Water Witches, Page 3

  He has photographs of almost every animal he has saved.

  And when Reedy is home in Vermont, he spends his nights

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  sleeping with my sister-in-law Patience, and his days tormenting me. He has told me many times in the hallways of the capital building and as we have ridden the chair lifts together at Powder Peak's mountains, that he and Patience really have only one thing in common: the rich, enveloping happiness they receive from seeing me squirm. But they have dated for close to four years now, since about the time that Miranda started school. They keep separate houses, but it is commonly understood around town that most nights they are in one bed.

  Most of the legislature believes that Reedy and I dislike each other, but nothing could be further from the truth. We actually like each other a good deal. And we respect each other. If Laura and I had stronger stomachs, perhaps, or the kind of money that lurks in Reedy's family trust funds, it is possible that we would follow him on his periodic trips into the environmental nightmares in which he revels.

  The fact is, I like to ski with Reedy, I like to drink with Reedy, I like simply to sit and talk with Reedy. Perhaps the one issue on which we fundamentally cannot agree is his choice in women. But I too view myself as an environmentalist, I too am a democrat with a large and a small "d". The difference between Reedy and me is simply one of degrees: I am a reasonable man and Reedy McClure is a fanatic.

  As a result of these degrees, however, Reedy and I will almost always wind up on the opposite sides of Vermont's more public debates. In the last year alone, we have fought over the construction of new condominiums near the Powder Peak Ski Resort; the expansion of a computer company in Burlington; and the addition to a small factory in St. Albans that makes colorful little statues of the Virgin Mary. I am confident that if Reedy and I were to look back over the last five or six years worth of legislation, the last five or six years worth of state changes, we would find that each of us has won about equally often.

  Moreover, whenas Laura's mother would saythe sap is

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  finally boiled down to something like syrup, most people would probably see that I am not the ogre of expansion in which I am sometimes portrayed, and Reedy is not the mindless but dangerous tree hugger my clients have feared.

  When I arrive at my office Thursday morning, Reedy is already waiting for me on the couch in the small reception room that looks out over the capital building parking lot. He is reading the business section (business page, actually) of the Montpelier Sentinel, his mass of curly brown hair still wild with sleep. Our firm has a temporary receptionist this week, a young woman named Peg who happens to be the daughter of one of my two partners, Duane Hurley, and she is eyeing Reedy suspiciously. It may be that she knows who Reedy is, and fears an enemy infiltration of sorts; or it may simply be the dirt that Reedy has left on the new carpet, perfect brown footprints that match the soles of his hiking boots.

  He stands to face me, frowning, and directs my attention to a story in Roger Noonan's newspaper.

  "This is a joke, right?" he asks, referring to something on the business page.

  "The Sentinel? Well, yes. But I wouldn't tell Roger that."

  "I don't mean the newspaper!"

  I take the paper from Reedy and skim one of the top articles, a continuation from the main section's front page. As I had expected, someone in the state's Agency of Natural Resources told the newspaper about the permits Powder Peak offically requested yesterday morning.

  "Want to go into my office?" I suggest.

  "I would rather drown on sick animal vomit. But since I want to hear how in the name of God you think you're going to pull this off, I'd love to."

  "Coffee?"

  "That would be great. You want some?"

  I nod that I do. Peg starts to stand to get us our coffee, but Reedy motions for her to sit down. "You, relax," he says, smiling. "I know where it is."

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  Reedy stretches his legs on the rug in my office to torment me. My carpet is clean, his shoes aren't, and he understands me well enough to know that the footprints he leaves will annoy me until I break down and vacuum them up myself.

  "It's a simple equation," I hear myself saying, my voice friendly and calm. "We can't compete with the west if we don't have snow. And we can't have snow these days unless we make it. And we can't make snow without water."

  "You already make snow on fifty trails!"

  "Forty-eight."

  He snorts. "So how big is the expansion? Really?"

  I sip the last of my coffee, watching the sunlight from the window reflect off the bottom of my mug. "It's not all that big," I tell him, unsure whether I have said this sarcastically, or in a half-hearted attempt to downplay the project. It was probably a little of both. "Fifteen million dollars. The plan is to add snowmaking to the existing trails on the southwest side of Mount Republic, construct a few new trails there, and then add some connecting paths between Republic and Moosehead. That's it, essentially."

  "Connecting paths ..." he says, raising an eyebrow doubtfully. It is one thing for a ski resort to clear a small path to link existing ski trails; it is another thing to mow down enough trees between the top and the bottom of a mountain to create a whole new trail.

  "Yup. Connecting paths."

  "Wide enough, maybe, to be considered ski trails?"

  "Perhaps a couple."

  "How many new condos?"

  "Zero."

  "Are the plans drawn up yet?"

  "Sure are."

  "Can I see them?"

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  "Sure can. Just go by the Agency of Natural Resources. They're a matter of public record now."

  "Oh, for God's sake, Scottie, you must have a set right here in your office."

  "Of course I do. We're professionals here. We make copies of everything."

  "You won't save me the trouble of getting a set myself?"

  "Nope. I tend to think Powder Peak might frown a bit if you were to get your copies of the plans right here. Don't you agree?"

  He shuffles his feet on the carpet, leaving a brown skid on the rug the length of his shin. "So how many trails will get snow?"

  "Probably another eleven," I tell him.

  "And of course you're going to need more power."

  "Of course."

  "How many poles?"

  "Enough to power the snow guns. And the new lift on Moosehead."

  "You son-of-a-bitch, you're putting in a new lift?"

  "You're going to love it. It's a high-speed gondola that will get you and me to the top of the mountain faster than you ever thought possible. Ten-passenger cars, twelve hundred feet per minute. Reedy, you won't have time on the ride to take off your goggles."

  He shakes his head, furious. Evidently, the newspaper reporter had either missed the detail about the new gondola, or failed to report it in the story. "Patience is right. You really can be an asshole."

  "Patience never calls me an asshole, Reedy, you know that. She calls me a prick. In her eyes, that's much, much worse."

  "I just can't believe you waited until the legislature had recessed to put in your permits."

  "Gee, we tried to get them in last month. We tried so hard ..."

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  "I'll bet. Where do you plan on getting the water to make your snow?"

  "The Chittenden River."

  "You can't do that, Scottie, that's a wildlife habitat."

  "Only in West Gardner and East Montpelier. Not in Bartlett."

  "You want to tell me how the mountain is going to get fifteen million dollars to pay for all of this? You told Roger just the other day that Powder Peak was on the verge of bankruptcy."

  "No, I don't think I did. I think I told Roger that the entire ski industry was on the verge of bankruptcy. There's a difference."

  "I hope you don't plan on pulling all of this off for this season."

  "No, of course not. Only the
gondola. The plan is to open the gondola in time for Christmas this year, and the new trails and new snowmaking system next year."

  He shakes his head. "New snowmaking system. Have any of your fat cat friends from down country looked at the Chittenden River lately?"

  "Yup."

  "Any of them comment on the fact it's about twenty percent below normal for this time of year?"

  "Yup."

  "And they think they're going to get away with draining it to make snow?"

  "No one's going to drain the Chittenden River, Reedy. You know that as well as I do."

  "Damn right I do," he says, sitting forward in his chair and leaning across my desk. "Because I'm going to stop them."

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  4

  Patience was eleven years old when the governor's son and his best friend disappeared. It was early March, when the weather in Vermont can be both unpredictable and unforgiving: The temperature might climb into the forties one day, and then plunge to near zero the next. Snowstorms and squalls will appear out of nowhere, abruptly blocking out the sun and the sky, and dropping more snow on the ground in an hour than the ski industry's snow guns can make in a night.

  The governor's son was an excellent recreational pilot, and he and a friend were flying from Montpelier to Plattsburgh, a small upstate city on the New York side of Lake Champlain. Both men were in their early thirties, and both worked for Vermont: The governor's son was a sergeant in the state police, and his friend was the Washington County state attorney.

  When the pair left the ground in Montpelier one Saturday,

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  the skies were partly cloudy, but visibility was excellent. The governor's son's single-engine Piper climbed quickly to four thousand feet, veered northwest, and then continued upward through five and then six thousand feet. At six thousand feet they hit turbulence, and the pilot asked Air Traffic Control for permission to climb through a cloud to eight thousand feet. Air Traffic Control said fine.

  As the plane powered through the cloud, the wings iced up. Almost instantly, the wings, the propeller, and the cabin were completely covered with ice. It happened within seconds, the sort of abrupt and dangerous dousing for which Vermont squalls are well known and rightly feared.

  The pilot immediately asked for permission to fly to ten thousand feet, but by then it was already too late. The pilot saw the plane's automatic free-fall gear drop, and the plane lost all thrust and lift. Air Traffic Control asked the governor's son if he wanted to turn back to Montpelier, or whether he wanted to try and coax the aircraft to Burlington. He never bothered to answer. The air speed indicator had dropped to zero, the controls were mush, and the plane was falling at a rate of five thousand feet per minute.

  It crashed somewhere near Mount Ira Allen, but no one was quite sure where. The Vermont Civil Air Patrol flew over the mountain until dark Saturday afternoon, and at one point there were six planes in the air, circling the mountaintop like osprey, and terrifying the skiers on Spruce Peak. But they never saw any sign of the crash. The search was scheduled to resume at sunrise Sunday morning, but overnight a cold front moved in, and with it a layer of thick clouds at about two thousand feet. Air reconnaissance was impossible.

  The families of the two men were desperate. In addition to clouds, the cold front had brought with it temperatures well below freezing, and a very good chance of snow. Especially at the higher elevations. No one was exactly sure what either man was wearing when they took off, but the pilot's wife was fairly confident that the jackets they wore were no heavier than

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  windbreakers. After all, it was forty five degrees when they left Montpelier, and they had planned to return to Vermont that night.

  Even if the pair had managed to survive the crash, if they weren't found soon they would probably die of exposure.

  The governor had never met Patience Avery of Landaff, but he had heard stories about her prowess. The little girl dowser. The little girl who could not simply find water, she could determine its depth; she could tell you whether it was potable or poisonous, whether it was from a spring that could be diverted. The little girl who had tracked down her own father, dead, one fall, but who had also found a small boy, alive, one spring.

  He wondered aloud to his press secretary whether it was possible the little girl could find for them his son and his friend.

  The press secretary shrugged, but said that he knew the little girl's mother, Anna, from high school. He said he would be happy to call her.

  The governor knew little about the art of dowsing itself, but by then it was almost noon on Sunday morning, and the planes were still grounded. The search parties on foot were moving over the mountain very, very slowly. And the front wasn't due to break for at least another day. At least. Moreover, the weather service had upgraded the chance of snow from fifty percent to seventy-five percent, and thought that it might start well before sunset. And so the governor told his press secretary to call Anna Avery of Landaff, and ask her if her daughter could ... if her daughter would help them.

  The press secretary thought Anna sounded reluctant when he first spoke to her, and attributed that hesitation to money. He hadn't thought to offer any, and he decided he should have.

  He was wrong. Money wasn't the problem at all. Anna Avery wasn't the type to charge for her services, or those of her daughter's. She and her daughterdear God, especially her daughterhad a rare and special gift, and it was a gift they were meant to share, not sell.

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  No, Anna's hesitation stemmed from the simple fact that it was twenty-five degrees outside, it looked like it might snow, and the last thing she wanted was her eleven-year-old daughter running around Mount Ira Allen in a blizzard.

  Patience and Laura were with their mother when the governor's press secretary called. Patience had heard about the plane crash on the public radio news that morning, so she understood exactly what the press secretary wanted. He wanted her. He wanted her to find the people who had crashed somewhere near Mount Ira Allen.

  ''I'm sorry," Patience heard her mother saying, "I don't want my daughter up on that mountain today, not with a storm coming in. She's only eleven years old!"

  Patience climbed out of her chair and went to her mother. She tugged on the sleeve of her mother's blouse, and insisted, "I can do it."

  Anna Avery put her hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone, and said quietly, "I know you can, sweetheart. But I don't want you to climb"