Damage Forgotten by G.A. Rivers
from Windmills: a PUNK NOIR Magazine series
The sun burns incandescent. I move across hot ground and spit the pebble from my mouth. It plinks the dirt more desiccated than when I’d picked it up.
The sun sighs and burns a sky of blue tin. I stagger up a slight grade, between clumps of dry brush. The backpack hangs across my shoulders, heavy with stacks of greenbacks, useless and dry.
The scent of creosote sharpens the air. Heat glances off small rocks in infra-red patterns. I’m a seven hour hike from last night’s dry camp. The waterless riverbed. The faded green of the cottonwood that drew me in only to murmur about water lost, its death hovering like dust in the air. A day’s hike to the east is the Blue River where water waits in abundance. Where the law waits in comfort.
I traipse in the opposite direction. I know where I’m going. I know the old windmill and how it pumps cold water clean and pure from a buried spring. I remember stumbling across it as we rode our ATVs across the desert, drunk and tripping on mushrooms. Rusted steel blades turning slowly as the morning air stirred, cold water spilling into the tank layered green with life. I remember being wasted and stupid. The shotgun and the Glock. The small animals and birds and cacti all shredded. At least we didn’t kill each other.
The sun burns my skin and my ears buzz. Do I hear a helicopter looping somewhere up above? Let them search. They won’t find me and if I don’t find water I’ll die out here with a bunch of stolen cash and the handgun I’d emptied at the bony old guy with the droopy white mustache who’d put all he had into protecting the savings and loan.
I try to read my surrounds. My eyes are crusted, my mouth a toasted ruin. The sky is frozen empty. Even the buzzards can’t find me.
I trudge on, as focused as I’ve ever been. If only you focused on the good things in life, I hear Jolene tell me. You damage everything that’s good and then you forget about it, act like you did nothing. It’ll come back on you one day, I swear it will. She repeats the words. Repeats the reason I left.
I mumble an apology to someone. Dead words muffled by a thick tongue and cracked lips. I choke a laugh. Fuck that. I don’t apologize. I’m close to where I want to be. Almost there. Livin’ the dream, Baby. No one to count on but myself.
A rock turns beneath my heel and I stumble, hit the dirt. Climbing to my feet takes time. Effort. The hot ground shifts. Balance is elusive. When nerves and muscle come to agreement I stagger on.
I reach an arm up beneath the backpack and under my shirt where the skin is tight and dry and no longer sweating beneath the weight. My heart races a marathon of its own. My throat burns with dust. I shrug and wobble on.
The windmill takes shape in the distance. Tall and enduring, its blades spin like a liar’s dream.
My eyes are swollen, my face blistered. The path to the windmill is faint but clear. Waiting for dusk is the smart play. Waiting out the molten sun to make one final push but the lure of water is too much and if I lose my way I will die. If I stop moving I will die. The thought of water dazzles my tongue. Pulls me forward and fills me with something new. My spirits soar. Oh my God if I can capture this feeling after I’m rehydrated maybe I will go back to the straight life. Find a way to settle down. Oh, Christ but this feels good. Will I be baptized in the water? Am I being saved? The water waits. My mind hurries. My body shambles and my feet drag. I burn precious energy. I burn moisture to dryness.
The windmill is tall and close. The rattling clank of spinning blades calls to me across the dry gulch. Blades turning to work the pump and draw a miracle from the dirt. I can smell the water. I only have to get there.
My feet no longer serve me as I crawl. The backpack is somewhere behind me. I’ll go back for it tomorrow when I’m pissing my name in the dust, pissing like a race horse.
The horizon glows pink as a newborn’s skin. The air is cold as I wake on hard ground. I hadn’t intended to sleep and now the dawn is stealing the starlight. Lungs caged in steel, I begin to crawl.
The windmill draws black lines against a rose petal horizon. Its blades creak and judder. There is no wind to turn them. The tank is there but no water spills. Bullet holes pepper its walls.
The blades aren’t turning which means the pump isn’t pumping. Don’t panic. It will come.
I pull myself to my feet using the metal legs of the beast that will keep me alive and wait for the wind to turn the vanes.
I drape across the windmill’s steel frame like a withered scarecrow and stare at the gap where the steel down rod connects to the pump but the connection is gone. Vanished.
The wind stirs. The metal rod dangles free, the knuckle joint shattered, rusted pocks and gouges and scratches where it reaches for nothing but a space left empty by the shotgun blasts we’d fired.
Damage forgotten.
This story appears as part of Windmills, a PUNK NOIR Magazine series.
Bio
G. A. Rivers is a former scientist who now lives and writes thrillers and crime fiction in the Midwest. A family man and dog lover, he is represented by Terrie Wolf, AKA Literary Management; his short fiction appears or is upcoming in Punk Noir, Bull Magazine, Texas Wind Anthology by Cowboy Jamboree Press and Reckon Review; he can be found at FB (GA Glenn Rivers); BlueSky garivers.bsky.social and at gariversauthor.com
PUNK NOIR, the online literary and arts magazine that looks at the world at its most askew, casting a bloodshot eye over the written word, film, music, television and more.
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You new friend ... have earned your strops and chipes!
I'm impressed with the imagery. Very cool read.