."

  The room is
warm, but the air is dry. I sit beside her on the edge of her bed. "Well, you had a big day."

  She reaches over for a small stuffed dinosaur, a pink triceratops, and bounces it by its middle horn off her chest. "I was nervous."

  "When you were dowsing the Mitchells' well?"

  "Yup. Aunt Patience told Mrs. Mitchell to go inside and clean out a closet or something, but I knew she was watching me from the window."

  "I hear you did a great job."

  "Once I started, it was easy. The vein was really big."

  "It was easy for you. It wouldn't have been easy for most people."

  She rests the dinosaur on her forehead. Then, lowering her voice into a conspiratorial whisper, she asks, "Did you tell Mr. Rawls about the catamounts?"

  I whisper back, "Yes. And we don't have to whisper."

  "It's not a secret anymore?"

  One of the sheer curtains in her window is moved just the tiniest bit by a breeze.

  "Because I can't wait to tell people," she continues. "About a hundred times today I started to tell Mindy, but I always had to stop myself."

  "Think you're going to burst, huh?" I ask.

  "Yup."

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  ''Well, I am too. So's your mom."

  "So I can tell people?"

  "Can you wait one more day?"

  She rolls the pink dinosaur onto the pillow beside her, and opens her mouth in astonishment. "One more day!"

  I nod. "Your mom and I are having dinner tomorrow night with Mr. Healy. He's the man who's president of Powder Peak." I keep my voice light, serene, despite the disgust I am feeling inside: I may be the only father in the world who would insist his daughter keep a catamount sighting a secret. "And once we tell him, then you can tell the whole world that you saw a catamount."

  She holds three fingers up before her. "Three! You can't forget the cubs."

  "Right. Three."

  "Okay," she says. "Let's see. Tomorrow night is Wednesday. So Thursday I can tell people."

  "Yup."

  "Because I think I'm going crazy, keeping this inside me. Sometimes, I just can't believe it. We saw catamounts, daddy! Practically no one else in Vermont can say that."

  "I know."

  "Weren't they pretty?"

  "They sure were."

  She takes a deep breath, as a small frown begins to form. Suddenly, she looks almost gloomy.

  "What's the matter, sweetheart? What are you thinking about?"

  She turns toward the window. "The catamounts."

  It is possible that Miranda has realized that we saw the animals in an area of the mountain that the resort plans to clear for ski trails, but I am fairly sure that's not her concern. I don't believe she has made that connection, at least not yet. I believe instead this is about a more pronounced fear of hers.

  "Why the scowl?" I ask.

  "The woods."

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  "That's their home," I murmur. "The woods. That's where they live."

  "I know."

  "Then what?"

  "The woods are so dry," she says, a tremor in her voice that could grow with each word. "And there have been so many forest fires this summer ..."

  I brush her bangs away from her forehead, hoping that whatever breezes are left in the night will somehow cool my little girl's face.

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  22

  El Niño. Spanish for "the boy" or "the child." Often, the Christ child.

  There is a weather pattern called El Niño that begins off the coast of Peru. It is called El Niño because it often affects that South American country just before Christmas.

  El Niño occurs when a tremendous current of warm water abruptly displaces a patch of cold in the Pacific ocean. It happens every four or five years. The result, aside from warmer Peruvian coastal waters, is a huge weather system of warm moist air that can affect much of the globe as it moves east. It can nudge the jet stream further north into Canada. It can cause heavy rains from California to Texas. It can warm up the mythically cold winters of northern Vermont.

  Last winter, we blamed El Niño for the limited snowfall we had here in Vermont, watching in envy as the snowstorms we

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  felt we deserved were pulled further north into Quebec. When the temperature would hover in the high thirties for days at a time, making it impossible to make snow, we nodded knowingly and said to each other, "El Niño."

  Now, in the midst of the drought, we are finding new reasons to point fingers at El Niño. It is probably more important than ever for us to find a meteorological rationale for days and days in a row without rain.

  Late Wednesday morning Ian Rawls phones to tell me that he isn't bringing his wife to dinner, and he recommends that Laura steer clear as well.

  "Boys' night out, Ian?" I ask facetiously.

  "I told Goddard about this catamount thing, and the three of us need to talk," he says, his voice flat.

  "Ah, the catamount thing."

  "Are you going to be reasonable about this?"

  "Yes, absolutely."

  "Thank God," Ian says, evidently taking my use of the word reason more seriously than I meant it.

  "Seven thirty?" I ask, the time I assume we will meet for dinner.

  "Make it eight o'clock. In case his plane's delayed."

  I scribble the time on a piece of paper, and before I can confirm the restaurant, he adds, "I closed the tramway today to tourists."

  "I'm sure that pleased the Chamber of Commerce to no end."

  "No sense in asking for trouble."

  "Guess not."

  "Besides, these days we get it whether we ask for it or not."

  Because I am not meeting Ian and Goddard until eight o'clock, I go home after work Wednesday afternoon. I leave the office just before five thirty, anticipating an hour and a half

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  when I can sit on the porch and think. An hour and a half in which I can try and understand my options.

  For a brief moment I can feel a smile form on my face at the thought, but the smile passes quickly. Options. The word implies there are alternatives. It implies I have choices, one of which may be better than another.