The Windmill People

The Windmill People In my early years, I had what most people would call a charmed life. I lived in a nice suburban neighborhood in Naperville, Illinois. My dad was a ense attorney, and my mom worked as an ER nurse. From the outside, we looked like the perfect American family. But I never really knew my parents. I can’t complain too much. We were better off than a lot of people. We had food, a nice house, and one of the best school districts in the state. Still, everything felt hollow. They fed me, bathed me, and took me to school, but they never comforted me when I cried. They never read me bedtime stories. They never hung my drawings on the fridge, even the ones I was proud of. The real problem was my dad’s drinking. I remember one Father’s Day when I was five. I wanted to make him something special, so I drew a picture of us standing in front of our house. I worked on it for hours. I redrew the house at least thirty times and dug through every crayon box I owned trying to find the right colors for my dad’s sandy blond hair and my platinum blond hair. When I finished, I carried the drawing downstairs. My dad sat at the kitchen table sipping coffee while reading the newspaper. “Happy Father’s Day, Dad!” I said. He glanced up. “Thanks.” I held out the drawing with a smile. He barely looked at it before setting it beside his coffee cup. I told myself he was just busy and would look at it later. A few hours afterward, I went downstairs for a snack and found the drawing crumpled in the trash. I stood there staring at it. Then I went upstairs, grabbed the glass of water sitting on my nightstand, and threw it against the wall. The shattering sound echoed through the house. “What the fuck was that?” my dad yelled. I froze. Heavy footsteps thundered up the stairs before my bedroom door flew open. He stared at the broken glass scattered across the floor. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he snapped. “Breaking our stuff? You’re the biggest disappointment I’ve ever had for a son. I wish we’d given you away.” Tears burned in my eyes. “Don’t fucking cry,” he barked. “You’re staying in your room the rest of the night.” Then he slammed the door. I threw myself onto my bed and sobbed into the pillow for hours. That was the day I decided I’d never express love or gratitude toward him again. Now that I’m older, I know exactly what my father was: a highly functioning alcoholic. The second he got home from work, he’d start drinking bourbon like his life depended on it. By his seventh or eighth swig of Jim Beam, the yelling usually started. The smallest mistake would set him off. Dad never hit us, but that didn’t make living with him easier. I learned to walk on eggshells around him. Avoid eye contact. Stay quiet. Don’t give him a reason. Luckily, he wasn’t in my life for very long. One night when I was in second grade, I was lying on the living room floor drawing while my mom made pot roast in the kitchen. Even with her usual distant expression, she was still an incredible cook. Now that I’m older, I recognize the look she always wore back then. Surrender. The kind people have after something inside them dies. I glanced toward the kitchen while sketching another picture of our family. Then the front door slammed open. The sound made both of us jump. My dad stumbled inside already drunk. His thinning hair was disheveled, and his face was flushed red with anger. He threw his jacket onto the floor and stormed into the kitchen without even looking at me. My mom immediately stiffened. “Phillip, what’s wrong?” she asked carefully. He ignored her and yanked a bottle from the cabinet. Normally, he’d pour himself a drink and collapse into his recliner. Tonight was different. “Phillip,” my mom tried again, “talk to me.” He turned toward her, visibly shaking. “I can’t take another fucking second of this and your bullshit!” he screamed inches from her face. For the first time in my life, I genuinely thought he was going to hit her. Instead, he hurled the bottle at the floor. Glass exploded across the tile. My mom froze. Without another word, my dad grabbed a second bottle and stormed back out the front door. That was the last time I ever saw him. The next morning, the police showed up at our house. My dad had driven his Ford Explorer off the road. No other cars were involved. They asked my mother to identify the body. She left me home alone while she went. I spent most of the day drawing in silence. When she came back, she looked emptier than I’d ever seen her. No tears. No expression. Nothing. A month later, we learned my dad had been drowning in debt. Bills piled up everywhere. My mom started picking up extra shifts at the hospital and waitressing at a dive bar afterward just to keep us afloat. I barely saw her anymore. She always left dinner in the fridge for me, but we hardly talked. Eventually, we lost the house and moved into a tiny apartment in a rough part of Illinois. Our relationship fractured more every year. Now I get maybe one phone call from her a month. The conversations feel more like obligations than love. The anger stuck with me. By fifteen, I was in juvie after beating a kid badly enough that he needed reconstructive surgery. I got off light with eight months and probation. I dropped out of high school at seventeen, got my GED later, and started working full-time. Now I’m a Walmart manager living in an apartment that somehow makes our old one look luxurious. College was never realistic for someone like me. My criminal record made sure of that. At some point, I realized I’d become a lot like my mother. Not alive. Just existing. The only thing that ever felt truly mine was art. I filled sketchbook after sketchbook with drawings—still life, surrealism, abstract pieces, anything that helped me get whatever was trapped in my head onto paper. A few months ago, after a brutal double shift, my car battery died in the Walmart parking lot. I’d left the dome light on like an idiot. So I called my roommate, Johnny, to bring jumper cables. Johnny and I met in juvie. He taught me which food to avoid, who not to piss off, and how to survive the place without getting my teeth kicked in. We’d been roommates ever since. The Walmart parking lot was nearly empty by the time I called him. The moon hung low overhead while I leaned against my ’98 Cavalier smoking my third cigarette. Johnny lived ten minutes away. After two hours, he still hadn’t shown up. I checked my phone again. Nothing. I was about ready to give up and walk home when a black Kia pulled into the space beside me. A large man stepped out. Late forties, maybe. He had a thick beard and a chaotic tattoo sleeve that looked like he’d gotten drunk and told the artist to surprise him. One tattoo was a detailed alien flashing a peace sign. Another was a cartoon gopher surrounded by tulips. It was more bizarre than intimidating. “You okay, son?” he asked. “Awfully late to be hanging around Walmart.” “Battery’s dead,” I replied. “Waiting on a friend.” “Well, I’ve got jumper cables.” I hesitated. The guy outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds. For all I knew, he could’ve pulled a gun on me. Still, I nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.” He grabbed the cables from his trunk and helped hook the cars together. I turned the key. Nothing. “Guess we wait a minute,” he said. We stood there in awkward silence while the engines idled. He tapped his foot nervously. “You from around here?” he asked. “Naperville.” “Nice area.” The silence stretched again. “You wanna try it now?” I nodded and climbed back into the car. This time, the engine sputtered before finally roaring to life. Relief washed over me. We let the cars run for another minute. That’s when he asked me the question. “You ever hear of the Windmill People?” I frowned. “No. Why?” He tilted his head slightly. “It’s just… you seem familiar.” HONK. HONK. HONNNNK. Johnny swerved into the parking lot in his battered Corvette like the thing had three wheels and pure determination holding it together. The driver’s side door flew open. “BRO!” he yelled while stumbling out of the car. “Sorry! Sarah called crying about how I’m emotionally unavailable or something.” Then he noticed the stranger. “Whoa. Who’s this?” I sighed. “Since you took two hours, someone else helped me.” I turned toward the man. “Thanks again.” He shook my hand. “Terrence.” “Evan.” Johnny grinned. “Good Samaritan alert. Thanks for saving my best boy.” He slapped me across the back hard enough to nearly dislocate a lung. Terrence chuckled politely. “Well, now that your friend’s here, I should get going.” After another quick goodbye, he drove away. I turned to Johnny. “What the fuck, man?” He winced. “I know, I know. I suck. I’ll make it up to you. L.S.D. for a week?” Laundry. Supper. Dishes. A stupid code we’d made up as teenagers. “Make it two weeks. I open tomorrow.” “Fair.” I lit another cigarette. “Are you at least sober enough to drive behind me?” Johnny finger-gunned me. “Sober? Never. Functional? Always.” I rolled my eyes and climbed into my car. As we drove home, I kept thinking about Terrence’s question. The next few days blurred together. I barely slept. Monster energy drinks and nicotine carried me through my shifts. Finally, on my day off, I stayed in my room working on a charcoal drawing of a phoenix. Commission work helped bring in extra money. Not much, but enough. Drawing had always been my escape. While searching through my closet for setting spray, I started pulling old boxes down from the top shelf. I found oversized clothes, old Pokémon cards, and stacks of VHS tapes. One tape caught my attention. HOME VIDEOS. The label was scribbled in black marker across a strip of Scotch tape. I stared at it. I’d never seen it before. My parents barely kept photographs of me around the house, so the idea of home videos felt bizarre. Still, curiosity won. I slid the tape into the old television sitting in the corner of my room. The screen flickered to life. At first, the footage looked normal. My parents stood together smiling. Actually smiling. My mother looked alive in a way I’d never seen before. My dad kissed her cheek. The sight disturbed me more than it should have. They’d never shown affection in front of me. Not once. The footage suddenly glitched. Then it cut to another recording. My mother stood in our old backyard speaking to a man wearing a purple robe. Even through the grainy footage, I could tell she looked distressed. The man held something in his arms. A baby. I leaned closer. The baby was me. I recognized the large birthmark on my shin immediately. It looked like the shape of Italy. The robed man handed me to my mother. Then the footage cut out. Static swallowed the screen before the final clip began. Even now, it’s the part that keeps me awake at night. A group of people wearing dark purple robes and gold plague doctor masks stood in a circle. At least twenty of them. They chanted in a language I didn’t recognize. The words sounded wet and guttural. The camera slowly zoomed inward. My stomach dropped. Standing in the center of the circle was my father. He wore a crimson robe. I would’ve recognized that exhausted, sweaty face anywhere. In his arms was an unconscious woman wearing a white dress. Her dark hair hung limp across her face. Dirt streaked her skin, but somehow the dress remained perfectly clean. My father carried her toward a massive golden altar covered in strange curling symbols. He laid her down carefully. Then he raised a knife. I stopped breathing. The chanting grew louder. And louder. My father drove the knife straight into her chest. Blood spread across the gold surface, running into the carved symbols. The crowd erupted into frenzied chanting. I sat frozen in front of the television. My brain desperately searched for some explanation. A prank. A fake. Anything. But it didn’t feel fake. Then I noticed the detail that still haunts me. The woman’s stomach was swollen.