Then a particularly violent stretch of washboard jostled it into his memory. I need the unhappy embraces of Lotta Kotznitzchuk. He thought of Lotta, now, as he navigated the long, lone curve in the roadway and saw the silhouette of the Despond Meadows grain elevator heave up against the horizon, pasted like a black tumour against the anguished blue of the stark Prairie sky. But that was a stupid simile, Olaf thought. Prairie skies don't have tumours.
Rectums have tumours.
So Olaf forgot about the simile and concentrated on the problem at hand, which was to remember what he had just remembered. Then Olaf forgot about what he was trying to remember and starting thinking about his wife, Ethel. They were desperately unhappy and they never made love, anymore. Egbert had put them off of sex, somehow. They had grown apart, and loneliness had driven Olaf into the flabby and unhappy but welcoming arms of Lotta Kotznitzchuk.