I needed a job, needed to help out my mom, a new widow, so I marched a mile over rough sidewalk to the company that droned from nine to five, making sawdust and wood chips -- what else, I couldn't say -- and I saw this dust, these chips upon entering the din and thought, I could sweep them up; I could do a good job.  But I was eleven, just a boy, the big bearded man said, which, I suppose, is why I cried all the way home.

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