Corpus Calvin by David Swatling

Author:David Swatling [Swatling, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2022-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

I. Valraven

“My Granddaddy Rafferty was one of the founding members of the American Society of Dowsers,” Duane told Valraven with pride, after having charted his family’s dowsing lineage. He took another large bite out of his cheeseburger. The North Country lad’s appetite had returned with a vengeance after his ordeal the day before. Valraven, on the other hand, picked at a rather unappetizing Cobb salad topped with too much Russian dressing. They sat in the booth of a small diner-style restaurant in Plymouth, New Hampshire.

They’d checked out of the Braintree motel, grabbing doughnuts and coffee to go before heading north in Duane’s dilapidated truck. They stuck to state roads, since Duane didn’t trust the temperamental condition of his rusty Tin Lizzie. And sure enough, the engine sputtered and died less than an hour outside Boston. Duane managed to pull off onto the narrow shoulder and spent another hour under the hood coaxing her back to life, voicing nonstop apologies.

Valraven didn’t mind. He was in no particular hurry to get wherever they were going. He was convinced Duane was the ticket to his unknown destination. When Duane said he lived on the northernmost edge of the White Mountains, Valraven vaguely said that’s where he was headed and could he hitch a ride? The unsuspecting young man was happy to oblige. He didn’t even ask his new friend where exactly he was going, which was a relief, since Valraven had no idea. But he would know when he had arrived. Of that he was certain.

“Anyways,” Duane continued after finishing his burger. “Granddaddy quit the Dowser Society over some kind of falling-out with the head honcho, a man named Ray Willey. He even wrote a book about modern dowsing, but Granddaddy said he was sick to death of that dang blasted engineer and his highfalutin ideas. I could see what he meant. Mr. Willey’s book was all kinda technical for being about something that comes from the spirit. That’s how my daddy described dowsing. ‘Nobody knows how it works but that’s no reason not to use it,’ Daddy said. Thomas Edison said the same thing about electricity. If that was a good enough reason for Edison, it was good enough for us dowser folk, too.” He took a sip of his iced tea.

“After Granddaddy passed, Daddy took me to a Dowser Society meeting at their Vermont headquarters. He said maybe it was time to reconnect but we never ended up going back. Anyways, this guy made a speech about a dowser called Springwater Bemas. In the first half of the 1800s he traveled around by horse and wagon and found dozens of springs all around Vermont—with just a hazel stick! He was like the Johnny Appleseed of dowsers, a real local hero. That made such a powerful impression on me—I must’ve been eleven or twelve—I wrote a report about him for school. The teacher made me read it out loud to the class and the kids all made fun of me, started calling me Dowser Duane.

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