““He liked the splash of the river and the night things that gathered there: katydids and crickets, frogs and cicadas. At night the smell of the river overtook his house. It smelled of everything it had passed on its way to him. It smelled of homes with families in them; of girls that sat in stiff chairs, painting their toenails and dreaming of far-off places; of boys who skipped rocks on the river's surface to break up the moonlight. The river at night carried the scent of untamed mountains and long, cool fields where dew settled first and sunlight hit last in the mornings.””
