Activity

THE BRINKMANS TAKE TO READING, when they’re alone together. And, together, they’re alone most of the time. Community theater is over; they haven’t acted in a play since the one about the nonexistent baby. They’ve never said out loud to each other that their acting days are over. No dialogue require…

They play three-ball, in rotation. Douglas is beyond pitiful. Four years of scrambling across slash, slag, and mud, stooping and planting, has shot his nervous system, wrecked his bum leg, and left him with a motor tremor that shows up on seismometers down in the Bay Area. Dum and Dee feel almost b…

The sun cuts starbursts in the needles’ verdigris, a thousand sconces of astral light. The great dinosaur plates of the trunks turn shades of orange, terra-cotta, and cinnamon.

And a named apple is a patentable apple, as Olivia’s father would tell her. She once fought with him over a case of his. He was helping a transnational company prosecute a farmer who’d saved some of last year’s soybean crop and replanted, without paying royalties again. She was outraged. “You can’t…

An ice storm coats the town in a lapidary crust