Water Witches

  Macomber shakes his head no, and smiles in a way that looks condescending to me. It probably wasn't, but it felt that way. "That's correct. I doubt very, very much that what they saw were catamounts."

  Dawn warned Reedy that there would be little she could do during the cross-examination, other than argue that just because Macomber did not see any evidence of catamounts on Mount Republic did not mean there were none there. The Copper Project's catamount "expert," a researcher with the state Sierra Club, had already argued that catamounts still roamed Vermont. Her hope now, Dawn said, was that Macomber would be sufficiently open-minded to allow room for dissent.

  "How long is a fisher cat?" she asks him.

  "Twenty to twenty-five inches. About two feet."

  "How about a feral cat?"

  "Feral cats are just ordinary house cats that have returned to the wild. So they're a little smaller than fisher cats."

  "How about catamounts? How long are theythe kind of mountain lion found here in Vermont?"

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  He rests his chin in his hands, weighing his response. "If there were mountains lions in Vermont, I'd estimate they would be about four feet long."

  "Twice as big as a fisher cat?"

  "At least twice as long. But, overall, four or five times as big. And that's an important distinction."

  "I agree. Given the difference in size between a fisher cat and a catamount, how likely is it that two peopletwocould mistake a fisher cat for a catamount?"

  "If you're referring specifically to the Winstons, I would have to say it's possible. They saw the animals at night"

  "They saw the animals at eight thirty in July."

  "In my experience, the light that's left that time of the day can play tricks on anyone. It certainly has on me."

  "You spent four days in Vermont. How long do you spend, on average, tracking mountain lions out west?"

  "Significantly longer."

  "What is significantly longer? One more day? Two? A week?

  "Professor Richardson, an associate of mine at the university, and I have been known to track mountain lions for months."

  "Months. And yet after only four days in Vermont, you're willing to rule out completely the possibility that any mountain lions remain in the state?"

  "I don't rule out the possibility completely. I simply said that, in my opinion, it is not very likely."

  "After four days."

  "Ms. Ciandella," he begins, as if speaking to a stubborn student, "when we track a mountain lion for months, we're not tracking it in a vacuum. We don't wander aimlessly through the Rocky Mountains, hoping we will stumble upon it. It isn't like that. We follow evidence. We look for signs. Claw marks that are fifty or sixty inches high on a tree trunk. Indications that an appropriate kill has occurred. We find and follow a trail."

  "Did you hear the testimony from the Sierra Club this morning?"

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  "I did."

  "The state Sierra Club believes catamounts might still live in Vermont. Is that organization, and all of the evidence it has amassed, absolutely wrong?"

  "All I can do is give you my views. I can't speak for the Sierra"

  "That's what I want. Your views. Based on your four days on Mount Republic, is the expert from the Sierra Club completely mistaken? Is there absolutely no possibilitynonethat catamounts remain in Vermont?"

  "No."

  "In other words, it is possible?"

  "Yes."

  "And if catamounts still live in the Green Mountains, isn't it also possible that Scottie and Miranda Winston saw some?"

  "Yes, it's possible. But"

  "Thank you. That will be"

  "But it isn't likely," Macomber continues, turning to face Mitch Valine and the Environmental Board. "In my opinion, whatever the Winstons saw were not mountain lions."

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  29

  The sun has been high and bright all Friday morning, and the weather report doesn't predict much change tomorrow. A few high clouds, little more. We may get some rain late Sunday night or Monday morning, but by then Patience and Reedy's wedding will be behind them, and the two will be far from Vermont. No one but Reedy knows exactly where the pair will be: Reedy has claimed that he is taking Patience with him to the coast of British Columbia, where an oil tanker ran aground in July, and the cleanup crews have barely begun to make a dent in the spill. Patience says that he wouldn't dare do such a thing, and is taking them to Scotland instead, where together they will savor and study the country's mythic cairns: the piles of stones that may have been pushed together by an ancient people. The cairns are considered by somesuch as

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  the faculty of the Green Mountain School of Earth Scienceto have extensive spiritual properties.

  And then there is Miranda's guess. "Wonderland," she suggested, meaning, I have to assume, Disneyland.

  A little before noon, our receptionist tells me, "Senator McClure is here. He wants to know if you have a minute."

  I sit back in my chair and smile. Do I have a minute.

  "Oh, I think I can squeeze him in," I answer. "Send him back."

  "Shouldn't you be home, doing whatever it is you're supposed to be doing for the rehearsal dinner tonight?" I ask him, as he sits down opposite my desk.

  "We're ready. Or we'll be ready. I'm not worried. I know it's supposed to be my show, but the bridesmaids seem to have taken over."

  "So I gather. Still ..."

  "I know, my parents would never have approved of half the stuff that will probably go on. At the day of reckoning, however, I'll be pretty darn pleased with myself if my worst sin was letting an army of new agers trample what was once my mother's garden, or paint some runes on my father's stone wall."

  "You realize, don't you, that you took your life in your hands coming to this office?"

  "Not really. I called first, and made sure that your partners had both gone to lunch."

  "Cowardly. But smart."

  He looks down at the carpet, and recognizes instantly the stain he once left there with his boots. He points at it with his finger. "Did I do that?"

  "Sure did."

  "Good Lord, I did that months ago! Don't you guys ever clean your carpets?"

  "It never came out."

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  He shakes his head. "I'm sorry."

  "It's a carpet. Don't worry."

  He sits forward in his chair, and says softly, "I saw an empty office. Did I do that too?"

  "No, I did. At least literally."

  "I guess I should be sorry for that also."

  Perhaps because this is his wedding weekend, I decide to be charitable and let him off the hook. "Not at all. Did you come by for lunch?" I ask.

  "No. I really should get back to the homestead, you're right. But I have some news."

  "Your appeal? It's not possible. It's going to take the Board at least two or three weeks to write up their decision."

  "Well, yes and no." He stands up and pushes the door shut with the tips of his fingers, and then sits on the radiator by the window. "This is all very secret still. The Board expects the news will be leaked to the Sentinel soon enough, but I was still asked to keep the decision quiet."

  "So you came right here to spill your soul."

  "Right. Mitch Valine called."

  "Mitch Valine called you?"

  "He called me and Ian. Some of the other Board members convinced him that the Copper Project and Powder Peak deserved to have a sense of their decision as soon as possible."

  "Because you're about to disappear for two weeks?"

  "That may have been part of it. But it's also in Powder Peak's interest to know quickly."

  Outside my window and across the street, a small breeze blows some of the leaves off the maple trees on the statehouse lawn. It's still early September, but with a dry summer, the leaves will go fast.

  "And? You're smiling. You must have won."

  "You? It still isn't we? Why can't you bring y
ourself to say that?"

  "We?"

  "Yes!"

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  I sigh. "I can."

  He picks up one of the photographs of Laura, a picture of her taken at the top of Moosehead the March before last. Spring skiing. One of those days when the temperature is forty degrees, but the sun feels even warmer as it bounces off the snow. As I recall, Laura and I skied that afternoon until five thirty. We were the last two people down the mountain that day.

  "Then say it," Reedy continues.

  "All right. We. How was that?"

  "Adequate. No more."

  "Okay, here's a wedding present: Did we win?"

  He grins, replacing the frame on the radiator, angling it so that the glass doesn't reflect the sun and I can see my wife right now from my desk. "Yes, sort of. I'm seventy-five percent happy."

  I nod, waiting for Reedy to continue.

  "We won our appeal on what was for me the biggest issue. The Chittenden River. Mitch says the Board is going to overturn the approvals Liza's commission granted the resort. Powder Peak won't be allowed to use the Chittenden to make snow until the river has recovered."

  That day in the March before last, Laura and I went straight from the mountain to one of the slope-side condominiums that wasn't rented that week, and slipped nude into the soothing bubbles of its Jacuzzi.

  "That could be years," I tell Reedy, something he already knows.

  "Yup."

  When we finally climbed from the Jacuzzi our muscles were Jell-O, and we were unwilling to remain on our feet and walk the twenty or thirty feet to the bedroom. We made love on the carpet on the living room floor, with the drapes to the sliding doors open so we could watch the snow that glowed under the moon.

  "What about the new trails?"

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  ''That's the other twenty-five percent," Reedy says.

  "The Board is going to uphold the commission on that one?"

  He nods his head yes. "Yup. They can start clearing trees on Republic as soon as the decision is official, and dropping pylons for the gondola on Moosehead."

  When Laura and I finally returned home, Miranda was watching television with Gertrude Scutter. I remember standing for a moment in the front hallway of our house, watching my daughter as she emerged from the den in her nightgown, and Laura as she tossed her ski parka into the closet, and thinking to myself that there wasn't a luckier man in the world.

  "Well. That's it then, isn't it?" I can feel Reedy watching me, preparing for my reaction. I look back at him, and wonder what he sees in my eyes. "So much for the catamounts. So much for Mount Republic."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Me too. It really was a beautiful mountain, wasn't it?"

  "You make it sound like it's going to disappear."

  "Oh, I know it's not. And I know at night it will look the same. When there's a moon. But not during the day. During the day you'll be able to see all the trails. Those big, wide cuts. When there's no snow on the ground, they look like they must hurt the mountain. Physically."

  "God almighty, is this Scottie Winston talking? Listen to you, you sound like me!"

  "Ironic, isn't it?"

  "It is indeed."

  "I spent a good part of last night apologizing to Laura. I've been sort of ... I've been a prick to her lately."

  He looks out the window at the statehouse, unsure what to do with my confession. When he turns back to me, he does what most mencertainly what Iwould do. He turns my admission into a bad joke.

  "You're a lawyer. What does she expect?"

  "She expects better. She deserves better."

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  He nods. "So what's next?" he asks awkwardly, trying to change the subject. "What will Powder Peak do now?"

  "If I know Goddard," I answer, "he's going to push to have at least some of the trails up and open this seasonby Washington's Birthday, maybe. He needs that water a hell of a lot more than he needs those trails, but he'll take anything he can get at this point."

  "The hills are alive with the sound of chain saws," Reedy says, trying to lighten the point. He then adds, "I guess we knew that part of the appeal was a long shot."

  "I guess."

  "If it were my decision, I would have ruled in favor of the little girl and the lobbyist. I mean that, being as objective as I possibly can."

  "Which is being, of course, completely biased."

  Outside my window the noon siren wails.

  "You know what's too bad?" I ask Reedy.

  He says nothing, waiting.

  "Miranda has turned out to be the real loser in this whole process. She'll be really and truly saddened by that decision. She'll be as saddened by it as any kid her age can be."

  "It was a rough summer for her."

  "You bet. I don't think she went two days in a row without bringing up Elias, or the catamounts."

  "Or forest fires, I'd imagine."

  There are two photos of Miranda on my desk, one of which was taken earlier this summer, when she grew into a butterfly for the Fourth of July. "And I agreed to let her testify. I just can't believe it. I must have been out of my mind. I must have been out of my fucking mind."

  "Well. Don't get mad at yourself. Get mad at me. It was my idea."

  "No, I'm not mad at you. On some level, I'm not even angry with myself. Not really. I'm just disappointed. I'm disappointed for Miranda," I tell him, shaking my head as. I speak. "I just can't believe what kind of summer she had. The poor kid,

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  she even lost her croquet court. Can you believe it? She had to trade her croquet court so we could have water to flush the damn toilets!"

  Reedy tries to smile at the reference, and says, "I wouldn't worry about Miranda. She's a resilient kid. She'll bounce back."

  "I know that. But that doesn't make it any easier for her right now."

  "And she may have had some disappointments, but you saved her from the big one."

  "Which is?"

  He rolls his eyes. "You're such an asshole, sometimes. I mean you! Her father. She knows the sacrifice you made. She knows it now, and she'll know it forever. Scottie, she'll appreciate what you did as long as she lives."

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  30

  I chose Las Vegas for the same reason Mother Theresa chose Calcutta," Carpe Tiller tells me Friday night before dinner.