Read Online Tilting at Windmills by Joseph Pittman - Free Book Online

it. Taking a sip, his mouth puckering from the tartness, he went outside into the beautiful clear night and wondered what he should be doing. Taking care of Janey was at the top of his list for sure. But he couldn’t help but think that there was something else he should do. There must be, he reasoned, a way to help Annie recover.
    He’d done nothing, still, about the windmill way out in the field. Cleaning up the awful mess was too daunting a prospect, one he just wasn’t ready to face. He knew he had to face the inevitable, so he swallowed the resistance he felt and found himself, lemonade still in hand, walking toward the ruined old structure.
    The windmill. How he’d been captivated by it when he was first passing through town, its majesty heightened by the lustrous green countryside. Now, as he closed in on the wreckage, illuminated by the glow of the moon, he found he could still easily imagine the untouched windmill’s presence on the landscape. Maybe not all was lost.
    The four sails had been knocked down and were lying in pieces on the ground. But the main structure, it wasn’t all lost. The windows were all broken out, and boards were missing and pieces of the tower were scorched. Flames had eaten away much of the cap before being doused by the heavy rain. And broken pieces of siding were scattered everywhere, leaving Brian wondering if he could figure out which piece was important, which piece went where. Was it possible that the windmill could be repaired?
    Could Brian bring the windmill back to life?
    He finished his lemonade and set the glass down, and then he sat himself down in the grass and stared at the structure, just as he had the night before, but this time he had an idea.
    He decided right then and there. He knew what needed to be done. He would rebuild the windmill. But just as suddenly, he realized how foolish a thought that really was. After all, what did he know of construction, much less restoration? Or windmills?
    That night, as he drifted off to sleep, a wise old man’s mantra came to him. “Always we must tilt at windmills,” he had said, and seemed to be saying again in these ever-hopeful dreams. “But they turn and they turn, and you live.”
     
    T he phone woke him at seven o’clock. He grabbed it on the first ring.
    “Hello.”
    “Brian, it’s Cynthia.”
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Oh, Brian, you need to get here—now.”
    “What’s going on?”
    “I’m scared. They’ve taken Annie away for some tests—but they’re not very forthcoming with information. Brian, Annie . . . she didn’t look good. There was no color in her face. I’ve never seen her like that.”
    He felt his heart fall, felt tears threaten to flood his eyes. “I’ll call Gerta and be there as soon as I can.”
    He hung up the phone and got out of bed. That’s when he noticed Janey standing in the doorway, the cordless phone in her trembling hands. She’d heard the entire conversation. Brian’s face went white as he realized the horrible implications. They’d tried so hard to keep Janey from harm, and they’d failed. She knew as much as they did, that the situation with Annie was more serious than any one of them wanted to let on, much less speak of.
    The poor girl. He wanted to take her, hold her, comfort her, and tell her that everything would be fine, that her mother would be fine. But he couldn’t, and not only because he feared it might not be true but because she didn’t give him a chance.
    “Janey . . . ” he started to say.
    She gave Brian no chance to catch her as she dropped the phone, its hard plastic making a loud clack on the hardwood floor, and tore out of the room, out of the house, and out of sight.
    “Janey!” Brian called out from the hallway, but the only answer was the empty echo of a lonely house. No reply came, not then, and not an hour later after his exhaustive search.
    Brian stood on the front porch calling out her name, his voice growing hoarse. He dropped to the