Water Witches

  "We had every intention of returning it," he said softly, tossing the bag to Patience. "Everything should still be there."

  The Princess grabbed the bag and immediately glanced inside. Patience could tell by the almost orgasmic sigh of relief

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  that escaped from the Princess's lips that the secret lining was undisturbed, and the letters were still there.

  "We really were going to return it," Oates continued to babble from his spot on the floor, as the two women left his room, smiling, unconcerned by the fraternity brother with a camera who snapped picture after picture after picture.

  I try not to listen to the sound of running water in the small sink in the next room. Our receptionist is cleaning the coffee cups and saucers that were used in a client meeting earlier this afternoon, and suddenly the urgent rush of water from the tap to the sink to the drain unnerves me. I felt this way when I was shaving this morning.

  Ian Rawls has come into Montpelier from the ski resort just outside of town, to join me for a conference call with Goddard Healy in San Francisco. While gallons of water douse a few small coffee cups in the room beside us, Ian and I stare at a speakerphone in the middle of the round conference table between us.

  "When you use the word protest," Goddard is asking, his voice strangely tired, "do you mean a thousand people with television cameras, or a couple of idiots in flannel shirts with a handwritten banner?"

  "I expect this will be an extremely well-organized event," Ian tells him. "I don't know if they'll actually get a thousand people, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were able to round up four or five hundred. Counting the children."

  "Counting the children ..." Goddard repeats.

  I reach behind me and gently push the door shut, shielding myself from the sound of the running water.

  "And I'm sure the CBS affiliate up in Burlington will send down a crew. So might the NBC station out of Plattsburgh."

  "Who's behind the rally? Locals or professionals?"

  Ian looks at me, not understanding Goddard's question, and then motions with his finger that I should answer this one.

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  ''We don't believe there are any outside activists or organizers," I explain, recalling the photograph Goddard showed me of his new girlfriend. "No one from Greenpeace, no one from Earth First. At least we haven't heard of anyone. But the group is being led by a very savvy, very smart local politician: a state senator named Reedy McClure."

  "Is the group protesting the whole expansion, or just some part of it? Like that river we're tapping?"

  "Well, the Chittenden River is a big part of their concern. Especially with this drought"

  "Droughts come and go! I keep telling you that!"

  "I understand that, Goddard. But the fact remains, it's exacerbating the situation. It's making everything seem more dire than it really is."

  "So is the Chittenden their focus?"

  "Yes. But they're not real wild about the trees we plan to cut down on Mount Republic either."

  Goddard snorts. "Give me the date for the rally again. It's a week from today"

  "It's a week from yesterday. It's Monday, June twentieth."

  "They're smart. Monday is usually a slow news day. They'll have a better chance of television coverage."

  "Reedy McClure is very smart," I add. "He's putting together a coalition of mothers, fathers, fishermen, hunters, environmentalistsit's quite a group."

  "Either of you boys know anyone with any sway over him?"

  "He's about to become Scottie's brother-in-law," Ian says, grinning at me.

  I mouth the words thank you to Ian, smile back, and then extend toward the ceiling the middle finger of my right hand.

  "He's what?" Goddard asks, and I envision the man sitting forward in his desk chair a continent away, sitting up in disbelief. It's sometimes difficult for anyone who doesn't live in Vermont to comprehend just how small this state is, andbecause of that sizehow incestuous politics have become.

  "He's marrying my wife's older sister," I explain, keeping my

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  voice even. "I probably have as much sway over Reedy McClure as anyone in Vermont, and that's not very much."

  "What's the name of this ... coalition?

  "It's called the Copper Project."

  "I suppose Copper is an acronym."

  "Correct."

  "Okay: The two P's come from Powder Peak. What's the rest?"

  "Citizens Opposed to the Powder Peak Environmental Rape."

  "Good God, isn't that a little melodramatic?"

  "Not for Reedy McClure."

  The speaker phone goes silent for a long moment. I am about to ask Goddard if he is still there when his voice returns. "Scottie, no offense here, but you know what I hope?" he asks, his voice low with exhaustion, frustration, and disgust.

  "What?"

  Speaking as slowly as I have ever heard him, Goddard says, "I hope some goddamn squirrel bites his goddamn tongue off, so he has to keep his goddamn mouth shut."

  When I went to law school, I never said to myself, "I hope someday I get to represent ski resorts." I never set out to help developers build condominiums and vacation homes in Vermont's older mill towns, or to assist the state's Agency of Economic Development recruit new factories, new plants, new manufacturers. It just worked out that way.

  I grew up as something native Vermonters refer to as a flatlander, a person from New York or New Jersey who visits the state to ski, to hike, to watch the leaves turn in the fall. And then goes home. It never occurred to me when I was twenty-four that a ski resort could cause conflict, that a housing development could trigger debate. Perhaps I was naive. Perhaps things changed.

  But when Laura and I decided that we would build our lives

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  in Vermont, I chose simply to work for the law firm that made me the most lucrative offer. It was not, to my mind, a political decision. Laura, an economics major at college, had already begun work as a commercial loan officer in a Vermont bank, a job she would hold until Miranda was born.

  In any case, three months after I started practicing law, I was defending the tax-exempt status of Vermont's largest hospital before Burlington's revenue-hungry mayor and city council, while justifying the hospital's profits.

  It all just happened, I tell myself now. It all just happened.

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  8

  Elias Gray still drives. He drives badly (although probably no worse than he did fifty years ago), creeping along Vermont's two-lane highways at a top speed of perhaps twenty-five miles per hour. He drives an ancient blue pick-up with rounded wheel covers and rust along the doors that everyone in Landaff can recognize at a very great distance.

  There is a bumper sticker on the back of the truck that reads Indago Felix, an expression Elias roughly translates to mean "Fruitful Search."

  Indago Felix is the motto of the American Society of Dowsers, and is often a part of their logo.

  Saturday morning, Miranda and I find ourselves trapped in our own truck behind Elias, as he twists his way west down Route 2 toward Montpelier.

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  "Has Aunt Patience told him she's getting married again?" Miranda asks, looking straight ahead at Elias's truck.

  "I don't think so. I think she and Mr. McClure are going to visit him this afternoon. I think they're going to tell him together."

  "How come?"

  We approach the long winding descent into East Montpelier, and I begin to brake, anticipating the fact that Elias will drive this part of the road at about ten miles an hour. Between the grocery shopping, a trip to the hardware store for me, and a trip to the bookstore for Miranda, I figure we have about an hour and a half worth of chores before us.

  "Because it's nicer that way. That way, Elias can see how much Aunt Patience and Mr. McClure love each other."

  "Do they really?"

  Above us roll blankets of gray and black clouds, part of a low-pressure system that
has been crossing Vermont for two days, but has left behind not a single drop of rain. The only comfort the clouds have brought us is a short break in the eighty-five-and ninety-degree temperatures that have haunted us since almost mid-May. Today it will probably not break seventy.

  "I don't believe they'd get married if they didn't love each other," I tell my daughter, aware that my answer is vague and evasive. She wanted a categorical, unambiguous yes.

  "Do you want me to start calling Mr. McClure, 'Uncle Reedy'?"

  "Only in my worst nightmares ..."

  Miranda looks at me, confused.

  "No," I explain, "I don't think you should. If you were a very little girl, maybe ... but not now. I don't think Patience would want you to."

  "Well, I don't think Patience even wants to get married," she says, folding her small arms in front of her chest.

  "You don't?" I raise my voice slightly, trying to sound surprised.

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  "Nope."

  "Did she tell you that?"

  "Nope. I just think it."

  A drop of rain falls on our windshield, then a second and a third. As I reach reflexively for the handle by the steering wheel that will turn on the wipers, Miranda says quickly, "No, daddy, don't! Let them stay!"

  We park beside Elias in Montpelier, in the parking lot around the corner from the state Capital. Elias emerges slowly from his truck, stepping down onto the asphalt like a man made of balsa, and wiping his forehead with a handkerchief when he is back on the ground.

  "Good morning," he says to us, waving, as he pushes his handkerchief into his pants pocket.

  "Morning, Elias," I say, taking his hand briefly.

  He bends over as much as his ancient back will allow, his hands cupping his knees, to speak to Miranda. "Broken any hearts lately? Or just an old man's leg?" he asks her, smiling, a reference to the fact that Elias broke his leg two years ago playing croquet with my daughter and Patience.

  "Your leg feel okay today, Mr. Gray?" Miranda asks, looking at the spot on the old man's shin that was once cracked by an errant croquet ball.

  "My leg's fine. It's as good as any ninety-three-year-old leg," he says, adding as he straightens his back, "which means it ain't any good at all."

  "How is Giannine doing?" I ask, referring to his wife. "Is she over her summer cold yet?"

  "Yup. She's feeling fine, thank you." He looks up at the sky, shaking his head. "I thought for a moment we were going to get some rain," he says. "Back in East Montpelier."

  "I thought so too."

  "This dry spell ain't so bad for an old fellow like me who

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  don't farm no more, but it's causing fits for the younger fellows."

  "It sure is," I agree. Beside me I can almost feel Miranda grow tense at the thought of the drought. "I hear you're building a new sugar house," I tell Elias quickly, trying to change the subject.

  "Yup. 'Course, I'm not buildin' it myself. I'm just the old cuss watching. Supervising."

  "That's not what I hear. I hear they're your plans, your design."

  "It's for my grandson. Anson."

  "Yup, that's the rumor. But the whole rig sounds wonderful, Elias. The talk I hear is that you just purchased some monster evaporatorfour by sixteen feet, someone told me."

  He smiles. "They told you wrong. Try six by eighteen."

  "Wow. You'll boil away half the sap in Vermont in something like that," I tell him, recalling the dozens of March afternoons that Laura and Miranda and I have stood in Elias's sugar house, watching vats of sap from sugar maples roll and gurgle and thicken. When the sugar first runs in March, it might be forty degrees outside, but inside Elias's sugar house the air feels like a sauna and the room smells like heaven.

  It smells like it's misting maple syrup.

  "I won't. But someday, Anson will."

  "Oh, you will too, Elias. You know it's not sugaring season in Landaff without Elias Gray. The sap just won't run if you're not there."

  He sighs, and then smiles down at my daughter. When he looks back at me he says, "I'm enough of an optimist to build the thing, Scottie. But I'm not stupid enough to ever expect to use it."

  As Miranda and I walk down Main Street in Montpelier, Miranda sometimes skipping a few feet ahead, we pass by store after store with the same small sign in the window:

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  Stop Powder Peak!

  Help prevent the destruction

  of acres of forest on Mount Republic!

  Help preserve one of Vermont's great

  wildlife habitats!

  Help save the Chittenden River!

  Show your opposition to the expansion

  of the Powder Peak Ski Resort!

  Rally on the Capital Steps

  Monday, June 20, Noon to One thirty

  Sponsored by the Copper Project:

  Citizens Opposed to the Powder Peak

  Environmental Rape

  "Did Mr. McClure do that?" Miranda asks, when she sees me staring at one of the signs.

  "Yup."

  It is clear that the poster was designed by some professional graphic designer, probably some friend of Reedy's from Burlington or Boston. There is a silhouette of the magnificent, hemispheric curve that is Mount Republic along the bottom of the poster, and the Powder Peak Ski Resort logo in the upper right-hand corner.

  The logo sits in the middle of a circle with a wide red line slashed diagonally across the center. No Powder Peak, the slash says.

  Miranda continues, "Is that why you don't want me to call him 'uncle'?"

  Beside the poster announcing the Copper Project rally is one promoting the Barre Town Volunteer Fire Company's annual Fourth of July picnic and dance. The fire company poster has letters written by hand in about five different shades of Magic Marker.

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  I kneel in front of Miranda, and put my hands on her shoulders: "Sweetie, if you want to call Mr. McClure 'Uncle Reedy' when the time comes, I won't mind at all."

  I sit on the porch after church Sunday afternoon with Laura and Patience and their mother, reading thick piles of newspapers. Sometimes we look up to watch Miranda and two of her friends from Brownies play croquet.

  Miranda is actually an extremely accomplished croquet player, capable of far more than merely cracking a ninety-plus-year-old shin, and she makes short work of her friends in game after game. Occasionally, she will race onto our porch and grab a handful of strawberries from the bowl on the wrought-iron table.

  "Elias asked Reedy if he was going to start staying home more, once he becomes a married man," Patience says, referring to the day before when she and Reedy visited the old dowser.

  "Is he?" Anna Avery asks, a trace of concern in her voice. MY mother-in-law, now close to seventy, worries about her older daughter. Although she has spent almost all of her adult life as a widow, she always had Patience and Laura for company. Patience, in her mother's eyes, lives alone in an old village house with neither husband nor children for comfort.