His father went on to work at the factory, still came on Sundays to visit, but even he seemed to be fading somehow. Fagen became a city wanderer. Not capable of going to the factory school like the rest of us, he would be seen going to and from the shrinking swamp, his contortions worsening, his face twisting into an ever more hideous condition. Fagen seems to leach from our consciousness altogether, a grotesque parody whom everybody is able to ignore. The last of the wetland is filled and trampled.
New factories appear.
They rumble and blaze around the clock, their wastes, odious and black, hang over the city like a sentence. My mother swoons in ecstasies of premonition. People turn grim faced as the sky goes black and the sun recedes to a dull glow. The land is gone. My mother wags her finger.