Tilting at Windmills

by Joseph Pittman

  “Wow,” I said, the sound more like a breath escaping me than an actual word. The sight was like the postcard I’d purchased only an hour ago, but this was three-dimensional and larger than life and more visually striking than could possibly be imagined. I stole a glance at Annie standing beside me, and you could not have painted her expression, for her face betrayed a series of moods and sensations that went deep below the surface, to a place that only her own heart truly knew.

  “Come on,” she said with sudden urgency, and grabbed my hand and pulled me forward.

  We ran together, two strangers linked not just by flesh but by a shared interest that had miraculously revealed itself to us. Our feet seemed to move above the ground of their own will until we’d reached the windmill. In this time and place, we were one.

  Standing underneath the grand mill, I watched as its huge sails passed within inches of my face, first one, then a second, a third, and finally the fourth one, each emitting a soft breeze, like intimate little kisses. I’d been this close to the windmill before, once, with Janey, but there and then I’d been filled with an awkwardness and apprehension, a sense that I didn’t belong. Now, though, it felt like I was meant to be here, like I belonged.

  “Tell me all about it,” I said, and she agreed to. And that was when I noticed that our hands were still locked together in a firm grip, sending tingling electric shocks all along my spine. And this was not the windmill’s doing, not this time.

  My lesson started with logistics as I learned first about the various parts of the windmill. That the main structure was called the tower, and the part above that which controlled the sails was called the cap, and that the cap spun separately from the rest of the structure, enabling it to move with the fluid motion of the wind. It was the cap that the sails were affixed to, and inside the tower was a strong metal beam that was imbedded deep in the ground. At last Annie took me inside, and it was here she began to tell me the story of how the windmill came to be.

  “The tale doesn’t begin with the windmill; it can’t. Because the windmill was born from circumstance, out of necessity. And although there were those who cheered its construction, there were detractors, too, those who saw the windmill as a piece of the past. And remember, back then it was a time of progress, of industrial revolution and for forsaking farming methods thought to be outdated. But for Donovan Van Diver, who built the windmill in 1912, this was not a concern to him. No, for him and his family, the windmill was fashioned out of sheer practicality. He built it right on this spot, and here it has stood for nearly ninety years.

  “This region was heavily populated with Dutch settlers,” she said, “and they brought with them their unique and wonderful customs and beliefs, and their own beautiful architecture. This windmill is notable among the many Dutch buildings and structures that still stand throughout the Hudson Valley and Columbia County.

  “Donovan Van Diver, you may be thinking, is an unusual name, a mix of two cultures and heritages, and you’d be right in your thinking. The Van Diver family settled in this region in the mid-1800s, immigrants who had landed at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and who had gradually made their way inland. With its closeness to the mighty Hudson, as well as the lush green valleys, they knew this was perfect farmland. Along the way, Donovan’s father, Derek Van Diver, met Kate Sullivan—in Boston—and they fell in love. They moved here, and eventually Derek and Kate took over the farm from his parents, who died, oh, maybe ten years after arriving in America. The farm was prosperous for years, mostly grains. Some dairy, too. As the story goes, though, there was a persistent problem of the land becoming soaked, water-logged, and it wasn’t until Derek and Kate’s eldest child, their son Donovan—named for Kate’s grandfather—grew up that a solution presented itself. Donovan, no more than twenty years old, was a young man fascinated by history, and so he thought to look to his Dutch ancestry and traditions, and in doing so, learned about the uses of windmills. And he proposed building one himself.

  “So one summer day, Derek and his son Donovan and many of the farmhands set themselves to work, to the task of erecting a windmill, like many of their forebears had done back in their homeland, where windmills had been in use for a couple centuries. Whether for grinding grains or pumping water, the windmills harnessed the power of the wind. They also added a grandeur and elegance to the landscape, and the windmills became world renowned not just for their practical uses but also for their architectural beauty.”

  “That they are,” I said, “unique, grand, elegant.”

  “Far more so than the ‘new’ style of windmill, the American windmill,” she said, going on to describe the streamlined modern windmills, the simple spinning wheels atop tall posts that tended to dominate America’s heartland. They might have been more efficient, easier to build, and easier to repair, given the tendency of fierce tornadoes to rip through that open expanse of country. But for Annie, the American windmill just didn’t compare to her Dutch version.

  All the while Annie was speaking, I sat enraptured, not just by her tale but also by the emotion in her voice. She spoke strongly, unwavering in her passion for the windmill, and by transference, for life itself. Considering that two months earlier I’d been lost in the quagmire of urban living, so consumed with achieving and excelling and just being, never stopping to appreciate the simpler things in life, the fact that I was now in the company of such elegance, the woman and the windmill both, had me in a state near euphoria. Sitting inside the windmill’s tower, hearing stories of the past, the people, of their trials and tribulations, their hopes and dreams, their losses and legacy, I could almost envision myself building my own windmill.

  “Tell me,” I said, as the story of Donovan Van Diver came to a close, “how Annie Sullivan came to know the windmill.”

  For the first time, she hesitated and bowed her head in silence, as though she’d lost her place on the page. I couldn’t see her face, but I detected a flash of sorrow as it moved across her features. When she finally looked back up, her eyes were moist and they stared not at me but through me, to the world beyond the window. The sun had slipped behind a cloud, and the turning sails of the windmill were casting giant shadows on the ground, like ghosts from the past.

  Annie curled up within herself, wrapping her arms around her legs. “When you’re just a kid, like Janey, every day is an innocent adventure. You play and you learn and you live, one day to the next, basically unaware that it’s a journey, a path you’re traveling, and that it will take you to wonderful and dark places both. And you are blissfully unaware of the twists and turns life will take. As you grow older, that realization kicks in and the arrogance of adolescence takes over, where you think you can carve that path yourself, cut right through the overgrowth and walk unchallenged through a clearing, straight on in the direction of your choice. Then, at some point, the innocence slips away, the arrogance is trampled, and you’re left with what? The bitterness of adulthood? The conclusion that everything you envisioned for yourself is lost? You can’t cling to your plans, because they come with no guarantee.”

  This wasn’t philosophy she was spouting but experience. My heart melted at the desolation she must have been feeling, and I felt at fault. I’d pushed beyond the memories and into the pain, taken her out of the past—the safety of history—and thrust her into her present. Even after two years, she still bore the pain of her husband’s death. By asking about the time she’d come to love the windmill, I’d asked her to examine memories that she’d tried to bury.

  “Annie, I’m . . . God, all I ever seem to do around you is apologize.”

  “No, Brian, it’s me who should be sorry. . . . It’s just, you know, you can fall in love with a silly thing like a windmill because it’s safe and easy. With its solid, unconditional love, you know nothing can take it away from you. For ninety years, the windmill has lived on, sometimes frail, sometimes strong, but it’s always been there. For me, it’s the one thing I can count on.”

  I felt a lump lodge in my
throat. “Finding something you can count on, you’re very lucky.” I paused, uncertain what more I could say. “Look, Annie, it’s none of my business, and I can’t presume to empathize with your loss, but you also can’t give up,” I said, my heart heavy with emotion for her, sad for her and mad at myself, for asking too much, pushing too far, and taking her someplace she still wasn’t ready to go—forward.

  She wiped away a trickling tear, and said, “That’s what Cynthia’s been telling me: ‘You can’t hide, Annie, not from life.’ ”

  I swallowed that lump, those words digging deep into my own heart. “Cynthia’s a smart woman, but she also has to realize that sometimes you need to close down for a while, you need time to heal, and that sometimes it takes longer than you think, longer than others want it to take.”

  Annie’s gaze was on me, and when she spoke, it was like a whisper. “You’re not speaking just about me, are you?”

  Afraid to speak, afraid my voice would betray me, I merely shook my head. There was a connection between us now, a shared and silent intimacy that had cropped up in the face of our pain, and by admitting it to the other, we had taken an uneasy first step toward each other. We sat together, not having to say a word, and it felt warm and comfortable and special. And then it was gone, a vulnerability picked up by the wind and taken from us.

  “How about we save the story of me and the windmill for a rainy day?” she asked me, her mood brightening. “Let me show you something really spectacular.”

  “I can’t wait,” came my eager reply.

  So we left our wounds at the open window, where the wind could catch them and blow them away, and Annie took me up the winding metal staircase to the second floor, which was narrower because of the windmill’s shape, and into a still sizable room. It looked to me like this was Annie’s secret getaway, her sanctuary.

  “Well, that explains the paint splatters,” I said, looking at an easel, and beside it, a table overflowing with paints and brushes and assorted cleaners. There was a canvas on the easel, but it was covered with a white sheet, and Annie said it was staying there.

  “I’m not ready to show it,” she said.

  “No pressure,” I said, “but I’d love to see some of your work.”

  She was smiling and obviously felt pride in her painting. “I’m no professional. It’s just a hobby, but . . .” There was a small closet against the far wall, and she opened the set of doors to reveal a series of canvases. She invited me over, and I crouched down near her as she flipped through painting after painting. There were ten in all, all natural landscapes, all beautifully wrought, with rich, vibrant colors and an amazing knack for detail. Trees in spring, awash with buds. A brook in summer, bubbling along. And, of course, the windmill, three paintings in all, each more remarkable than the other.

  “Oh, Annie, they’re really quite beautiful,” I said, taking hold of the last painting and bringing it out into the light. Annie had captured a lovely summer sunset, an iridescent sky set behind the glorious windmill, and playfully running across the lawn was a little girl not unlike Janey.

  “Like I said, it’s just a hobby,” she said. “And it’s very soothing. I can’t tell you the number of days I’ve spent inside my windmill, days when Janey’s been at school, days she just sat and played beside me. That day . . . that sunset—it really happened. I took a photograph, and I knew it needed to be painted.”

  She let me pore over the paintings a while longer and then finally coaxed me away and closed the closet doors. She told me to follow her.

  There were three windows on the second floor of the windmill, each facing a different direction, but as she led me over to them, I noticed they were more than just windows. They were doors.

  “This is my favorite part,” she said, and opened one of the doors.

  I’d seen from the ground that the windmill had a railing encircling it, but I hadn’t realized completely that you could actually walk outside it, indeed walk around the entire perimeter of the windmill. But you could, and we did, Annie once again taking hold of my hand and leading me forward. We were probably twenty feet above the ground, not terribly high, but from this perspective there was a sense of being higher than the clouds, able to reach out and touch the sky and float on the air and bask in the sun. Annie led me around and around, and we circled the windmill in near dizziness. Finally she brought us to a stop, just behind the turning sails, to where I could look above and almost touch the thick metal pole that held the sails so firmly.

  And there Annie and I remained, two people who had both known sorrow but who now found joy in the unlikeliest of places, atop a lonely and majestic windmill. We stood with our hands clasped and our hearts full, the two of us strangers no more. Time could have stopped, save for the gently turning sails of the windmill.

  SECOND INTERLUDE

  Gerta, as promised, arrived at eight o’clock, ready to hustle Brian out and on his way to the hospital while she cooked breakfast for Janey. But that wasn’t the calm picture that awaited her at the Sullivan farmhouse. Instead, a frantic Brian appeared at the front door.

  “I can’t find Janey.”

  Which was followed by an explanation of what had happened that morning, Cynthia’s phone call, Annie’s being taken for “tests,” Janey’s accidentally overhearing it all. She’d run away and Brian couldn’t find her.

  “Where have you looked?”

  “Everywhere.”

  “The windmill?”

  “First place I looked.”

  “The barn?”

  “Locked, so she couldn’t have made off on her bicycle.”

  The only other place Brian had been able to think of, a place where Janey might go to connect with her mother’s presence, was the place he had dubbed “Annie’s Bluff,” but that was a hike, not easily found on foot, especially not by a seven-year-old, even a determined one.

  “I don’t know what to do, Gerta. Help Cynthia at the hospital or . . . keep looking for Janey. If only I could talk to her, ease the pain she’s feeling, the confusion, answer her questions. Hell, if only Janey would just show herself, at this point I’d sneak her into the hospital to see Annie.”

  “She’ll be back. She’s scared and eventually she’ll realize she needs someone—she needs you. Right now, you’re all that sweet thing has.”

  They decided to split up, with Gerta taking the outdoors and Brian taking the indoors, and it was on his fourth trip upstairs that he heard a rustling sound. It seemed to be coming from above, from the attic. He circled back from Annie’s room, where the clock—in the shape of a windmill—announced the time with nine revolutions of its sails. How Annie treasured that clock; how comforting he suddenly found it. That was the thing about clocks and watches, there were always more seconds and minutes and hours, more time to come, more time to achieve the things you had yet to accomplish. There was still time to hope.

  The time, though, had come to find Janey, and he dashed up the stairs to the attic, and that’s where he finally found the tousle-haired girl, nearly lost in a sea of cardboard boxes, their contents littering the floor of the attic. Janey looked up at him and wiped her dripping nose.

  “You okay?” he asked her.

  She said nothing, just held her stuffed purple frog, held it tight. When Brian moved closer, she scampered back a few feet but found herself backed up against a cardboard box. Brian was close enough to her now to see that her eyes were red, swollen. Nearly two hours had passed since he’d last seen her, and his heart broke at the thought she’d been alone all that time.

  “Janey, talk to me, please.”

  She still wouldn’t talk, but at least she didn’t move away from him. Progress, he thought. She’s opening up.

  “Janey, I’m sorry. For . . . everything. For your not being able to see your mom, for not telling you the truth . . . but Janey, let me help you. It’s the only way I can help your mom right now—by helping you.”

  She sniffled. Then, in a flash, she rushed into Brian’s waitin
g arms, burying her face against his chest as sobs wracked her small body. Now wasn’t the time for words, so he just held her, tightly, vowing then and there to never let her go, not as long as she needed him, even if it meant forever. Life was delicate, but youth was fragile and needed to be handled with care and love. Brian found himself smiling, realizing how lucky he was to have this little girl in his life, how full she’d made it in such a short time.

  Finally, Brian spoke. “Hey, what are you doing up here, anyway?”

  She brushed away tears, staring up at him. “I came to find something.”

  “And did you find it?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet.”

  “Can I help?”

  “You don’t know where they are.”

  Brian looked at the mess on the floor. “Seems neither do you. So maybe four eyes are better than two.”

  She resigned herself to his help. “Okay, start digging.”

  Brian eased in closer to her, studied the contents of the box now opened before them. It was full of photographs that had yet to be placed in albums and rolled-up canvases painted by an obviously talented yet untrained hand. They were Annie’s illustrations from years ago. Raw but filled with bright colors, reds and yellows and oranges. Sunny, like the woman herself.

  “If you tell me what we’re looking for, maybe we’ll be done sooner.”

  “Plans,” she said.

  “Plans? What kind of plans?”

  “For the windmill, silly. Momma kept them, from the last time she rebuilt it. If we find them, we can make it turn again. And then Momma will be better, I just know it.”

  Brian couldn’t help it, not here and not now, seeing how brave and hopeful and, yes, innocent she was. The tears rolled down his cheeks. They intensified as Janey tried to comfort him, hugging him tight and telling him that she knew her idea was the perfect solution. Finally he was nodding his head, agreeing with her.