Water Witches

by Chris Bohjalian

  "You go where you're needed."

  "You can't imagine the negative energy in that place," she then adds. Probably unconsciously, she has wedged the toe of her boot underneath one of the slates on Reedy's patio.

  I ask, "Your dad's a private eye, right?"

  "The best."

  "Is he a dowser?"

  "He could be if he wanted to be," she says, finally removing her sunglasses. Her eyes are the closest thing to a neon green I have ever seen on a living creature. They have to be contact lenses with a cosmetic tint.

  "Good energies?" I ask, trying to sound serious as I sip my beer.

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  "He is extremely open to the intuition we all have. Unfortunately, he carries a gun."

  "Yup. I'll bet a gun wrecks a psychic connection every time."

  She raises an eyebrow. "You of all people should not be cynical."

  "You're probably right."

  "My father and I have an extremely effective division of labor. I find whoever it is we're looking for, and he brings him/her back."

  "Him/her? Hermaphrodites? You two specialize in hermaphrodites? Now I'll bet that's a specialty that's hard to come by. Even in Vegas."

  Without even a trace of a smile on her lips, she says, "I will never understand what a person of Laura's qualities sees in a person like you."

  Normalcy, I think to myself, but I keep that thought inside me.

  In the kitchen, Laura winks at me as she glides between the caterers, two students in their final year at Vermont's culinary institute.

  "Don't be concerned when some of the people need to be reassured that there's no meat in the pâté," she says to them. "That's just how some of these people are. They're the type who need to ask."

  One of the students, a fellow barely half my age, asks, "Should we tell them that none of the food was irradiated?"

  "Sure," Laura says, "feel free to tell them that." She tastes one of the stuffed mushrooms on a serving tray, and smiles approvingly. "One more thing," she continues. "You'll see a few people dangling pendulums over their food before they eat it.''

  "Are they that religious?" the student caterer asks, impressed.

  "No, they're that pecul ..." Laura says, before catching

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  herself mid-sentence. "They're just dowsing it," she says instead, "to see if their bodies need whatever vitamins are in the food right then."

  A quartet plays classical music at the edge of the patio, by the doors that open into the living room. Behind them, inside the house, I see Miranda looking at a photo album on the couch. Reedy is sitting beside her.

  I slide behind the violinist into the living room, and look over their shoulders at the pictures. I then kiss my daughter on the top of her head, and squeeze her shoulder gently. Each time I have seen her today, I have either kissed her or hugged her. I have asked her twice if she knows how much her mother and I love her.

  Evidently, she does: With the flexibility and strength of a child about to turn ten, she told me of course the second time that I asked, and then shook her head in mock irritation.

  "That's a manatee," Reedy is telling her, nodding at me as I hover behind them. "I met him in Florida. On the Gulf of Mexico."

  "What happened to him?" she asks.

  "He got sick on some polluted water. He and a lot of his buddies. A soap company accidently pumped some detergent into the water."

  "Did you save him?"

  "I helped save him. I certainly didn't do it all by myself."

  "Are they all that big?" Miranda asks.

  "Oh, they're big. But they're also very smart."

  Miranda looks up at Reedy. "Big things can be smart, you know."

  "You're right."

  "Look at elephants," she says. "They're very smart."

  I tap Reedy's shoulder. "The only pictures in that book are the animals that made it, right? The ones that survived?"

  "Scottie, my man, of course! This is a happy occasion!"

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  Wide-eyed, Miranda asks, "Do you mean you keep pictures of animals that died?" I can't tell by her voice if Miranda believes that such a concept is horrifying, or if it's extremely cool in a twisted, almost-ten-year-old sort of way.

  Reedy finishes the wine in his glass in one long swallow. "Another time," he says. "Another time."

  Patience stands at the edge of the lawn, having some sort of conversation about logistics with Angel Source Brandy of Danville.

  "Hello, Scottie," Angel says. For a moment I believe she is offering me her hand to shake, but that handshake becomes a hug. "No handshakes for me, only hugs," she explains. "I'm a hugger."

  "Watch it," Patience says to her bridesmaid, "Scottie's the type who can get real uptight with affection."

  "How are you, Angel?" I ask, ignoring my sister-in-law.

  She smiles broadly. "I'm great."

  "Good."

  "But you're not," she continues, her smile widening even further.

  "Oh, I'm fine."

  "No you're not. But I won't pry."

  "Thank you."

  "You're welcome," she says, exposing in her grin two rows of perfect white teeth. "Patience and I were just discussing the labyrinth I've designed for the ceremony tomorrow. Have you ever walked the labyrinth, Scottie?"

  "No, but I used to be a pretty good slalom skier."

  She tilts her head, as if the joke might make more sense to her if she sees my face at a forty-five degree angle. The smile never leaves her lips.

  "Bad joke," I admit.

  "There's no such thing as a bad joke, Scottie Winston," Angel says. "Some simply have more apparent meanings."

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  "I'll remember that."

  "You'll like the labyrinth, I can tell," she continues. "It will do you a universe of good right now."

  "I'm looking forward to it."

  She shakes her head. "No you're not," she tells me, her voice one endlessly happy lilt. "But you will."

  "The summer may be over," Reedy says, loosening his tie after dinner, and sitting back against the stone steps that lead down to the patio, "but our appeals don't have to be."

  "Appeals? What are we supposed to appeal? The fact the Board thinks my daughter and I are insane?"

  There is no moon tonight, but the sky is filled with stars. There is a fall chill in the air, and the rustle of leaves in the grass. The glass doors between the living room and the patio are open, and sounds drift outside to us as the caterers clean up in the kitchen.

  "I've decided they shouldn't be allowed to build those new trails on Mount Republic. Not with those animals there," Reedy continues. "If you could have seen your face today in your office ..."

  "You saw on my face whatever you wanted to see."

  "I saw disappointment."

  "Of course you did. But it's still over."

  He shakes his head. "There has to be someone who can overrule the Board." He pulls his tie through his collar, and then rolls it into a ball the size of my coffee mug. "I'm a state senator. That must mean I have some clout."

  In the living room, Laura and Patience are laughing at something that Angel has said. I believe all of the other guests have gone home. "No, you know as well as I do: There's no one left to appeal to."

  "Then couldn't we cut some sort of deal with them? With Powder Peak? You used to always be cutting deals with people."

  "You make me sound like a used car salesman."

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  "You know what I mean. Isn't there some sort of deal we could offer the resort?"

  "You mean to save the catamounts?"

  "Right."

  A shooting star crosses the sky. It's too bad that Miranda is asleep in one of the bedrooms upstairs. Miranda loves shooting stars. "A deal implies that we have something to offer Powder Peak. Something they might want. Any suggestions?"

  "Well, you tell me. You know those people. What do they want?"

  "They want their permits to make snow."
r />   "Well, they can't have that."

  "Then they want water. They want it to rain. They want it to rain so much that the Chittenden River returns to the way it used to be."

  He snaps his necktie into the air like a bullwhip. "They wouldn't take a couple thousand candles from the Divine Lights of Vermont?"

  "I doubt it. They want to make snow. That's it. That's what they want. That's what they need. Snow." I press the palms of my hands against the stone, and push myself to my feet. It's late, and suddenly I'm very tired. Reedy remains where he is, staring off at the wide field that is his lawn. Tomorrow morning, it will be trampled by sandals.

  "There's some ice caked to the insides of my freezer," he mumbles. "They can have that."

  I shake my head no, although he can't see me. "They'd never do it," I tell him. "They'd never trade anything of value for frozen granular."

  Laura and I undress each other on the couch in our library. We begin slowly, necking, and for long moments she slides her tongue back and forth over my lips. In my head is the music from the rehearsal dinner, strings now as erotic as moans. When she raises her arms over her head and allows me to pull

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  off her dress, however, we both begin to move with more urgency: I unclasp her bra at the same instant that she reaches for the zipper to my pants, and within seconds, it seems, our clothes are scattered around us on the floor.

  She starts to lean me back against the wide pillows that frame the walls of the couch, her hands rubbing circles along my chest and my stomach, but I take her fingers in mine and hold them together as if she were praying, and kiss each of their tips. I pull her onto the couch beside me, massaging the fur between her legs, astonished by the rich cream that already is there.

  "The towel," she murmurs, opening her eyes for a brief second. I nod, remembering, and brush my lips over hers, savoring the lingering, licorice-like taste of sambuca. I then slip the fresh bath towel beneath her hips, raised, and kneel on the carpet before her, running my tongue slowly along the insides of her legs.

  "I love you," I tell her, looking up into her eyes, grateful for the smile that graces her face. "I will love you forever."

  Laura's breathing is soft, her body still. Her hair has fallen across her eyes and onto the pillow. She, like me, fell instantly asleep when we went to bed three short hours ago. I am not sure what woke me now. I recall no dream, the house is soundless.

  I consider stretching my legs and rolling over, but I fear if I move I will wake Laura.

  In less than two hours, the dowsers will arrive at Reedy's home for their nondenominational sunrise service. The sun will rise, and the dowsers will share their new age faiths and fellowships. Reedy will stand among them, smiling, the congenial host. Ironically, Patience will not be with him. She does not want Reedy to see her on their wedding day until the ceremony. Ritual. Tradition. Superstition.

  Our room is without light and shadow. I close my eyes, I try

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  not to think. But images of my summer pass through my mind, as well as my fantasies of my tomorrow. My today. We are already four hours into the wedding day of Patience Avery and Reedy McClure. The ceremony itself is only a workday away, only nine hours. I wonder what the dowsers will do between the sunrise service at Reedy's, and the ceremony at the Landaff church. Perhaps they can find the town water.

  "Water is the most important thing in the world," Angel Source Brandy told me last night. She said that she almost took the name Water solely, instead of Angel Source. But then she had a vision that showed her the origins of water, its cosmic formation in the beginning: a beginning before time, before Genesis.

  "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters." There was water, she pointed out to me, before there was light and before there was day. She would therefore be doing water a greater justice, she explained, paying water a greater honor, if she were to take the name source instead. Angel Source. Because that is indeed what water is: the source and origin and informing factor of all that there is. There is nothing alive without water.

  And that, she said, is why a drought is so frightening. And that is why she became a dowser. Water is everything, andsomeday, if we are not carefulit will become more precious than gold. Always at least a half-smile on her face, but becoming more animated as she spoke, Angel Source Brandy reminded me that already we buy water in bottles, paying premium prices for that which we once took for granted. That which was meant to be free. That which is the source of all life.

  At Powder Peak, we used to call snowfall white gold. Water made snow, and that was our most precious resource: either the natural flakes that fell from the sky or the unnatural flakes that we made ourselves with our snow guns. Without snow, after all, there was no skiing. There was no business.

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  I sit up in bed, and brush the hair away from Laura's eyes. I kiss her softly on her cheek, and then brush my lips over hers. I purr her name into her ear, trying to wake her as gently as I can, but to wake her nonetheless. I take a deep breath to try and calm my excitement. If Reedy wants to dealif Reedy and I together want to dealwe may have in our hands after all the one thing that Powder Peak really wants, the one thing Powder Peak really needs: the water it must have to make snow.

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  31

  It's three o'clock, Winston. In the morning. Three fucking o'clock in the morning."

  "Not here," I say, my voice chipper. "Here in Vermont, it's six a.m. The sun is rising, and it's going to be a beautiful day. Just grand."

  "What do you want?" Goddard asks me. "If it's help licking your wounds, you've called the wrong man."

  "Now, Goddard, you don't want to burn any bridges. As I used to counsel you and Ian, you always want to make friends with your adversaries. Right after you win. Vermont is too small a state to let people hold grudges." I glance out my kitchen window. The sun is beginning to peer over the trees; the service on Reedy's lawn is probably in full swing, with one-hundred-plus crystal dowsers hugging, singing, and sharing

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  more intimate confessions than they might in a twelve-step group.

  "If you're calling to apologize, three o'clock is a stupid time to do it. Especially on a Saturday."

  "In all of the years that we worked together, did I ever demonstrate the kind of stupidity that would lead me to wake you up just to say I was sorry?"

  "You seem have gotten stupid in your old age."

  "Nope, Goddard. Sorry isn't in the lexicon. Not on a beautiful day like today."

  His voice low and angry, he says, "Tell me why you're calling. I want to go back to sleep."

  "Okay, I'll get right to the point. Which would you rather have for Powder Peak: the permits to build a few new trails on Republic, or the permits to use the Chittenden to make snow?"