Water Witches

  "No."

  "Thank you." He picks up a clipboard from his chair, and glances at the top sheet. "How old are you, Scottie?"

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  "Thirty-nine."

  "You'll turn forty this fall, right?"

  "Right."

  "Do you wear glasses?"

  "Nope."

  "Think you see pretty well?"

  "I do."

  "When was the last time you went to an eye doctor?"

  The reporters from the Burlington Free Press and the Associated Press are scribbling madly, trying to catch every word of our exchange.

  "Three years ago."

  "Three years. You're about to turn forty, and you haven't been to an eye doctor since your mid-thirties." He carefully returns his clipboard to his seat, allowing his words to settle.

  "Do you know the percentage of people your age who wear eyeglasses?" he asks.

  "No."

  "Eighty-nine percent. Almost nine out of every ten people in their forties wear eyeglasses or contact lenses. Think you're that lucky tenth man who doesn't need them?"

  I glance over at Dawn, trying to will her to her feet. In my head, however, I know it would be useless for her to try and object. If I were representing Powder Peak, I too would question my eyesight; moreover, if I were Mitch Valine, I would allow this line of questioning.

  "I think so," I tell John. "My eyesight has always been excellent."

  "Even at five hundred and thirty feet?"

  "Five hundred and thirty feet?"

  "Five hundred and thirty feet. That's the distance between the rocks where you think you saw some animal, and the chair lift."

  I shake my head. "That was the second sighting, John. There"

  "Oh, now there were two sightings? You saw catamounts twice?"

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  "No, of course not"

  "Of course not? Of course not? Is your story that improbable?"

  "No, John, what I'm saying"

  "What are you saying?"

  Dawn finally stands: "This is badgering. John is asking questions, and he's not letting the witness answer them."

  Mitch rolls his gavel across the table without thinking about the noise it will make, and says to John in a friendly tone, "Slow down, could you? We've got all day."

  John nods, asking me more evenly, "Is your eyesight that good that you could tell exactly what you saw at five hundred and thirty feet?"

  I take a deep breath, gathering my thoughts. "When we first saw the catamounts, they were much closer. When we first saw them, they weren't up on the cliff. They were at the edge of the woods. The evergreens. I'd guess at one point we were within forty or fifty yards of them."

  "Fifty yards. One hundred and fifty feet."

  "Or forty yards. One hundred and twenty feet."

  "This was before these ... supposed ... animals saw you, disappeared into the woods, and suddenly reappeared at the rocks five hundred and thirty feet awayfive hundred and thirty feet away at best. As the chair lift moved, they were even further away, you realize."

  There is nothing I have to answer here, so I sit impassively. Finally he asks, "And you think you saw this something while the chair lift was moving, right?"

  "Right."

  "And you think you saw this something at eight thirty at night?"

  "Right."

  "Do you know what time the sun set on July eighteenth this year?"

  "Sure do, John. It set at eight seventeen. We checked that too."

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  Facing the Environmental Board for emphasis, he continues, ''We will certainly agree with you on that. The sun did indeed set at about quarter past eight that night ... almost fifteen minutes before you think you saw something. So let me ask you this, Scottie: Are your almost forty-year-old eyes that good that you know exactly what you saw from a moving chair lift a full fifteen minutes after the sun has gone down?"

  "It's still very light out at eight thirty in the middle of July. Yes, technically the sun had set, but it was still light out."

  "It was nighttime!"

  "No, it wasn't, John. It was barely twilight. It was barely dusk"

  "Fine. It was twilight. That's a terrible time to see"

  "That's John's opinion only," Dawn says, interrupting. "Neither of these men is an optometrist, and neither should be allowed to offer an opinion on whether twilight is a terrible or a terrific time to see."

  Mitch looks at both of us, and then at Dawn. "Both these fellows play a little softball. So do I. And I think we would all agree that unless a field has lights, you call the game at twilight. Is that true, Scottie?"

  Although these hearings are, at best, only vaguely judicial, I can see that Dawn Ciandella from Boston is appalled at the chairman's idea of using twilight softball for a legal precedent. Before she opens her mouth and says something that might antagonize any member of the Board, I answer Mitch's question, as ludicrous as it might be.

  "Twilight is a vague concept, and yes, you might call a game at twilight. But I assure you, Mitch, I have never, ever seen a game called in the middle of July at eight thirty at night."

  Laura moves one of her fingers toward her mouth, but catches herself. Her hand partly raised, she uses it instead to brush Miranda's bangs from her eyes.

  Mitch nods and turns to John. "Are you done?" he asks him. "Do you have any more questions?"

  He rubs his shoulder. "No more questions."

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  "Fine. In that case, let's break for lunch."

  Dawn raises her hand, and Mitch turns to her.

  "We would like to bring forth our last witness."

  "It's almost twelve thirty," Mitch says.

  Dawn walks past me to the Board's long table. Speaking softly she says to the chairman, "Our last witness is Miranda, a little girl. I don't think it's fair to make her wait another hour to speak."

  "Is she nervous?" Mitch asks.

  "She's nine years old," Dawn says, evading the question.

  "Fine. Let's do it," he agrees. He then motions for John Bussey to join him. "Go easy on her, John," he says, speaking as much for my benefit as John's, "even if she is Scottie's kid.''

  Miranda's feet dangle at least six inches above the floor, and they sway like a pair of her aunt's pendulums. Occasionally she sits forward as far as she can in the chair, and stretches her legs and her feet so that she can anchor herself for brief moments by the tips of her black patent leather shoes.

  "Do you have a cat, Miranda?" John asks my daughter.

  "No."

  "Have you ever had one?"

  "Oh, sure. Snowball. But she died a couple years ago."

  "How many years ago?"

  "I was in second grade. So two years."

  "Do you miss Snowball? Do you miss her a lot?"

  This is a personal question for Miranda, and she answers with some reserve. "I guess I do."

  "Do you want a new cat?"

  "Well, my dad's allergic to them," she answers. "But I still might get one for my birthday," she continues, her voice brightening at the idea as she looks in her mother's and my direction.

  When Snowball died, I had hoped my daughter would lose interest in cats. Lately, however, it has become clear to Laura

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  and me that she hasn't. Consequently, for Miranda's birthday later this month we have promised her a new cat.

  Beside me, Laura scribbles a note.

  John asks, "Do you think a lot about cats, Miranda?"

  "I don't know."

  Laura turns the note toward me: Is he trying to show she made the catamounts up?

  "Maybe," I whisper.

  "Were you thinking about getting a cat the night you and your dad took that ride on the chair lift?"

  "I could have been."

  "Did you and your dad talk about getting a cat that night?"

  "I think we did."

  He nods and smiles at my daughter. "Do you know what a feral cat is?"

  Miranda shak
es her head that she doesn't.

  "A feral cat is sort of like the kind of cat I'll bet Snowball was," John explains. "You know, a regular old cat."

  Miranda quickly raises her hand as if she were in school.

  "Do you need to ask something, Miranda?" Mitch Valine asks her.

  She drops her arm to her side and says, "Snowball wasn't exactly a regular old cat. See, Snowball could fetch things, just like a dog, and she'd come when you called her."

  "My mistake," John says. "All I meant was that feral cats look sort of like the kinds of cats your friends must have. Except for one thing: They live in the wild. And do you know what they have to do to live in the wild?"

  Miranda follows John with her eyes as he paces, but she doesn't answer his question.

  "They have to make themselves look as big as they possibly can," John says. "So, sometimes, they fluff up their fur so they look huge. Huge!"

  I sit back in my chair and sigh. Any moment now, John will plant the final seeds of doubt in the minds of the Environmen-

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  tal Board, by convincing my daughter to admit that there was at least some small chance that what we saw were feral cats.

  "Could Snowball fluff herself up a bit?" John continues. "In the winter, maybe, when it was cold outside?"

  Miranda nods and smiles. "She sure could."

  "I'll bet. Now those animals you and your father saw that night at Powder Peak, those cats. Were you close enough to pet them?"

  "No way!"

  John nods. "Now you understand that when things are far away, sometimes it's hard to see exactly what they are, right?"

  "Boy, not this time, Mr. Bussey."

  "That wasn't my question, Miranda," John says, a hint of disapproval in his voice. "I'll repeat the question: Sometimes, it's hard to see things exactly right when they're real far away. Isn't that true?"

  "But Mr. Bussey, I know"

  "Miranda?" he says, drawing out the length of my daughter's name.

  "John, I think she understands the intent of your question," Mitch says, interrupting. "Go ahead, Miranda. What do you want to say?"

  She takes a deep breath. "Mr. Bussey, I know the animals were far away, but they weren't so far away that I couldn't see what they were! Snowball was never, ever that big! The catamounts me and my dad saw were much bigger," she says, pulling her hands from the table and spreading her arms as wide as she can. "Even the babies were bigger than Snowball. And the mom? Ho-boy, she was big. She must have been taller than Mindy's sheep"

  "Mindy who?" Mitch asks.

  "Mindy Woolf. She's got this sheep dog named Merlin. Anyway, the momthe catamount momwas taller than Merlin. And Merlin's the biggest dog I've ever seen!"

  "Thank you, Miranda," John says, his voice even.

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  Shaking her head back and forth, my daughter continues, "I'm not kidding, Mr. Bussey, I'll bet you've never seen anything like it! And the mother catamount, she wasn't just big, she was beautiful. No offense to Mindy, but she was a lot prettier than Merlin. And a lot faster too, I'll bet."

  The Powder Peak attorney glances once at Ian Rawls, his client, staring out the window at nothing. John then turns to Mitch Valine. "No more questions, Mitch," he says. "Let's go get something to eat."

  "You were sensational, Miranda Avery-Winston!" Patience coos at her niece at the Sign in the Sky, a vegetarian cafeteria a few blocks away from the statehouse.

  Miranda pushes her falafel burger around on her plate with her fork, and tries to smile. "Will the people at the ski resort change their minds now?"

  "About cutting down the trees where we saw the catamounts?"

  "Uh-huh."

  Laura looks at me as she massages her daughter's back. "Well, there's a chance now, sweetheart. And that's more than there was a couple of days ago."

  "What else can we do?" she asks.

  Before Laura or I can respond, Patience smiles and answers, "You did everythingand morethat anyone could do to beat that little shi"

  "Easy, Patience," I tell my sister-in-law, cutting her off.

  "You did everything you could to beat the pants off of John Bussey, King Twerp," she continues.

  I can tell that Miranda isn't satisfied with her aunt's conclusion. "I hope so," she says simply.

  The afternoon session is scheduled to begin in fifteen minutes, so I begin to pile my family's plates onto my tray. "Do you plan to eat that, or just build a falafel mountain?" I ask Miranda.

  "Finished."

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  Laura joins me with a tray full of plates and glasses, and together we bring them to a special return window on one side of the cafeteria.

  "Honestly," Laura says, "do you think there is a chance to win?"

  "There's some. A lot will depend on how well the Powder Peak witnesses do. And how well Dawn's cross goes. She and Reedy are practicing right now. But it has become one of those 'battle of the experts' kind of hearings. 'Our experts are bigger than your experts.' 'My dad's experts can beat up your dad's experts."

  "What if we lose?"

  "We? Must we be the Copper Project?"

  "Scottie, come on."

  "I mean that," I tell her, trying to keep my voice low. "Hasn't this been hard enough? Hasn't everything I've ... I've given up been enough?"

  "This isn't about what you've given up."

  "It sure as hell is."

  "Scottie"

  "At least it should be. For you, for Reedy. I've given up a career that"

  "For your daughter," Laura snaps at me, angry. "You're not doing this for Reedy McClure, and you're not doing this for me. So don't you dare try and make me feel guilty."

  I shake my head. "Let's face it: If Miranda and I hadn't seen those stupid animals last July, Miranda would be in school right now, you'd be running your business, and I'd be where I'm supposed to be. Where I like to be."

  "Where do you like to be? Drying up rivers?"

  "And creating jobs."

  Laura presses her tongue against the inside of her cheek, and takes a deep breath. People at nearby tables in the restaurant have begun to stare. "But you did see the catamounts," she says. "We've been through this and through this. Wondering where you'd be right now if you hadn't seen them is like some scientist