Water Witch (3 page)

“Man, that’s got to be tough, having her
around all the time, huh? I mean you’ve only been married a little
over a year. Isn’t that sort of still in the newlywed phase?”

“Yeah, well . . . you’ve gotta do what you’ve
gotta do for family, right?”

I tsked. “No fair. That’s a set up if I’ve
ever heard one.”

“Dunny, those kids . . .”

I knew what was coming and didn’t want to
hear it. I wanted to go back to earlier, when opening a can of beef
stew for a mangy mutt was my only concern. Right then, I almost
wished for a tornado or to be driving around and have some
pimply-face kid broadside my truck. Anything but what Angelle was
about to ask.

“You have to come out here and help find
them.”

I shook my head. “I can’t, and you know why.
What about the police? Haven’t they been called in? Haven’t they
sent out search parties?”

“Everyone’s been looking, neighbors,
teachers, other students. Bayou Crow only has one cop, so they sent
a couple of deputies from Iberville Parish Sheriff’s Department
yesterday. Problem is they already had to pull them out this
morning. Dunny, this town’s so small; if those kids were around
here, we’d have found them by now.”

“Not if someone grabbed them and hauled ass
to another town.”

“Yeah, I thought of that, but there’s only
one main road that runs in and out of Bayou Crow. People around
here are too nosey to not have noticed a strange car trolling the
street. Someone would have seen something—said something. The only
logical place those kids could be is in the swamp. And if someone
took them in there, and they manage to escape somehow, there’s no
way they’re going to be able to find their way out by themselves.
They’ll die out there, if they’re not dead already. It’s as simple
as that, Dunny. You have to come. If anyone can find those babies,
I know you can.”

“Shit,” I muttered, then trapped the phone
between my right ear and shoulder and wiped the sweat from my palms
on my jeans. Fritter was still pawing frantically, but at least his
howling had stopped. I finally asked, “Did you tell anyone about
me, about what I can do? Does anyone there know?”

“I haven’t said a word to anybody. Trevor
doesn’t even know, and no one has to know. You can wear your gloves
like always. I’ll just tell them you’re here visiting, then when we
go out to look for the kids, I’ll make sure we’re alone. No one
will find out, I swear. Dunny, you have to come.”

I sighed, suddenly feeling like the most
exhausted thirty-three-year-old on the planet. No more fresh-dug
potato and onion scents to comfort me. All I smelled now was
trouble. “Gelle, I’ve never done it around a lot of water before.
Even if I went out there, there’s no guarantee it’s going to
work.”

“But that’s just it; at least you’d have
tried. Remember all you did even without trying? The water at the
Hughes’ place—the oil on Mom and Pop’s property? And Pirate

. . . don’t forget about Pirate.”

“I don’t—“

“Look, there’s a plane that leaves out of
Midland at seven-thirty tomorrow morning. It connects in Houston,
gets into Baton Rouge a little after eleven. I sent the link with
all the flight information to your email address. You won’t have to
worry about renting a car or getting directions here, I’ll pick you
up. All you have to do is say you’ll come.”

Fritter gave a high-pitched yelp, and when I
looked over at him, he slammed his body against the door, just as
he’d done to my truck. The expression on his face, if a dog could
have an expression, and this one certainly seemed capable, read,
“Don’t even think about it!”

I didn’t want to think about it. But what
choice did I have? In truth, it wasn’t so much a repeat of the past
that I feared, as it was not finding those kids. Suppose I went out
there and nothing happened? Eventually I’d have to leave Bayou Crow
knowing I’d failed. I’d have to carry the weight, the guilt, the
burden of those lost kids all the way back to Texas. I didn’t know
if I could live with that. And truth be told, I did worry about
people knowing my secret, as selfish as that felt under the
circumstances. It had taken a long time to get my life on an even
keel, to get people to forget about me and move onto some other
freak. Going out there could bring everything back, everything I’d
worked so hard to leave behind—everything that shoved loneliness
front and center.

“Dunny?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

:So . . . will you?”

“I’ll be there,” I said quietly, then hung up
the phone, realizing only after I turned away from it that I hadn’t
told my sister goodbye.

Feeling like the soles of my feet had been
painted with Super Glue, I made my way from the kitchen into the
living room and over to the large picture window that took up most
of the east wall. Beyond the window, in the center of the front
yard, stood a twenty-foot mesquite tree. Its thorny branches didn’t
flow up and out like an oak or a pine. They were twisted and bent
at awkward angles, refusing to conform to any standard
horticultural symmetry. Pop had worked for years pruning, trimming,
literally training the mesquite to be a tree. Left on its own, it
would have grown to be little more than a scraggly border shrub,
but under his care, it stood tall and birthed beautiful lavender
flowers. If only I’d have fared as well under Pop’s care as that
mesquite.

I placed my left palm against the windowpane
and spread out my fingers—all six of them. The extra digit had been
there since birth. It had its own bone and was as flexible, if not
more so, than my normal little finger. I never asked why my mother
and father didn't have the appendage removed at birth. I just
assumed it was because they didn’t have the money. By the time Mom
and Pop could afford the surgery, which wasn’t long after the oil
well began to produce, I was in my early teens and had become so
accustomed to the thing by then, I feared losing it more than I did
the ridicule and curious looks it brought from other people.

I was only eight when I learned to fold the
extra digit into my palm or to wear gloves while out in public.
Gloves were a bit of a hassle because I always had to get two pair,
one a size larger than what I normally wore. That way I could mix
the left larger with the right smaller so the extra finger would
fit into the finger sleeve along with its sister. As closely as I
tried matching them, however, the gloves still managed to draw
attention. They were just too out of place in Cyler. It was rarely
cold enough here, even in winter, to wear a heavy coat, much less
gloves. And as if it wasn’t bad enough I had to hide the deformity,
by the time I turned ten, I discovered the damned thing could do
stuff
.

The first time I found that out was on a
Sunday afternoon, when Angelle and I had gone with Mom Pollock to
visit Frieda Hughes, a neighbor. The entire time we were over
there, Frieda whined about the number of drillers she’d brought out
to her property in the last month and how not one of them had been
able to find a freshwater well—and, oh, Lord what was she to do?
While Frieda was in the throes of one of her famous pity parties, I
grabbed Angelle, and we escaped to the backyard for a game of hide
and seek. One minute I was giggling with anticipation of finding
the perfect hiding place, and the next I was standing near an old
tractor shed behind the Hughes’ house, grimacing in pain.

The extra finger had folded into my palm on
its own. And it hurt as if someone had trapped it in the jaws of a
clothespin. Angelle, who’d been the designated seeker at the time,
found me with little effort. At first she’d laughed in triumph,
then realized I wasn’t so stupid as to hide out in the open. When
she asked why I was just standing there instead of playing the
game, I meant to tell her it was because my finger was hurting so
bad. Instead, I wound up saying, “Go get Mom Pollock. There’s a lot
of water under here.” Then I pointed to the ground beneath my
feet.

Two days later the same drillers who’d been
out the previous week found a wide freshwater spring, sixty-feet
below the ground on the very spot I’d predicted. Dowsing wasn’t an
unusual occurrence in Cyler, only the known dowsers normally used
forked willow branches or thin metal rods. No one had ever heard of
a kid dowsing, much less a kid dowsing with a finger.

Word spread quickly after the Hughes' find,
and Mom and Pop Pollock did their best to protect me from the
clinging people, many coming as far away as New Mexico, all of them
hounding me for help. No one could protect me, though, from the
teasing at school. While other misfits were tagged with names like
Four-Eyes, Fattie, Banana-nose, or Dumbo, I got stuck with Freak
and Water Witch.

The worst of it came soon after I discovered
oil on Mom and Pop's property. Although no one in the family had
breathed a word about how the oil had been found, people
immediately assumed I was responsible. Folks appeared in droves,
begging me to search their land for black gold. It got so bad, we
had to get an unlisted phone number, and Pop had to put a gate at
the end of the driveway to keep people away.

Unfortunately, instead of growing tall and
fruitful under Pop's care, like the mesquite, I shrank away from
people. Their greed overwhelmed me. It still did. I was a freak
that people tried to manipulate with lies and promises they never
meant to keep. And that didn’t change once I became an adult. I was
still a target for manipulation, especially from men. I’d been
wined and dined by some of the best, only to find out later that
they meant to use my abilities for their own gain.

To make matters worse, I found out about five
years ago that my finger’s talent extended beyond finding oil and
water, lost lockets and misplaced keys. Back then, Angelle's yellow
and black calico, Pirate, who’d been part of the family for years,
went missing. I’d searched for that stupid cat, consciously
focusing on it and trusting that my extra finger would find it.
And, of course, it did. Instead of pulling into my palm and
pinching like it had when I’d found the water, though, or
stretching outward and aching like when I’d discovered the oil, it
had grown limp and cold. By the time I located Pirate's headless,
mauled body under a thicket a mile away from the house, my finger
had felt encased in ice.

It was then I’d sworn Angelle to secrecy. If people
went nuts over water and oil, what would they do if they knew I
could locate other things, like dead bodies? Since my sister was
the only one to witness my finding Pirate, I made her swear a
solemn oath never to tell anyone about it, and she hadn’t. I’d also
made her promise to never bring the matter up again, and she
hadn't. Until now.

The thought of searching through a swamp for
two missing children made me queasy and sent a litany of doubts
tumbling through my mind. It wasn’t about searching through so much
water. That had only been an excuse. What I feared most was
failure. What if those kids
were
in the swamp and I couldn’t
find them? Then again, what if they were in there and I
did
find them, only dead?And there was no telling what else my finger
might dredge up from hiding in those dark, murky waters.

From somewhere deep inside, instinct warned
me to stay home. But judging by the heaviness in my chest, my heart
had already succumbed to the missing kids. I had to go.

Drawing in a long breath, then releasing it
slowly to calm myself, I dropped my hand from the window and
watched the imprint of all those fingers fade away. If only
disappearing were that easy . . .

With my head clogged with worry, I headed out
of the living room and to the computer that held the information on
the Baton Rouge flight. As I passed through the kitchen, I heard
Fritter whimper from behind the screen door. I looked over at
him.

“Don’t even start,” I warned. “I don’t want
to hear it.”

He flicked his tongue over his snout, stared
at me.

“There just little kids. I have to go . . .
so quit staring at me like that godammit.”

Fritter chuffed once, and in that sound, I
could’ve sworn by all that was sacred I heard the words,
“You’ll
be sorry.”

CHAPTER THREE

The Baton Rouge Airport was smaller than I
expected. It didn’t take long for me to get from the gate and to a
set of wide glass doors that whooshed open, welcoming me to a warm
and humid Louisiana day. Angelle had told me about the heat and
humidity that baked the state in the summer, but she hadn’t told me
that summer began in April. It was obvious other travelers hadn’t
been warned either, for a few had arrived in heavy coats and
sweaters, most of which were stripped off immediately.

I squinted against the sun and marveled at
how green everything looked—grass, trees, shrubby, so lush and
beautiful. In Cyler, spring took its sweet old time coming about.
And even then, its landscape remained predominately brown due to
drought. Back home, the air always smelled of dust and desert, but
here it was scented with pine, jasmine, and a hint of something
that smelled a little like bananas.

A horn honked, and a gray Camry pulled up to
the curb in front of me. No sooner did it stop, than the trunk
popped open. An elderly woman peered out at me from the back
passenger window. She pressed her face against the glass and
smiled, lips curling in over toothless gums, heavy jowls jiggling.
She had brilliant green eyes that held the expression of a child
who’d just seen her first department store Santa—a little fear and
a whole lot of wonder.

Someone tugged on the strap of the carry-on
bag I had slung over my right shoulder, and I glanced over to see
my sister standing beside me.

“Hey you,” she said, and offered a faltering
smile. “Sorry if you had to wait long.”