The Death of Annie the Water Witcher by Lightning

by Audrey J. Whitson

  The flowers appear on the earth,

  Father Pat had chosen a considerably unremarkable reading about God taking care of his flock, his weak sheep, and so on and so forth.

  and the song of the dove is heard in our land.

  We do have doves here, mourning doves we call them. Known by their sad coo coo coos, their feathers, a delicate, pearly grey. I love the sound of them out the window on a summer’s morning, early, just as we’re making love.

  FLORENCE

  When I get up here I realize the bishop is determined to read so I just stay to the side and wait it out. I know he’ll eventually see me and come to his senses.

  When we met this morning, he was shaking like a white poplar in spring. It was such a shock when he insisted on washing our feet. He told us how many feelings he had coming back to this place, how there were so many memories for him here, how it had hit him between the eyes that he had known Annie. How much he had wondered about her over the years. He says he remembers me too, that I used to go to confession every chance I got. I was always sorry for something in those days, sorrier than most children my age, heavy in my regret, but he never knew why.

  I took him under my wing. I told him, “Not to worry, Bishop. We’re all a little emotional today. It’s been a shock. We appreciate your coming to share our sorrow.” He was speechless at that and just patted my hand as best he could while leaning on his cane, kneeling the way he was on the floor.

  BUSTER

  When he starts to read there’s a chuckling at the back. Alex will say it’s the Protestants. I admit the words sound odd coming out of the mouth of a celibate clergyman. The bishop looks delighted with himself, all that flowery lover talk. I know, the lover is Jesus and the beloved is the soul, and so on and so forth — Daisy’s trained me up good. But still.

  O my dove in the clefts of the rock,

  in the secret recesses of the cliff,

  “Hmm. Hmm. Hrumph.” The old bishop stops himself midsentence.

  Hah, even he thinks it’s queer.

  Let me see you,

  let me hear your voice. . .”

  When he gets to the end, he sees Florence waiting to read and Daisy behind her. He gets flustered and realizes he’s in the way and that he’s made a mistake. But he seems seized by something and can’t help himself. He calls up Daisy. Florence keeps squeezing her hands together in front of her, as if she’s afraid they might fly apart if she lets them be, but she smiles and steps aside.

  ALEX

  The old bishop shows Daisy something in the book, where he’s moved the red ribbon — points at the place on the page, looks her in the eye and waits till she nods. He smiles and pats her on the back then totters off the risers, almost hopping like a jack rabbit to take a seat in the front row. People make room. He lays his cane on the floor in front of him. Father Pat looks fit to be tied watching from his perch on the altar, his arms folded across his chest. He tries to get the bishop’s attention, points his head at the big red seat next to him. The bishop has forgotten his place. Or he just wants to sit with the rest of us for a change.

  This time the reading’s about the desert breaking into song and flower. Daisy seems pleased to be reading.

  The desert and the parched land will exult; the steppe will rejoice and bloom.

  About the blind seeing and the deaf hearing, about the lame skipping and the mute finding their tongues, singing harmonies.

  Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared.

  Then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the dumb will sing.

  It rings true about flowers in a desert, about anything growing. Streams and rivers bursting in the prairie, springs in the dry lands and up ahead a highway called the holy way.

  It is for those with a journey to make, and on it the redeemed will walk.

  MIKE

  According to the order of service the first reading should have been from Ezekiel. I can see Father Pat’s eyes widening. People start to murmur. It’s unusual to have two readings from the Old Testament and neither of them the one in the program. Buster is looking behind him, frowning. Father Pat clears his throat a second time.

  The bishop is pretty straight up about it. He’s old, so I guess it’s hard to keep track of everything all the time. “I was mixed up,” he says. “Very sorry. Let’s see. Here’s the one.” And he lets Daisy start this time.

  This time nobody laughs, from the very back to the very front, they all fall silent, as if it is a book of prophecy she holds.

  It’s this reading about the miracle in the desert, everything blooming and rivers running where there aren’t any before. The bishop was right to change it. Annie would have liked it. It was the kind of thing she believed in.

  VERA

  It isn’t the reading in the program. None of them has been so far.

  The first time it happens, Father Pat sticks his head up like a periscope, wheels it round and round like a distress signal on a lighthouse, alarmed no doubt by all the erotic verses, then sits back relieved when the bishop leaves the podium. But when Daisy starts to recite a different reading too, Father Pat stops her after the first line, taps her on the shoulder, whispers but forgets about the microphone, “This is not in the program.”

  Daisy whispers back, just as audibly: “There’s an error in the program, Father. The bishop said.”

  And with that she turns back to the congregation, looks at the book and starts over. There is not much he can say. Like Daisy says, The bishop said. I have to pinch myself from laughing out loud. Father Pat slinks back down into his chair and presses his hands together again, stares at the red carpet in the sanctuary. The aisle and the sanctuary are the only places we could afford carpet of any kind.

  Father Pat insisted on choosing the readings for the funeral. He was dogmatic about it. “The wake is for the people. Let them grieve. The funeral is a witness for the whole church.”

  He wanted it low-key, he told me — nothing to emphasize her oddness or draw attention to her peculiar gifts. But neither of us had counted on the bishop. I am watching Father Pat. One moment closing his eyes, trying to pray; the next pulling himself forward, his neck bunched up over his white collar, like a lion ready to pounce.

  By some strange miracle, the psalm is the same as the program and Father Pat sits back, relieved.

  Florence recites the cantor lines, while the rest of us sing the response.

  God, you are my God,

  for you I long

  for you my soul is thirsting

  My body pines for you

  like a dry, weary land without water

  The choir stands to lead the response.

  I thirst for you, O God.

  We say it over and over again.

  ANNIE

  Long have I yearned; it’s been a lifetime of yearning. My body, my soul always in search. A piece of me missing even before they took my insides. Searching always, desperate to put the torn parts of me together again, the puzzle of who I am, the lost puzzle pieces: Maman, Papa, Nana, the spirit in the water. Is this what they call the Holy?

  My being thirsts for you.

  KRISTIAN

  It’s hard to tell about Kelsey with that choir robe she’s got on. Those big flappy sleeves and pleats over her belly. She could be carrying twins for all I know or not pregnant at all.

  Hey, she smiled at me.

  Fuck, that makes me feel worse. I don’t deserve any of it. I’m a land parched, lifeless, without water, holed up in that shack out back, cooking crank all day, tweaking, tweaking, tweaking, chilling out. I feel like that dude at the River Styx we read about in grade ten English, as I drive get-away cars in the middle of the night, picking up packages from the sides of ditches, throwing others in their place. Meeting these goons with grey and gloom around them shot through with orange sickly light. I don’t like the way it makes me feel. Ferrying me and them to certain death. When I look in the mirror afterwards, that’s the light I car
ry too. The light of despair and pain.

  BUSTER

  When Florence tries to recite the second reading from the book of Revelation, the bishop jumps up from where he’s sitting, grabs his cane, hobbles up the risers and starts to add commentary that this passage is about the ancients’ worship and belief in the fertility of the moon cycle, and, my God, you should see people’s eyebrows shoot up. It’s like he’s got a gusher in him, that he’s got to let out, and there’s no stopping him.

  On either side of the river grew the tree of life that produces fruit twelve times a year, once each month;. . .

  “It’s only womankind,” he presses on, “who can potentially produce fruit twelve times a year. That, of all mammals, she can become pregnant any month of the year, that she isn’t tied to instinct but a creature of choice!” The old coot is practically raving by this point. I glance over at Daisy; she looks like she’s enjoying this too.

  “The fruit of her womb,” the bishop references the Virgin Mary and smiles up at Kelsey by way of example, “is a gift.” He goes on commentating about how womankind are the font of life-giving waters, how they carry the tree of life in their bodies, and Annie was like the healing tree at the centre of the world whose leaves healed the nations. That he had known Annie’s grandmother when she was alive, and she had told him that the witching worked best on the lunar cycle, and he had been scared of what he did not understand. But now that he is an old man, a lot he had believed seems foolish to him. How it is clear to him that it is all part of God’s design.

  Still, what the bishop says next is prin’near fantastical. How in the Old Testament the Wisdom of God is a woman, Sophia they called her in the Greek. How she was the Word that came forth from the mouth of God. Or some such madcap.

  Come to think of it, Daisy is what I would call a wise woman. Might be something to that. Florence takes a deep breath and reads another line.

  . . . the leaves of the trees serve as medicine for the nations.

  DAISY

  It is a fine reading, about the river of life, a much better reading than the one Father Pat ordered with all kinds of sternness about the end of the world. Still, more than a few of us think the behaviour of the bishop is peculiar. Those words about Hagia Sophia, Holy Wisdom, about her being the breath of God and covering the world like a mist. How she was there beside God at the creation of the universe, playing along with him, throwing in an opinion, and lending him a hand! I mean I have heard those readings before but I never knew what they meant. Afterwards, Florence leans over and says in my ear, “That was the gift of tongues.”

  VERA

  I never thought in my lifetime I would hear the Word of women proclaimed from the altar by a man of the cloth.

  FATHER PAT

  I had purposely chosen Revelations 21, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, to remind them who is the giver of lifegiving water, he who is the giver of life. More important than any water in their fields.

  To the thirsty I will give a gift from the spring of life-giving water.

  Obviously the bishop’s mind is affected. We agreed he would lead the service with me, but I am preaching. Here he is walking towards me with the book of the gospels, bowing, asking for a blessing.

  “But Your Excellency?”

  “Bless me, Father Pat,” he whispers, “or the people will think we’ve mixed things up.”

  “But you have,” I hiss.

  “Thank you, Father.” And with that he crosses himself and makes a small bow before he raises the green clothed book into the air and limps down in front of the altar to read the text. Kelsey hurries to steady him on the first step and hold the book for him. He seems to have thrown off his cane. He leans on her arm, and I find myself worrying for her, not wanting her to trip. I catch up to them, steady his bad side, while Kelsey turns the gold ribbon to the gospel.

  ALEX

  The bishop starts to tell the story.

  Now that very day, two of them were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred. And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.

  “They didn’t recognize Jesus, my dear people. I too failed to recognize him in his body, the church. This woman who has been living in your midst: Annie Gallagher. But you recognized her in the witching of the water. You recognized her as she sorted mail for you, as she brewed you a cup of coffee or poured you a beer at the end of a long day.”

  Were not our hearts burning [within us]. . .?

  “Oh yes, our hearts were burning. Were they not?” Florence practically sings.

  “Yes, Father,” Bob calls out, then catches himself, slinks back into his seat, like he remembers we’re not in a Baptist church here. But no one stares. They’re all listening to the bishop and thinking pretty much the same thing, their mouths propped open.

  The bishop beams. “Yes indeed!”

  I can’t help but think of the post office, the coffee nook, and the Table of Truth.

  “Did she ever raise a word of complaint about her suffering? Do any of you know she was sent away from this place? To live where all the rejects of our society are sent. An institution. Those we thought were inhuman. And I’m ashamed to say that I was the main one who sent her.

  “The Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives. That’s what they called it in those days.

  “Because her grandmother witched wells and Annie saw and understood things beyond her years and because Annie held herself with a particular grace. God help me, she was beautiful!” He said it without any hint of apology. And then more somberly, suddenly near tears, “She was ‘sent away’ my dear people, because I lusted after her.”

  The church falls silent as a tomb. No one moves, spellbound by the spectacle of the bishop, fallen to his knees at the top of the risers, heaving. A minute, then two, passes and he pushes himself up on his cane with both hands to keep going.

  “What the women had to say astounded the apostles and astounds us! They have been faithful friends, these women who have prepared the body, prepared the ceremony today, because they know that Annie was with us, she is with us, and she will rise at the last day.

  With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight.

  “Your eyes were opened long before mine, in the water. It was only these past hours that my own eyes were opened, and I recognized her.

  Were not our hearts burning [within us] while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?

  “Did not our hearts burn as she explained the Book of Creation to us?”

  People speak up one after another. The Mueller boy, Kristian, in the front row, nods his head like a nervous jack rabbit this time.

  “I lost track of Annie. The good women of your community have told me what happened.” He points out Daisy and Florence and Vera.

  “She ran away from the training school, ended up in the city, on skid row. After that institution, Annie was never able to have children. She took up drinking. That was all more than six decades ago. And I feel God’s redemption speaking powerfully through your presence here today.

  “When she found her way home, she found her father had fallen onto hard times. She stayed to help him with his work. She continued to drink. When he died, she drank more.

  “It is the women who are at the tomb first. ‘Some women from our group. . .’ Some women who had received the mystery. But their story seemed like ‘nonsense’ to the apostles. Can we believe them? Peter has to go see for himself.

  “After his death, Jesus does not go up to Jerusalem or any other places of power or centres of economy. He does not appear in a temple or a synagogue or a church or on the steps of city hall. No, he appears at a table with friends, in a garden with his beloved, on a country road to two travellers. All these common places we occupy in our daily lives. And
he never looks like we expect but is completely recognizable.

  “In Luke he is made known to them in the breaking of the bread. In John it’s in the sharing of a fresh-caught fish. It could have been anything lifegiving. To hunger, to thirst: these are human. To feed, to quench, to show compassion, this is the work of the Christian. In Jewish tradition every meal is opened with a ritual blessing of bread.

  “My dear people, it doesn’t much matter what is shared. It is in the act of sharing that we recognized her.”

  He’s right on that point. It doesn’t much matter what. A word, a feeling, touch. A meal. That’s probably the thing I miss most about not having someone in my life. Someone to share the worrying window with. Your day can start out like hell. You can journey, journey, and journey through, but if you don’t have someone to share a meal with at the end and make sense of it, it’s all just a maze.

  VERA

  “She was struck down,” the bishop pauses for emphasis, “doing a work of mercy for a neighbour. For we were thirsty and she gave us drink!”

  Heads are nodding all over the church.

  One young man is sobbing with his head in his hands, sobbing and shaking like a leaf. The same one I saw at the wake. Before the service I asked Mike if he knew him. The only face I don’t know. “Trouble,” he said. “Hans Mueller’s son.”

  Kelsey — who was living with Annie, Florence’s taken her in now — is watching him too. Her eyes are welling up. She keeps trying to dab at them with her wide sleeve.

  Trouble? Now don’t tell me that’s her young man?

  I remember Hans and Kristian now from their visits to the hospital when Mrs. Mueller took sick. He has grown two feet since then.

  “When lightning struck Annie, death would have been near instantaneous. A split second of suffering and she would have been free.”

  The young man looks up from his crying, an expression of disbelief on his face, just like a new puppy, miserable one moment, happy the next. His hands grab the pew in front of him, push Rita Chambers’ sweater out of the way, and he shakes his curly brown hair back out of his eyes. They are bloodshot and ringed with sleeplessness. Trouble. I’ve seen that look enough at the Emerg. For a minute I think he’s going to get up and shout something out too. But instead the bishop speaks.