From A Length of Wire and Other Stories

"There was a man when I was fourteen who came to our house to dig out a ditch. I was at the age when boredom was as thick as the mud at the bottom of the river and everything—my mother, my father, the road, the house, the barn, all the trees I used to climb—was furniture to move through and nothing more. I was adept. I knew my mother's moods, my father's habits; I knew the deep spots in the river, the path to the blackberries; I could get in and out of my bedroom by way of the window and wherever I walked I could feel how the air moved and how the sounds brushed against my skin."