Whirligig by Paul Fleischman

into the water were terns. He didn’t mind apprenticing himself to a third-grader. In gratitude, he let the boy drill holes in a long finger of plywood.
    He finished the whirligig that afternoon. The only wind to test it with was provided by the lungs of his four assistants. Cheeks ballooned out, they blew on the propeller. The red-jacketed band stirred to life. The first musician raised his trumpet. The trombone dipped. The drumstick rose. Lea lowered her clarinet. It had been Brent’s idea not to have their instruments rise and fall in unison. The staggered motion gave it a more exciting rhythm. He studied it, pleased. His breathless audience agreed. He grabbed the camera from his pack and put them in the picture.
    He drilled two pairs of holes in the base and threaded through two lengths of brass wire. Then he moved one of the picnic tables, climbed up, and secured the whirligig to the top of the metal framework, across a corner.
    â€œYou don’t want it?”
    â€œIt’s not for me,” he said. He stepped down off the table and admired it. “It’s for you. Nobody else comes here. You’ll be the only ones who know it’s there.”
    â€œWhat about when a hurricane come?”
    Brent hadn’t thought of this. “Do you get hurricanes?”
    â€œLots of ’em!”
    â€œWe don’t neither.”
    â€œI ain’t scared of ’em.”
    â€œIt gonna tear that thing up!”
    Brent scanned the Gulf. The sky held no clouds. He thought back to the storm that had appeared out of nowhere and drenched him a few days back. No doubt another would blow in someday with winds strong enough to wreck his handiwork. There was nothing he could do about it. He was sure Lea’s mother would understand. No matter what happened, she would have the photo of the four grinning faces around the marching band.
    He began packing up. Then he noticed the boy who’d drilled holes through the strip of plywood. He’d put a nail through one of the holes, hammered it into the side of a table, and was now blowing on the wood. This improvised propeller budged, then stopped. He blew again, then pulled out the nail and hammered it through a different hole.
    Brent watched the boy at work—and cast off all worry about hurricanes. After the storm, new whirligigs would appear.

San Diego, California

    We were at opposite ends of the house and of the life span. A hall, a stairway, the den, the dining room, and another hall all lay between us. But even up in my room with the door shut, even listening to the radio loud or looking at my old dolls and scrapbooks, my mind a million miles away, I was conscious of my grandmother’s presence. I was always waiting, listening, imagining. Always aware someone was dying downstairs.
    When it was just the two of us home, the entire house seemed to resound with her heartbeat. I’d plug in the portable intercom by my bed and count the minutes until my mother came home from errands or my father from the university. Fortunately, my grandmother slept a lot. My mother assured me she was doing just that when she left to go shopping one day in July. I was reading a collection of Anne Frank’s father’s letters, then realized that I’d stopped and was just staring at the intercom. Five seconds later the sound of my grandmother clearing her throat came through the speaker, a long overture of scraping and swallowing. My heart began to race.
    â€œRachel…”
    I closed my eyes. Rachel was her sister, long dead.
    â€œNo. Deborah.”
    Her daughter. My mother.
    More throat-clearing. “Deborah. Please come.”
    The words catapulted me off the bed. Her moment had arrived. Impossible, I answered back. Everyone said the chemotherapy had helped. I flew down the wood stairway, pushed by duty, pulled back by dread. I loved my grandmother, but I did not love shots, bedpans, puking, or the sight of stitches. I was fifteen and still