She didn't tell him she'd known any mud engineers before or about the one she'd heard was killed by a pressurized hose. The hose had shot up into his stomach from underground.

The thought of that death, although she'd only been half acquainted with the man, always put a panicky, dry lump in her throat. It was the hose, she thought, snaking up suddenly from its unseen nest, the idea of that hose striking like a live thing, that was fearful. With one blast it had taken out his insides. And that too made her throat ache, although she'd heard of worse things. It was that moment, the one moment, of realizing you were totally empty. He must have felt that. Sometimes, alone in her room in the dark, she thought she knew what it might be like. -Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine

I keep trying to get it together. To think rightly. But maybe I should empty out. I can't think at all anymore around this thinking I've got going. It's in my way.