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7 Illustration from an Early Reader Night. Rain. Our hero has caught a trout in the creek running past his house. Lamplight frames a window. He stands alone on the bank, the silver whip of a fish trembling on the end of his line. A boy my age. Black ink defines the dark and the cold. All he is is captured in an image on the page. And then, somehow, that moment leads to this: I’m thirty-five years older, lying on a bed, alone in a quiet room, reading, when I think of the boy, the fish. Apparently, I am there, too. Floating, perhaps, just beyond the trees. Someday I will die. And then so will they. Meanwhile, we wait. The lamp burns. Rain hisses in the creek. ...

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