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The gray is terminal this time of year.  The tourists cleared out months ago, leaving us islanders to find one another in the barren streets, exchange pleasantries, then wander home.  I drive into Vineyardhaven for my morning cup of jumpstart while the ferry's moan pushes through air that is damp lint.  Somnambulent, the winter months…

1. Come back, little Sheeba. That's Uncle Jack thinking he's being smart, but I don't answer. I keep picking strawberries, my fingers red as the berries so I get mixed up thinking I'm seeing a ripe one to grab when it's only my own hand deep in the green leaves. Twenty quarts, twenty-one quarts. One…

Cal used to be president of their fraternity. But then he was in a car wreck. Cal and Hap and a group of boys from the fraternity house had been out to the bars, and they were on their way home. Afterward Hap often pictured Cal dipping his hand into a cooler of beer, letting…

I The lemon tree splatters a lacy shadow over the hot grass. A main bough gave out five years ago under the weight of fruit the size of croquet balls, which should have been picked but wasn't (there are just so many things you can do with lemons). The scar from the missing limb is…

The Stratton Military School for Boys is a quadrangle surrounded by low buildings, surrounded by a stone wall, surrounded by the mountains of north central Pennsylvania. The school is on a hillside above the white clapboard houses of the nearby town. It is a steep slope, the kind where kids might go sledding in winter….