Short story · 3 min read ·
The Weathervane That Would Not Settle
The copper weathervane on the parish hall at Thornhill has pointed at the same ridge for a century, and when the council decides to replace it, the new vane turns on its spindle every night to face the house where the old one was stored.
The weathervane on the roof of the Thornhill parish hall was a copper cockerel, green with age, turning on a brass spindle above the clock tower. It had been there since the hall was built in 1873, and in all that time it had pointed at the same ridge of hills to the north-west, as steady as a compass. The villagers used it to read the weather. If the cockerel faced the hills, rain was coming. If it turned to the church, the wind would drop by evening. Nobody had ever seen it move against the wind.
In the autumn the council decided that the copper had worn too thin and the spindle needed replacing. A contractor came out from the town with a new vane, gilded, shaped like a wheat sheaf, and fixed it to the roof on a fresh brass rod. The old cockerel was taken down, wrapped in sacking, and stored in the back room of the parish hall, where the chairs were kept.
The first night after the new vane went up, it turned to face the north-west, as the old one had. The second night it turned to face the church. The third night it was pointing east, toward the back of the parish hall, where the sacking lay on its bench.
The contractor came out again and tightened the bearings. He said the spindle was perfectly true, and that the vane could not move on its own. The council said the wind had been very changeable. The villagers, who had watched the cockerel from their windows for generations, said nothing, but they began to look up at the roof more often than they had before.
By the second week the sheaf had moved every night. Each night it turned a little farther toward the back of the hall, until on the seventh night it stood stiff and still, pointing straight down at the back room window, like a compass needle that has found its true north. The rain came in sheets that week, and the wind was from the north-west, and the new vane did not turn into it at all.
Mrs. Agnes Holt, who was ninety-one and had grown up in the cottage opposite the hall, said that the old cockerel had been stored there once before, in 1912, when the roof was repaired, and that it had been the only time anyone in Thornhill could remember a flood. She said the cockerel had never liked being taken down. She said that if you wanted the weather to settle, you had to put the old vane back where it had been.
The council refused. The copper was too thin, they said, and the wiring for the clock would have to be redone. But the new sheaf went on turning, and the rain went on falling, and by the end of the month the parish hall had a damp patch on its ceiling in the shape of a rooster's tail.
The vicar eventually asked the contractor to take the old cockerel down and fix it to a pole in the churchyard, where it could see the hills. The contractor did. The new sheaf came round to face the north-west that same night, and stayed there, very still. The village says the weather has been fair ever since. The old cockerel stands on its pole by the lychgate, green and patient, its beak pointing at the ridge. Every so often, on the stillest evenings, it creaks a little on its spindle, turning slowly to face the back room of the parish hall, where the sacking was, and then, with a small, reluctant sigh, turning back.