Wind Tower

The world felt newly created and vulnerable after the storm. In that particular stillness, a sound carried from out beyond the house, carrying across the puddles remembering pieces of sky. He moved about the barn, reflexively examining the several machine engines placed within green tilling bodies. Stopping on a thought, with careful attention, only cursory in its regard, he stood memorizing the lines that a spider drew in its web. The spiders, cleared weeks ago, had begun their works again. Between the fence posts and across the tractor shed doorway, he found himself transfixed by each web, as if within their pooled dew there might lay some truth about impermanence. They glittered with what once was rain. All the jewels of the world sapped his joy.

He had been sleeping in the truck for three nights now. It sat, a dull rust hue, beside the monsters of green. The seat reclined to its limit with a blanket haphazardly thrown on top of it. Each morning, he woke with the dawn, neck stiff, and watched the farmhouse from a distance that felt insufficient and necessary.

Inside were photographs on walls, dictionaries on bookshelves, and partially finished newspapers lying on the dining room table. The lights were off, and the only sounds were the quiet rustling of wind through wet grain, and a low hum from the refrigeration unit.

Inside, a pen was placed squarely atop a napkin, with a name and number written upon it. Inside was the phone, message light blinking. His father had built the house and placed the furniture. His father owned the land and barn. The wheat was soon to be harvested.

The barn door creaked as it closed, replacing the silence the barn often knew. Now, in the fresh quiet after rain, he circled the property's perimeter, collecting fallen branches and straightening fence posts that had shifted in soft earth.

A tenth of a mile away, the cellular phone left on the dashboard of his truck rang once, then twice, and three times in quick succession, before falling silent.

He stood at a height of six foot two inches, leaning against the wooden frame of a fence. He looked out into the forest and noted how the pine firs locked together, a standing border between the wheat, fence, and twenty-yard boundary between the two. When he was young, four foot seven on account of his fast growth, he would often run between the fence and the forest. The distance felt much larger then, and the trees taller, and the wheat thicker. He wore a fisher's cap, leather patched with care where it was thorned through. He used to come back with scratched cheeks, and now they were replaced with weathered skin. He let go of the thought. He continued along the line.

The sound of turning gravel and dirt pulled his attention toward the long drive. A car—his sister's car. He knew without needing to see it clearly. It moved slowly, twisting to avoid puddles that reached towards the sky. She always drove cautiously following rain, even with the only consequence being mud on tires. He watched her approach without moving from his position at the fence.

The car stopped twenty yards from the barn. She stepped out, righting herself, and waved without calling out. Her hair was pulled back severely, the color of straw, same as their mother's. The same way their mother would wear it following funerals or tax appointments.

After a moment's idle consideration, she fumbled open the door and reached across into the passenger's seat to retrieve a bag. The car door slammed shut. Carefully, she made her way toward him, stepping around the larger puddles, closing the distance with the measured pace of someone approaching a wild, frayed animal they did not yet wish to startle.

"You didn't answer your phone."

"Don't have it on me."

"You don't have to act cold, now, you know? It hurts me just as much."

The air was cool. The sound of birds chirping broke past the tree's boundary. His leaning against the fence pushed the post deeper, steeled against further disregard.

"I know. I'm sorry."

She looked out against the firs, wishing to say more. A tentative silence filled the gap between them. She brushed against nearby wheat with her hand absent-mindedly.

"Remember when we used to play here? We'd make up stories…"

"Yeah. I remember."

"Look— It's not my fault why he's-"

"Please. Not right now."

"Sorry, I know. I know."

She looked away from the firs, redirecting her gaze at him. He was staring down at where the fence post merged with the dirt. "I'm going inside. Please… come in when you're ready."

"I will."

As she turned away from the far side of the property, her eyes held a bit of the past within them.

"I wish it were all different. But it isn't." Then, the stalks rustled as she trudged through them. His eyes remained on the fence post.

From across the yard came the soft protest of floorboards bearing weight, then silence so complete it seemed to hold his breath. He walked to the small wind tower they had built together when he was fourteen, him and his father. "Measure twice, cut once," his father would often advise, saying it's better to fail the first time than to reconcile with it later. His father's hands guided his own as they fit the metal blades into place. For every project he spoke those same faithful words, as if precision could prevent all failures. The tower still turned in the breeze, sixteen years following its birth. Its rhythm, however, had changed with the years, a slight anxiousness to it, influenced by its memories of his aging father.

He placed his palm against the tower's base, feeling the vibration travel upward through the rusting metal. While the rhythm had changed, it had lulled him to sleep when winds picked up while he rested in his truck, just as it had through childhood summers. The sound of something built to last, likely to outlive the hands that shaped it.

Leaving the shape of the tower to its solace, his eyes briefly flitted towards the now lit home before turning back towards the barn. The farmer's son remembered his phone upon the dashboard and thought to retrieve it.

The barn held different air — warmer, thick with the ghost of hay. He remembered a copper stench when the last cow died.

"Son, I'm sorry. She isn't going to make it." The father held a rifle in his thick hands, looking down at the farmer's son as the news was delivered.

"She's just sick, pops, I promise. She's the last one. We can't kill her."

"It happens. You have to be there. It's natural—it's who we are."

Later, the sound of gunfire carried from the barn, startling a young girl playing in the field.

Later still, the father stood behind his son, standing in front of the carcass.

"Listen son, I never want to die. Not like that. Nothing like that."

That is all the farmer's son remembers of that day. Following those words, the scent drifted off, diffusing into the barn's stagnant mist. The phone sat where he had left it, black screen reflecting the barn's dim light. Fingers closing around it, he immediately felt it heavier than he previously remembered.

The barn doors carried with them sixty-seven years of rains and snows. Through them, the light of the kitchen was visible, with his sister, head in hands, at the table. The upper floor was entirely dark, save one room.

His sister appeared small and weighted down. Something in the way she held herself at the table — shoulders curved inward, head cradled in her palms — made his distance from the house feel suddenly cruel, and he wished then to cry.

No tears came, yet still he walked towards the house, towards the lit kitchen and lit upstairs. The creaking wood felt hollow, as if the house were drained of its liveliness.

"Hello." He approached the table.

She, sobbing into her hands, stood up and hugged him. "I can't do this."

"We both can't."

"But we have to. We have to— I just thought I'd be better prepared for this is all."

"You thought you'd be better prepared for this? Right. You always think you know better."

"You— please. Please, for one day. Can we not fight?"

"I— I know. I'm sorry. It's just —"

"He's my dad too, you know. I didn't want to leave. There's just… less for me here, than for you. You know he loved you more. Or at least showed it more."

"You don't get to say that. You don't get to just say that like you knew him. You left. Went out as fast as you could. He missed you, he wished he could say more…"

A pause stretched between them, both understanding only pieces of the other, each seeing the other as incomplete and inadequate.

"I know he loved me… I know… I'm sorry I hurt him. I had to go. I couldn't just stay here forever, could I?"

"You could have. I did."

"But I'm not you."

The silence swooped in once more, a third party intervening in the dialogue. Her phone rang, once, twice, then three times within her purse. She turned it off.

"You know, dad and I would write each other." She chuckled. "His chicken-scratch barely legible on the page. I miss him. I miss you."

The bulb was bare, and the light a warm hue. It was as if the dark were nowhere, a myth, yet looking outside the window showed a dimly lit barn. On the table, beside his sister's tears, the napkin read Dr. Finch, along with his home phone number.

"I just don't— I don't know what to do."

"We go upstairs, and we do what we both know is right."

The stairs creaked beneath their weight, sixteen steps worn smooth by time. At the top, the hallway stretched before them, familiar photographs witnessing their final approach. The door at the end stood slightly ajar, light spilling from its edges in thin, golden lines that cut across the darkened floor.

They approached together, their footsteps muffled by the carpet their mother had chosen thirty-five years before. The light grew brighter as they drew near, and the sound of shallow breathing reached them from beyond. He placed his hand on the door handle. His sister's fingers found his shoulder.

Together, they stepped into the light.

On the morning they buried their father, the wind that had turned his tower for sixteen years fell completely still, and the over-ripe wheat stood motionless in the fields like an army of mourners holding their breath.

The two children of the late farmer wore all black and were surrounded by many whom they did not know. Silently they stood on the plot of land, looking down towards the soft earth and headstone, marking the final rest of their father.

He turned to his sister, both having had no sleep. "I'm glad you came."

"What, to the funeral? Of course."

"No, that day those weeks ago. I couldn't go in the house."

"I know you couldn't. You didn't go in the barn for weeks after Mary died."

"I suppose you're right."

"You should come and stay with me a few days in town. It won't do you any good to stay here now."

"Maybe. Maybe it won't."

As the day drew long, the fellow mourners of their father's passing gradually departed, leaving only the two siblings. They knew not what to say to one another.

"I'm not going with you."

"I know. I just thought it'd be nice to ask."

"I hope you take care of yourself. Come back soon. I'll miss you."

"I'll call you when I can. Just— take care of yourself. I have space for you. You can come over any time." Her car trailed dust in its wake, slipping away with her in its belly.

Eventually, the low sun cast a shadow from the gravestone, and the farmer's son moved inside. Light returned to the dining room, then the living room, but never again to the upstairs. The second floor stood dark for years from then, with curtains drawn, rooms abandoned, and one bed that would never again know his weight.