“Maggie,” Billy said. He raised his hand in greeting but did not lay his book on the banister until we’d stepped on the porch.

“This is Allen Hemphill,” I said after Billy had released me from a bear hug.

“William Watson the Third,” Billy said, holding his hand out. “But you can call me Billy since you’re with Maggie.”

“Nice to meet you. I’ll take fifteen dollars of unleaded,” Allen said, handing Billy a credit card with one hand and shaking with the other.

We stepped into the store. Even in midafternoon the two bare bulbs hanging overhead couldn’t disperse the dark that pooled in the corners and lined the back wall. Billy had made changes since he’d bought the place from Lou Henson. He’d hung a hornet’s nest and a tanned timber rattlesnake skin on the wall. In the back corner he’d installed a potbelly stove many tourists believed was a moonshine still.

Billy also sold items that Lou Henson never allowed on his shelves: for the tourists, T-shirts and ball caps with TAMASSEE RIVER printed across them, walking sticks, postcards; for the river rats, Tevas and Patagonia shirts, plastic dry bags for cigarettes, even a few paddles in the back.

But other parts of the store remained unchanged. The floors still smelled of linseed oil. A ceiling fan big as an airplane propeller creaked and rattled overhead. Fishing and hunting equipment crowded the first row of shelves, much of it covered by a fine layer of dust. I knew if I lifted the lid of the red battered-metal drink box Cokes and Nehis and Cheer-wines would be up to their necks in ice and water so cold you had to snatch them out.

And the cigarettes. They were behind the counter, the same place they’d been eighteen years ago when my father left my brother Ben and me alone with a pot of simmering navy beans so he might come to this store and buy a pack of Camels.

I looked down and saw that my left hand lay over the part of my forearm scalded that long-ago evening. Covering the scar had been a habit I’d formed in middle school, a habit I’d never been able to break.

Allen turned from the counter.

“I’m going to get a couple of things I forgot to pack,” he said, tucking the credit card back in his billfold. “If that’s all right with you.”

“I’m in no hurry,” I said.

Billy wrote something on a receipt and placed it in the cash register. Despite the ZZ Top beard, he was a handsome man, eyes a deep blue, hair the shiny black you see on a raven’s wing. You didn’t need the Watson family Bible to know that a few generations back Cherokee and Celt in this valley had done more than just trade and fight.