The Dowser
by Liz Wyckoff
Mr. Chartrand lives in Harrisville, New York—a village forty miles south of my hometown, with a population of six-hundred and fifty-three. He’s eighty-seven years old, wears his shirts tucked in, and has deep creases stretching from either side of his nose to the corners of his mouth.
Since he was twelve, Mr. Chartrand has been a dowser. He uses a stick to detect water far below the earth’s 
surface. Some people call this water witching or divining or doodlebugging. Others call it bunk. Rubbish. Hooey. Mr. Chartrand calls it “a gift from the good Lord.”
“There’s quite a lot to it,” he says. The stick must come from a fruit tree. It must be large and freshly cut and shaped like a Y. He pulls the branch apart with both hands and walks off in the direction of hidden water veins. Once he’s found them, he paces off the precise location for a well and provides instructions on where to dig and how deep.
Some dowsers have been known to locate other things, like gemstones or gravesites, but not Mr. Chartrand. He can’t explain why—he’s just good at finding water.
Still, I can’t help but wish he’d help me find other things. I wish Mr. Chartrand could pay me a visit, clip a crotched branch from a cherry tree down the street, and extend his arms to find me a job, for instance. I’d follow him and his tucked-in shirt on a jagged path across town to an office building with some open position waiting to be filled.
Or, even better, what if Mr. Chartrand could find love? He’d collect an apple bough from behind my apartment and allow its invisible pull to lead him to another human—some man that he could mark for me like an X in the dirt.
Maybe each of us has a gift for finding something. Lucky pennies on the sidewalk, arrowheads in the weeds, used clothing that doesn’t smell, funny friends with infectious laughs. And maybe those things are just as important as water.
If I told that to Mr. Chartrand, I’m not sure he’d agree. But I bet he’d smile, stretching those creases on his face just like a divining rod, and that might tell me all I need to know.
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