The Black Fan
from House of Fields
My mother is standing on the edge of the back yard, watching the
heavy clouds scuttle across the sky. The men are hooking up equipment,
slinging chains over their shoulders. The old windmill rises over
us, its iron struts thrumming in the wind. Something is turning
over, leaves in rain, color in fall. The people standing around
the back yard mutter about the news, they talk about what
Kennedy has said about the missiles. There is something
called a crisis which my father has said is serious. My
Uncle laughs and says prosperity is just around the corner
in the way he talks when he means the opposite. This wind has
been blowing for days
We are standing around the well-pit. Our old well was too shallow,
the pressure too light, the pipes not properly insulated. A new
well has been sunk and the pit has been widened so that a new
pump can fit where the old windmill pivots dropped like iron needles
into the depths. The stone walls have been retucked. My father
has said that it should stay dry down there now, if we ever have
to get underground. And no one is using windmills to bring
up their water anymore.
We watch the windmill. Its slow turning has been the longest song
of my childhood, its metal wheel the oldest silhouette. Every
sunny day, I have watched that shadow move across the yard and
over the roof of our house. The leggy tracing of its supports
and struts shift in and out of the kitchen window every morning
there is light, straight and clear, different from the shadows
of tree branches or laundry in wind. These have definition. And
the windmill itself is something I can see from way down the road.
It tells me my home is in place, like the pins Sisters puts into
the maps to show us where the missions are. I can find shadows
just like it on Uncle Joe’s farm and on Ed Smith’s
and at Birkman’s place.
The new pump’s voice turns on and off depending on how much
water we use. I hear the soft throb of the motor after Mom’s
second load of washing and Saturday night bath time. Though no
longer needed, the windmill has stood, and every inch I have grown
this fall, the low creeeek of its blades has accompanied,
as though it is making the sound my silent bones cannot. My legs
have grown longer with the long breath of gray steel turning in
the wind. I hear its metal in the air like something speaking.
I have always loved this tall thing, how it stands against the
cold and the weathers that come sweeping over us like coarse blankets.
My father and Ed and Uncle Joe set up the welder. My father puts
on the odd helmet that makes him look like a creature from Tom
Swift stories. He bends to the arc that we have been told is too
bright to look at directly. I look at my mother who is looking
up at the rust and gray rays, the shape of a color wheel without
the color. We hear the whine and hiss as they cut the struts,
cut the L-shaped steel that holds up the circular blade that has
graced our farm for decades.
My mother, with her auburn-gray hair and strong jaw, has too many
faces today. One is proud, full a dream I have heard her tell
Dad, that she wants something better and the well will
help. It is here, near the well-pit that she wants the new flower
garden, here that she wants to set the pretty buckboard seat from
the old school. But her face is also about the water jugs she
filled just yesterday, twenty gallons stored in shelves on the
basement. Just in case, not to worry.
I watch her face watching the windmill, listening to it comb the
wind. She has said that times change. But my mother’s
eyes will miss what they see when she looks out the kitchen window
in the morning. She sees already how the sky will look empty without
it, that the world will get lonelier.
When they have cut through three of the iron legs that stretch
up some thirty-five feet, they hook up the tractor. They loop
and tie the chains and ropes as high up as they can scramble.
They turn a key and an engine’s thud rises over the wind.
My father shoves the tractor into gear. The tractor pulls; the
chains straighten, grow taut. A few of the rusted stringers pop
like gunshots. The men wave us back. But we do not go inside,
we watch from the windy edge of the yard.
I
think she is like a tall woman of dark bones with a black fan
that moves in wind. I think she is something that has watched
over us. I think she is old as a grandmother and holy as church.
She is leaving now. Times are changing.
The
map of the world comes into our house every night now.
Her coming down happens slowly, with cold words. Pull. Go.
Stop. Go. Gun it. Go. Go. They pull the structure east, away
from the house. The steel shudders. The tractor labors but then
moves steadily. The chains and ropes hold. The fourth leg, uncut,
bends at the ankle, and controls the fall. The windmill begins
to tremble, keel, the top moving in a dark arc, this tallness
that held our sky. It shifts, drawing its compass line across
the low clouds. There is a slow squeal of metal so deep and strange
I cannot look away. The structure moves through the air, and not
until the last moments does weight carry it down, the steel bars
thudding against the rutted yard so hard we can feel the impact
in our feet, like thunder far away. The blades clang against each
other like tin feathers, then bend in half against the yellowed
grass, folding up in disarray, trembling against earth now that
they are out of the air where they have always belonged.
I thought it would have folded up into a compact thing like a
paper fan decorated with small birds. We could simply have put
it away then. But it is broken, each blade tangled against another,
the bang and scrape still fluttering in the wind. The men swarm
over the steel girders with the welder, cutting the dark supports
into scrap metal which they will sell.
They will keep the heavy struts to build a new asparagus picker.
My
mother walks over to the well pit and looks down. The new pump
hums steadily, bringing up the water from inside the earth. The
hired man is already digging out the footings that were buried
outside the corners. She thanks him for his help. He nods. She
steps forward, touches the spigot she will use to run the hoses
for flowers. She looks at the skeleton of iron and frowns quietly.
But her strong hands reach out, and she turns on the faucet. She
lets it run into the grass, then bends and splashes her face with
the deep fresh water, rinsing her skin with new water. She turns
to me, gestures for me to do the same, and when I have done so,
washed the dust and wet from my face, we look up where the sky
is now a wild empty blue except for the storm clouds coming swiftly.
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