The Death of Annie the Water Witcher by Lightning

by Audrey J. Whitson

  After they’re gone, I sit myself down in the last pew, just across from her. Stay long awake in the flickering of votives banked beneath the picture of the Black Virgin with the torn cheek. When their wicks start to sputter and give out, I lay myself down on the table beside her, my head toward the dying light. Wake suddenly. Find someone has draped me with a blanket. See the red electric light over the tabernacle; the light that never goes out. See that someone has lit fresh candles under the black-skinned Madonna while I’ve slept. Feel my face, wet with crying. Touch myself, tears, and then the wood at the base of the coffin beside my head. That is when I hear her.

  I was wrong to make you hide our love.

  Oh, Annie. I touch the wood again.

  I didn’t trust myself, Jack.

  I heave inside. But there is worse, I want to say: Beloved, what am I to do without you?

  I think I hear her laugh. We constantly reinvent ourselves.

  I prop myself up on one side, my body pained by the effort, lean lightly into the wood. Reinvent?

  Jack Ramsey, you know the story of the earth; you’ve always known it. And you know my story well enough.

  Annie Gallagher, you are the most extraordinary woman.

  Whoever we’ve loved, lives on in us. A piece of me, you. Always.

  Annie, what do you mean?

  You have to be the witcher now. You are.

  And as soon as she’s said the words, I feel the tug in my hands.

  I want you to have my nana’s old divining rod for practice.

  And in my mind’s eye, I see where it is hanging, in among the hooks for coats, just inside her back door.

  For now, I need you to keep watch over me, Jack.

  I wipe the tears from my face and touch the wood one last time. Something fierce and primal rises in me.

  I move back my post to the opposite pew again, sit up straight. I nod off a few minutes, maybe an hour or two, wake again, this time to the voices of men, terse whispers, the rustle of robes behind me. Priests. The light of day streaming in the stained glass windows. I listen not to the words themselves but their pitch. Listen for a lament or dirge, the slightest whiff of pontificating. I’ll not let them hurt her again. I wrap the blanket closer around me. I see the old man is kneeling on the floor by her side, his teeth chattering. I let him be in peace. That’s when I notice the kid in the shadows, the pale arms limp, the face obscured. Kristian Mueller? The waif. Only there for the time it takes for the blink of an eye, and when I look again, gone.

  11

  FATHER PAT

  When the bishop arrives Saturday morning, he wants to take one last tour of the church before the deconsecration tomorrow. I explain the funeral, hope it won’t be a problem. “It’s an odd situation. She never took communion or came for the Sacrament of Reconciliation, but she was there every Sunday. She was their water witcher,” I say, lowering my voice and raising my eyebrows as we go inside.

  The bishop dips his free hand into the baptismal font at the back of the church and crosses himself.

  I know he doesn’t want to draw attention to the church closing. No doubt there will be quite an audience at the funeral later today.

  “Was she very old?” he asks in a hesitant voice.

  “Yes, she was one of the oldtimers here.”

  “Well some of that generation. . .” he starts to say, then stops himself, as if he’s pondering something.

  “I know it’s irregular, but it was that or a rebellion,” I say.

  He ignores me, says he wants to pray with the body. We start walking towards the nave.

  “I’ve promised them a simple funeral, no bells or whistles, no eulogy, in keeping with the new Vatican protocol. No communion of course.”

  “Yes, yes.” The old man waves my explanations aside. He’s using a cane since I saw him last. The rumour is he has Parkinson’s. He’s old enough, in his eighties, and should be long retired. But everyone knows the Vatican requires a bishop’s resignation at seventy-five but doesn’t often accept it until they’re on their deathbed.

  “Let me pray with the body.”

  “Certainly.” I take him by the sleeve and try to guide him to where the casket rests on an old table, just inside the main door to the body of the church. Halfway there he shakes me off.

  “I can manage on my own.”

  I find an old prayer kneeler for him. That’s when I notice Jack Ramsey is there too, sitting alone, in the corner of the church, praying. He has a blanket around his shoulders. He looks over at us and grimaces. I give him a quick nod and turn back to the bishop.

  The chancellor told me to keep an eye on His Excellency. He didn’t say why, just that he had concerns about him travelling right now. But the bishop insists that it’s his duty to be with his people upon the closing of their church. He has only reluctantly accepted the recommendations of the consultants. The diocesan deficit has forced his hand.

  Only when he struggles to open the top half of the casket, do I intervene. We have only just pried the lid upright when he gasps and takes a step back as if he’s seen a ghost. He almost trips on the kneeler and with his good leg shoves it violently out of the way.

  “God help me,” he shudders.

  I manage to catch the lid and set it down gently. I leave him leaning over the table like that and walk to the nearest pew and sit down. He stares and stares, shakes his head, finally turns to me, agitation in his voice, “Annie. . . ? What was her family name?”

  The bishop catches himself between his cane and the table and topples down on his knees to the bare floor.

  I rush to him. “Bishop, are you all right?” But he waves me away before I can help him up. I am regretting my promise to the ladies and thinking I should have paid more attention to the chancellor’s warning. All I need is for his Grace to drop dead on my watch.

  “Leave me alone,” he says, his voice wavering, one hand up to stop me, his face flush now. He knows her, he says. “Annie?”

  “Gallagher,” I reply.

  “Leave me!” He almost shouts it this time. So I take my seat again in the last pew of the nave.

  He hauls himself up on his cane, making the sign of the cross, staring, then praying frantically, whispering as if his life depends on it, alternating, watching silently, then praying. I see him jump back at one point, bring one hand to his face in surprise, study the sunlight streaming over the body, look down at the face. Kneel again. He kneels there for some time, waves me away each time I approach, till finally he brings himself up with both hands on the top of the cane, shouting through sobs, “Do not assist me. I am the most wretched of men!” Drags himself up the centre of the aisle and prostrates himself just short of the stairs surrounding the sanctuary and the altar, the red light of the tabernacle in his sights.

  At the end I have to help him haul himself upright. I am beginning to understand the chancellor’s concern.

  The bishop says he has had some kind of spell. He just needs an aspirin. At the same time, he announces that he will preside at the funeral. I try to reason with him, “Bishop, you’ve had a busy week, and you have a big day ahead of you tomorrow with the closing of the church. Why not leave this one to me?”

  “Nevertheless, I will preside at today’s funeral.”

  BISHOP LEO

  “What is her name?” I call back to where I know he is hovering, thinking I’m going to totter over at any minute.

  “Oh, but you know who I am.”

  I look. It is the woman. It is her voice.

  “Annie Gallagher,” Father Pat says quietly, coming up beside me, fixing me with a peculiar look, threatening to stay rooted there at my side if I don’t say something.

  “Thank you, Father, that will be all.”

  It is her all right. I lost track of her, the dusky skin, the high cheekbones, the sweetheart forehead, the full red lips, red even in death. But I’ve never forgotten the voice.

  What’s this? My hands are shaking. Here, better hide, inside my robes. Bow
my head or the young priest will suspect my condition. Oh Mary, Mother of God, she was beautiful and so frightening to my young aspect. She was cause to fall, I convinced myself.

  When she visited the confessional, her voice husky like her father’s, her hands delicate like her mother’s, so alive they danced when she spoke.

  “Do you have bad thoughts?” I asked her once. It was a selfish question. The contrast of her blonde hair against her dark skin dazzled and dazed in the half darkness of the confessional. She had looked at me puzzled and thought hard before she answered.

  “I get sad and pained inside when I think of my maman, Father. How bad a person I must have been that she left.”

  That’s how I first learned that she had lost her mother. And I had looked away in embarrassment. What I had meant, what I had been thinking was that I had had bad thoughts about her.

  Such a normal thing, sexual attraction. Forced celibacy, distorted by shame and years of denial can make us into small-minded, near-sighted creatures. Oh, how I agonized, felt terrible at my temptation, thought, Oh! If I could just rid myself of the object of my desire. “If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out!” I couldn’t sleep at night, couldn’t get her out of my waking mind.

  Here she is, her hair is combed straighter in death than I remember it in life, a lustrous white now.

  Forgive me, Annie.

  Father Leo. Her lips don’t move.

  My heart stops. Yes, I know the voice.

  Do not be afraid.

  It was me I wanted to lock up.

  Yes.

  And in her face I see my life flash back sixty-odd years. It’s as if I’ve died for an instant and see myself as she would have seen me: young, confused, and foolish. Twenty-one years of age, newly ordained. My first parish.

  You almost killed me, Father Leo. Again her lips don’t move. But from somewhere comes a low cry, a near growl. ArrRhh! A sob.

  It can’t be. I force myself to make the sign of the cross on her forehead. Dead cold, nothing there. But at the flutter of an eyelash, I flinch. Calm now, patience my heart. I must remember the young priest. He’s come up beside me once more, wondering if I’ve gone off the edge.

  “I knew this woman,” is all I say. “From when I was much younger. It’s a shock. I just need a minute.” He gawks. Impertinent youth. Finally, moves away again.

  God forgive me, how I wanted her.

  How you sent me away. God forgive me.

  Father Leo, I see Lady Death in you.

  How does she know? The brain cancer. Inoperable. I’ve written the Papal Nuncio.

  But then I remember. The dead know everything.

  I forgive you, Bishop Leo, but save your people.

  Suddenly I’m gasping for air. I’m inside of somewhere with layers of brick and cement, long hallways, rows of beds, grey-striped feather pillows, rough cotton sheets, grey wool blankets, the windows high and small. And then I see the occupants of the place. Some have heads the size of overgrown cabbages, ears like cauliflowers and lips split. Some sit in bed with diapers, grown adults. Some are stunted and deformed and struggle to carry themselves along. Some are smiling and wanting to take my hand. They talk to the empty air. They talk nonsense.

  They touch all the time, Father Leo. Annie is speaking to me now. They touch. It’s how they communicate. Afterwards, I saw what an education it was. Their gift.

  “Bishop, Bishop Leo! Wake up! Wake up! Are you all right?” Father Pat is shaking me, lifting me from the floor.

  The church. My first church. I look up. They’ve lowered the ceiling — foam board now. All Douglas fir planking up there, long sixteen-foot boards. Can’t buy wood like that anymore. Birch floors. An altar of cedar, all the way from the coast; a table, like they’re meant to be, for a meal.

  “In all my life, I haven’t touched or been touched,” I say aloud.

  The young priest stares at me.

  “TIAS,” I say, struggling to recover my wits, to cover myself. “Small strokes, normal for someone my age. It’s nothing. I haven’t had one in weeks. Just the shock of so many years. Find me an aspirin, will you?” And that sends him off on a cause. By the time he gets back, I have it all planned out.

  “I’ll say mass today.”

  He gapes at me.

  “There is one thing I’ll need from you—” He’s still sputtering by the time I dismiss him.

  KRISTIAN

  I follow the two black robes through the front door of the church Saturday morning. They don’t even see me hanging out in the parking lot, the young one fussing around the old one. He keeps going on about something, looks like he has a rod up his ass. The old one keeps taking deep breaths and leaning on his cane coming up the stairs. I give them about two minutes lead time and then I slip inside. The young priest is sitting in the last pew looking straight ahead and the other is bent over the coffin that’s on a small table, with his eyes closed, holding the big cross hanging from his neck for dear life. They both have a troubled kind of light over them, browns and greys, but it’s changing near the coffin where the light is a different tone, calming, like at the wake. I head for the men’s bathroom downstairs.

  I didn’t bother to walk home after the wake last night. Found some kid’s lost rain jacket on the slides at the school, threw it over me, and slept in a corner of the sandbox. If Mom could see me now she’d say that I looked like death warmed over. And I would have joked, Well, I am going to a funeral.

  I hope I look a mess; it’s how I feel inside.

  I woke up this morning knowing that I have to see this through. I have to go up to each and every one of her friends and her guy (that’s going to kill me) and look them in the eye and tell them the truth and how sorry I am for what I’ve done. And at the end of it, I have to turn myself in to the police, plead guilty, the whole bit. It’s what Mom would have wanted. And she would have told me to at least comb my hair.

  The first person I have to confess to though is Miss Annie. I have to sit with her for a while, and even if she can’t hear me, apologize. I have to get up close to her and tell her everything. About the magpies and the drugs, about Kelsey. God, I’m going to start crying again. I flush the toilet, splash cold water onto my face, and tuck my shirt into my jeans. Take the comb out of my back pocket.

  I wait till I hear the Old Robe’s cane ra-ta-tating on the floor overhead, the big front doors open and close again and the two of them stumping their way back down the stairs. Then I steal upstairs, slowly passing through the doors into the main part of the church, where Miss Annie’s body is. That’s when I see her guy, in the other back pew, on the other side, wrapped up in an old blanket, snoozing softly. I try to get as close to the coffin as I can, but I know I’ll explode if I get too close. So I keep to the shadows and stand at attention, whispering everything I can.

  ANNIE

  It was a strange place, the institution, the children like moths coming to light. They would cling to you or shun you. They knew every feeling that passed your face, every shadow of intention, affection, whim. From our keepers I learned the categories of a subhuman being. Imbecile, Idiot, Moron. From the kept, I learned other forms of intelligence.

  Hints of malice, meanness made them angry. Injustice was their bread. You were an open book. They knew at a touch what your intentions were. They saw your true heart. No one could hide from them.

  “Annie’s mad,” said one of them the night I arrived. It was the best of words. I was enraged, but out of my mind too. That first night I lay on my black iron bed, covered with the same blue-striped spread as everyone else’s, facing the wall with my back towards them, my knees up to my chin.

  “Someone’s hurt her very bad,” said another and hugged me, not with a hug like we know it, but until her arms were too tired. I counted the minutes on the clock. Extraordinary was the comfort they gave to each other.

  From them I learned which staff to avoid, which to trust. Some of the assistants treated them as their own children, but some waited and wa
tched for who they could steal away. The ones who couldn’t talk. The ones who couldn’t move. There were soul stealers in that place. The children knew — you could see it in their sad eyes.

  I used to help feed and dress the smaller ones. Their mouths didn’t work right, swallowing was hard for them. They had things wrong with their hands or they hadn’t been taught yet how to use them. Most were the tribe of the rejected with neither intelligence nor strength to understand the why of it. They lived with an unknown wound whereas I knew my labels. Delinquent. Bad influence. Wayward. Mental Defective.

  They would look at me, longing on their wide flat faces. “Annie wanna play?” There were days I wished I could be like them.

  That first night at the training school, the warden set me down on a stool, put an empty porridge bowl on my head and cut my long, pale, unruly hair. Pixie cuts were easier to control for head lice, and why I dreamed in that place of what I couldn’t have.

  That’s when I learned the training school had been a finishing school at the turn of the century. An old staff telling a new staff the history. Girls from hundreds of miles around, girls from the flat prairie, set down in a small town, brick and mortar six stories high, by a river that fed a pot and kettle landscape, small streams and lakes rimmed with bluffs of poplar and spruce, traversed by muddy roads in spring. After World War I, the Presbyterians had sold it to the army to use as a hospital for shell-shocked veterans.

  After I was shorn, they issued me a plain cotton brassiere, dressed me in a long white blouse with short puffy sleeves and a grey skirt that stopped just above the knees. Then they gave me a pair of white bloomers that stuck out below the hem and had to be fastened at the waist with a clothespin because they were too big for me. A safety pin was considered a dangerous weapon in the hands of a defective. Over top of these layers the girls were forced to wear a blue gingham jumper with cap sleeves that acted like an apron.