I raised that kid like I was running an egg-and-spoon race through a minefield, and he was the egg. - Jonathan Lethem

THE OLD GROWTH, THE MAPLES, turned first. They rusted one leaf at a time, where ocean breezes bruised them, late in August. Paulo, the tree warden, once told Journeyman that the first trees to change reveal a map of damage. The earliest turning were those once sickened or lightning-struck. So Journeyman saw the season as a theater of succumbing. The wind’s bite called each tree to solidarity with the weakest. Only the evergreens were refuseniks. Primordial trees, dinosaur trees — in their gummy hearts, they were deader than the trees that turned.

The Hippie Parents weren't for all their distraction and funk, for their love triangles and LPs and antiwar demonstrations, illiterates...You'd find the books in the downstairs bathroom, or on their bedside tables, or maybe see them unwrapped at holidays as gifts, a cherished revelation passed from one to another, shared like a joint...

He didn't hide his teeth, which were bright yellow, like the van we'd unloaded.