Water Witches

  "Yup. It's pretty deep in the toilet," I tell the young teacher. "There were eighty-one different ski resorts in Vermont in 1971. How many do you think there are in existence right now?"

  He rubs his chin. "I'm guessing."

  "Of course you are."

  "Fifty."

  "Wrong. Try nineteen."

  "Nineteen?"

  "Nineteen."

  "Where the hell do sixty ski resorts go in a couple of decades?"

  "Out of business," I tell him. "Insurance has gotten too expensive. And the resorts have gotten too little snow."

  "And they have to battle too many regulations," Ian adds, disgusted. "Too many environmental regulations, and a permit process that must have been designed by the devil himself."

  Clark Rawls hits a ground ball to third, and the inning looks as if it will come to an end. But the third baseman throws the ball high over the first baseman's head, and Clark winds up on base.

  "And it's not just the resorts that are in trouble," I tell Clinton, almost relishing the opportunity I have taken to speak freely in public about the woes of the industry. "About one out of every six ski retailers declared bankruptcy or closed its doors for good between January first and May thirty-first. And of those retailers still in business, probably about one-quarter will go belly up this season if we don't get a ton of white stuff dropped on us.

  "Now what does it mean when people aren't buying ski equipment? Well, it means that the companies that manufacture the stuff, companies like the one Joel used to work for, have severe financial problems as well. And so they let people go. They lay them off."

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  Clinton looks past me at Ian, and then back at me. "Is there anything you guys can do about all that?" he asks.

  "Like maybe make snow?" Ian asks in response.

  "Sure. Like that."

  Ian looks at me, waiting for me to jump in once again.

  "Write the governor," I tell him. "Write the District Five Environmental Commission. Write your state senators and representatives. Tell them how much this state needs a healthy ski industry."

  One of the few actual men from the Barre quarries on our team hits the next pitch to deep center field, but the outfielder runs the ball down to finally end the inning.

  As the three of us reach for our baseball gloves and start toward the field, Ian turns to me and says quietly, "Masterful, Scottie, just masterful. I hope you're going to tell Liza Eastwick everything you just told Clinton Willey."

  "I'll try."

  "Because I'll be frank: If it doesn't look like we're going to get our permits to tap the Chittenden and build some new trails down Republic next year, I'm not about to go out on a limb for people like Joel this November."

  Miranda has preserved her wings, and floats among Laura's flower garden in the moonlight. A border of small lavender ageratum. Pink and orange zinnias. Neon yellow snapdragons and marigolds. Dozens and dozens of sky blue iris.

  In the soft and misty light of this moon, the fact that each flower hangs limp, each petal has withered, can be ignored. The moon hides the fact that each flower is dying, weightless without water, droopingsomehownonetheless.

  Miranda too may be oblivious, at least for the moment, to the notion that she is dancing among the dead. There is no life left in those marigolds. One breeze and the petals will fall off, fly away, blow across the dry and rocky soil that is a far cry from a bed.

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  The wires that border and shape Miranda's wings sparkle when the moonlight catches them, and the gauze, painted with silver glitter, glistens.

  She sings to herself, humming a song I don't know. She raises her arms over her head, and her wings rise above her golden blonde hair, two filmy arches of pink that look as if they just might lift her off the ground.

  Sometimes, I see only those wings.

  I wonder if Miranda believes she is dancing for rain.

  She knows that our well still has water, but many wells don't.

  She told me today that she and her mother see Micheal Terry's big well-drilling trucks wherever they go.

  Michael Terry is indeed having the summer of his life.

  Fireflies dance with Miranda, stars that flicker as one with the night sky, stepping aside as she sways and spins and glides.

  Miranda is grace. She is grace in her small sneakers in Laura's garden, she is grace on her skis or her snowboard on any trail at Powder Peak.

  I may have lied today when I described to Clinton Willey the state of the ski industry. My numbers were truthful and accurate, but I'm not sure that my reasoning was. At least not completely.

  If I had wanted to be completely honest with Clinton, I might have told him that it is not simply a lack of snow that is driving ski retailers out of business. It is unrealistically high prices. It is overextension. It is technology and gadgets that are out of control: heated boots and double-tipped skis, ski racks that transform themselves into bike racks in the spring, parkas and caps and fashions that change every year.

  If I had wanted to tell Clinton the whole truth about Vermont's ski resorts, I might have added that it is not simply the cost of insurance, or the lack of snow, or even the state's strict environmental laws that are causing them quickly to disappear. It is lift tickets that cost forty and fifty dollars a day. It is mountains that are less steep than the west, and trails that are

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  often miles and miles shorter. It is consistently poor management, poor advertising, poor self-promotion.

  Am I willing to trade a river forever so that Joel Stebbins can have a job this fall? I sure talk like I am. I sure act like I am. And if I ran into Joel right now at a restaurant or a movie or softball practice, if I were to see on his face the fear that unemployment can cause, how could I not demand that the state trade some trout for a job?

  But I didn't tell Clinton Willey tonight about trades. I didn't tell him that Vermont cannot have everything. If he wants to write his senator so that Joel can have that job, then he shouldn't expect to take his childrenif he does indeed have anyfishing someday in the Chittenden River. If he wants Vermont to have a ski industry with profitable boot makers and thriving resorts, then he shouldn't plan on deer hunting ten years from now on the undeveloped side of Mount Republic. Because there won't be one.

  My small daughter whirls among the impatiens.

  And I stand alone in the dark and watch her dance, unwilling to go inside and face the harsh light of my own house.

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  13

  From my perch at the kitchen table, I can see Elias Gray's blue and rust pick-up rolling slowly up our driveway early Saturday morning, and then coasting to a stop between the barn and the house. The sun, barely over the mountains, reflects off Elias's windshield and the back of his rear view mirror.

  ''I knew they'd be on time," Miranda says, dropping her spoon into her cereal bowl, and running to the foot of the stairs. It is not quite six thirty.

  "Mom, they're here!" she yells up to the second floor.

  "Thank you, sweetheart," Laura yells back from our bedroom.

  "Are you coming?"

  "Sure am."

  Miranda races past me to the back door, rolling her eyes

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  briefly as she reminds me, "I told mom they'd be here on time." She pushes open the screen door, and leans against the metal frame, half in and half out of the house.

  Patience jumps out of the passenger side of the truck, while Elias carefully lowers himself down from the driver's side. Elias is wearing his khaki-colored overalls, and Patience is wearing plaid Bermuda shorts with a striped tee-shirt.

  Only around Elias does Patience wear shorts. It's as if she wants to dress as childlike as she can around the closest thing that she had to a father for the vast majority of her life.

  "Hi, Aunt Patience, hi, Mr. Gray!"

  Patience hoists Miranda into the air and swings her once, kissing her on the forehead as she puts her down. "Morning, Mirand
a. What are you doing up this early on a Saturday?"

  "Mom said I could pick out the candles."

  "The colors?" Elias asks.

  "Yup."

  "Dowse for the ones that'll sell best," Patience says, not wholly serious. Patience and Elias are here to pick up the cases of candles that Laura is donating to this morning's church rummage sale. The rummage sale occurs every year on the second Saturday in July, a small part of the town's annual Old Home Week Celebration: a week that begins with the Fourth of July parade and fireworks, and continues with a variety of events such as the rescue squad's pot luck supper, the volunteer firemen's chicken barbecue, and the church rummage sale. Other than Christmas and Easter, the most well-attended church service of the year will occur tomorrow, when anywhere from twenty-five to fifty former members of the congregation who have returned to Landaff to see friends and family will return also to church.

  "You two must want some coffee. It's fresh," I tell them.

  "Nope, we got three more stops to make before eight o'clock. We said we'd be at the church by eight with the last of the merchandise," Patience says. "So we should keep moving."

  "I hope we're your first stop."

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  "Nope. We've already picked up some goodies from the Moodys and the Woolfs. Laura awake yet?"

  Before I can answer, we all hear footsteps on the stairway.

  "Yup, she's awake," Miranda says.

  Laura strolls into the kitchen, her feet and legs bare up to her tan hiking shorts, wearing a faded blue tee-shirt that says, "Dowsing is Sense-sational." She bought the shirt years and years ago at the annual dowsing convention.

  "How's the 'Stolen Goods Committee'?" she asks her sister and Elias.

  "It's already been a full and rich day," Patience says. "But just between us, I think we'll probably do a heck of a lot better with your candles than with Cynthia Woolf's macaroni jewelry."

  Elias shrugs. "Giannine says we always sell a few pieces. And it's easier to just pick the stuff up and put it out on the table, than it is to tell Cynthia we don't want it."

  Laura fixes one of the shoulder straps on Elias's overalls, which at some point became twisted. "Michael Terry's drilling a well today, isn't he, Elias?"

  "Yup."

  "And you dowsed the spot, didn't you?"

  "You're supposed to be a dowser," he tells my wife, "not some gypsy mystic."

  "No mysticism. You just look a little tired today, Elias, that's all. And Giannine told Patience and me years ago that you don't sleep a wink the night before a well's drilled that you dowsed."

  Elias nods that she is correct: He didn't sleep much last night. "I was up at the Langtons' on Wednesday. And Terry's got his rig up there today."

  "I'm in the wrong business," Patience says, shaking her head. "I shouldn't be finding wells, I should be drilling 'em."

  Miranda pushes open the screen door. "I'll go pick out the candles," she says, and then adds, "Aunt Patience said I should dowse them!"

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  "Just pick out the colors you like, sweetheart," Laura tells her. "I'm sure your aunt was just kidding about the dowsing."

  "But I could do it."

  "We got no doubts about that," Elias says, hunching over a tiny bit to meet my daughter's eyes. "But you got to treat your talent with respect. You've got a very special gift, and the one who gave it to you doesn't want to see it used on just anything."

  Patience looks at her sneakers, no doubt feeling chastised.

  "Isn't the rummage sale important?"

  "'Course it is. But you know what?"

  'What?"

  "Whether you pick out your mother's pink candles or the evergreen ones won't make a difference. I promise you, we'll sell 'em all either way."

  It sprinkles Sunday morning, periodic raindrops that fall for a few minutes before eight, and then again in the ten or fifteen minutes before church starts. It is enough rain to blacken asphalt roads, briefly, and moisten the highest tips of grass. But it is nowhere near enough rain to salvage what's left of the corn, replenish the wells that are low, or in any way slacken the thirst of a state that has forgetten how high its streams and rivers once were.

  In church, it is possible for short moments to forget the drought, to forget the red plastic rain barrels that pose as lawn ornaments throughout the county, dotting yards and fields like tombstones. People are in Landaff today who haven't been back in town in years, in some cases sitting in almost the same pews in which they sat many Sunday services ago: elderly people who retired to small apartments and trailers on Florida's gulf coast; college students who now come to church once a year; and the small clusters of "summer people" from Boston and New York City, sitting together, who descend upon Landaff every June, July, and August.

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  During this morning's service, people in the congregation stand and recall stories of the church and the town that they want to see live on in the community's tradition of verbal myth and oral history. They stand and acknowledge people who once lived in Landaff and have now returned for a visit, and they stand and remember people from Landaff who have now died, and who they believe must not be forgotten. People like Darcy Floyd.

  "Darcy," says Anna Avery, standing in her spot in the choir, conjuring an image of the man for much of the church with the simple mention of his name, "meant an awful lot to Landaff. He didn't just raise the money we needed for this organ, and he didn't just run the roads with the town plow for maybe forty winters. He was ... the conscience of our public debates."

  There is a small ripple of loving laughter among the senior citizens in the church who remember Darcy Floyd. Whenever there was an apparently unanimous vote in a town meeting, Darcy would vote no, even when he agreed wholeheartedly with the town. "There's always somebody who doesn't agree with the masses," Darcy insisted, and "that fellow deserves some representation too. Even if it's meaningless. Even if that fellow's an idiot."

  One of the church deacons asks us all to recall Prue Minton, the woman whountil she died on March 11 of this yearwas the oldest member of the congregation. She died at athe age of 101, leaving behind 96 direct, living descendants.

  Winnifred Mead, one of Laura's and Patience's aunts, stands and says that Paulette Hackett should be thanked, once again, for her years of tireless service managing the church Sunday school programs before she moved to Florida. Paulette, who has returned to Landaff for a visit from a place called Blue Marlin Spas, sits beside Winnifred and smiles self-consciously as the congregation applauds.

  "Aunt Winnie is an inspiration to us all," Patience whispers to Reedy, sitting beside her in the pew. "A senior citizen lesbian. You don't see that much anymore."

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  "I thought your aunt was married once," Reedy says softly.

  "So? She got smart in her old age. Isn't that right, Laura? Just look at ol' Paulette nuzzle Aunt Winnie."

  Laura folds her arms across her chest, ignoring her older sister.