The Windmill Mom Was Told to Scrap

“Most of the county,” I said, which wasn’t quite true, but it felt true.

I had him stop partway, just below the platform where the tower narrows, clipped off where he could hand me tools and steady the pump rod.

There wasn’t room for two of us on that platform with the head coming in.

Down on the ground, my foreman ran the boom. He swung that new head up and over, slow as syrup, and I talked him in with my hands. Down a foot. Left. Down. Hold.

The head slid down over the mast pipe and seated with a sound I can still hear, a heavy clean clunk, steel finding steel.

I got the bolts in and snugged them, and I checked them, and I checked them again.

“It’s on,” I called down.

Mom was standing up by then. She’d left the lawn chair. She was standing by the stock tank with her hand over her eyes against the sun.

We put the wheel on next, section by section, Kade passing each one up to me from where he was clipped, and me bolting them to the arms.

Then the tail, with Dad’s letters on the back side, facing away from the house like he’d meant them to.

Then I filled the gear case with oil to the line, closed it up, and climbed down. Kade came down behind me, and I watched every step he took until his boots hit the ground.

But we weren’t done. The pump still had to go back down the well.

That took the rest of the afternoon, with Tobias back on his rig and the leathers fresh out of the soaking bucket, soft as a glove.

The cylinder went down first, then the drop pipe, length by length, then the sucker rod. Tobias didn’t trust anybody else to make up the joints. He did every one himself with his own wrenches.

When the last rod was down, we hooked it back up to the pump rod coming down from the head.

By then the sun was getting low in the west, and I didn’t want to unfurl it in failing light.

“Tomorrow’s her birthday,” Kade said.

“Then tomorrow,” I said.

My wife had been planning the party for three weeks. Mom said she didn’t want a fuss, which in our family means she wanted a fuss but wanted to be able to say she didn’t.

The plan was cake and coffee in Mom’s yard on Sunday after church. Velda, from the next place south, had said she’d bring a sheet cake. A few neighbors were coming. Glen was coming, because Glen always came.

He hadn’t been out once during the work. Not once in three Saturdays. He’d driven by. I’d seen his truck slow at the end of the lane and keep going.

Sunday was bright and clear, the best kind of Sandhills spring day, with a steady south wind and the sky so blue it looked painted. I couldn’t have asked for better wind for a windmill.

We came out right from church. Mom rode with us. She was quiet in the back seat, holding her Bible in her lap, looking out the window at the hills.

When we came over the last rise and she could see the tower, she let out a breath.