He lay on the bed with the geography book open before him. A new norther rattled the windows. The kerosene lamp flickered in the air currents in the room. December. The book was open to a map of North America. He could not get enough of it and had begged the teacher to let him take it home even though it was the only copy for the whole class. A huge green trough running from top to bottom with the Mississippi River, shading on either side into browns and smaller areas of yellow and white: somehow he grasped the depiction of elevation and thought of the north wind beating at his windows as having coasted down a giant slide in the middle of the continent. Desire of a strength he had never known filled him: to get out, away, to see, to breathe! How could he? How?
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