Flight Behavior

by Barbara Kingsolver

what to say to a family that had lost their world, including the mountain under their feet and the butterflies of the air.

She watched an unbelievably tall, thin man get out of the small car, unfolding himself like a contractor’s ruler.

My son has the personality of a border collie.

There were two worlds here, behaving as if their own was all that mattered. With such reluctance to converse, one with the other. Practically without a common language.

couldn’t afford to walk into most of those places, and recreational envy was not her idea of fun.

underpaid people cranking out things for underpaid people to buy and use up, living their lives mostly to cancel each other out. A worldwide entrapment of bottom feeders.

Roy. He was a perfect dog, he didn’t deserve poverty rations. He should apply for a position in a better household.

Man against Nature. Of all the possible conflicts, that was the one that was hopeless.

a flowerpot jammed with cigarette butts, a still life of her sins,

What she wouldn’t give for a smoke right now. But that was the regular formula, wasn’t it? People always gave their lives for a smoke.

Words were just words, describing things a person could see. Even if most did not. Maybe they had to know a thing first, to see it.

“If someone you loved was dying, what would you do?”

You do everything you can,” she said. “And then, I guess, everything you can’t. You keep doing, so your heart won’t stop.”

There was no easy way to talk about the known world unraveling into fire and flood. She came up with a reliable word. “Pollution,” she said. “You pollute the sky long enough, and it turns bad on you.”

“Not like some in your house. That has about one idea in a year, and gets so worn out from it he has to go lie down.”