The Pinwheel

The Pinwheel
~A.F. Lamonte~

Martha Turner-Kent was a woman who lived in the town of Shaver, a woman with a happy life, married to her childhood sweetheart. Just four months after she married him, her beloved marched off with the Union Army in the Civil War. Shortly after he left, Martha discovered she was pregnant. Her joy over the news was cut short when she received a notice from the Union army that the love of her life had been killed in the war.

The newly widowed Martha delivered her daughter, Anne, alone in the cabin her husband had built for her. Lost without the man she'd loved her entire life, Martha lived for their little girl. But tragedy struck again when Anne, at just five years old, succumbed to dysentery.

Now not only widowed but childless, Martha was alone in the cabin for the remainder of the winter. The body of her daughter remained in the cellar, wrapped in white linens, waiting for burial in the spring. During the day, Martha spent hours in that cellar, holding the cold, tiny hand of her daughter, and when she finally dragged herself back in the house, she wept.

It was a sunny morning on March 24th, after the ground had thawed, when Martha was finally able to bury her daughter beside the memorial marker she'd erected in honor of her husband who had never returned from war. Late that afternoon, Martha crafted a pinwheel out of paper and wood, which was an activity she'd once enjoyed with little Anne. She left it between the memorial marker and her daughter's resting place and then, as the sun was setting over the hills, Martha walked to the bridge that overlooked the creek nearby and jumped off.
It was over a week before neighbors found Martha's body, and they laid her to rest beside her daughter. By the time of Martha's burial, a terrible windstorm had broken out, and Martha's pinwheel had blown away.

A year later, on the anniversary of the day of Anne's burial and Martha's suicide, Shaver locals were mystified to find a freshly crafted pinwheel between the memorial marker and Anne's grave, exactly where it had been placed the year prior. If any neighbor had left it in tribute, no one admitted to it.

Winds again blew the pinwheel away, but the following year, another pinwheel appeared, and the year after, and so on. No one could figure out who was leaving the pinwheels, but neighbors began to theorize it was still the grieving widowed mother, returning from the grave to visit the two people she'd loved most in the world.

To this day, even though the town of Shaver has long been abandoned, even though there is still no marker for Anne's grave, and even though no one is around to even remember little Anne Kent and Martha Turner-Kent, the urban explorers who visit Shaver and locals from the neighboring town are mystified to find a freshly-made wood and paper pinwheel quietly spinning in the breeze every March 24th, right in between a faded, crumbling memorial marker and a grassy unmarked grave.