Rigging the Windmill

RIGGING THE WINDMILL / Walter McDonald AU morning from the windmill I've seen specks on the horizon, hawks or buzzards, certainly not clouds. Living on hardscrabble, I know good rain when I smell it. The town ten miles away shimmers in a lake that isn't there—thermale, maybe bent rays from outer space beaming a Vermont village to the plains. I shake my head at my schemes and sweat flies. Another well witched with a willow stick. Peeled white, hollow in the heartwood, it dragged me like a magnet to this sandstone ledge between mesquite and cactus. Sweating like a fool, I dug all April, sloshing at last ankle-deep in water which may not last the season. Thousands to save dry-pasture cattle which maybe I should trade for goats and get it over. Nothing not native can last without what I can't promise. The last pipe mated, I twist this wrench as if the water of the world depended on it. The new lead grits in the grooves like leather. I lock the windmill vane wide open and duck below it. Now it goes on without me, only dry wind to keep the wide blades turning. Sweating, waiting for the first pumped trickle to the tank, I hang up here and wonder how many cows it will water, how many angels dance in whirlwind, how many times a pump goes around before breaking. 24 · The Missouri Review ...