Flight Behavior

by Barbara Kingsolver

sentence like that. Dellarobia’s eye caught the remains of a pink balloon dangling from the fixture over

“if Bobby came out against the logging?” “I don’t know.” “Would it make a difference if Hester did? Or

dead, and do the math. Dellarobia forgot about eating her lunch until well past noon. Pete had left her rigging up more lines for buttons while he shot more arrows. Sometimes he crouched on his heels at the plywood table and entered sequences of mystery data into Ovid’s small computer. Ovid himself remained at large. The sun gained its legs in the forest throughout the morning, warming the air by imperceptible degrees until she realized her fingers had thawed and she no longer needed some of her outer layers. Around the time she shed her coat the temperature touched some threshold that set off an extravagant spectacle of butterflies twitching open and even launching. The air got crowded with little celebratory bursts

calling the “exercise things.” Dellarobia