I closed my eyes and must have napped, because when I opened them the drillers had waded out of the water, and seven metal braces rose like submarine periscopes in the water above the falls. I watched Brennon’s crew bolt the braces together. All the men wore life jackets and safety ropes. Four worked in the water while the other four held the ropes.

I stood to look more closely at the river. The water was dingy again. I saw Joel on the far bank. He knew as well as I what that dingy water meant.

I looked over at Phillips, the walkie-talkie strapped like a second pistol on his hip, then at Randy and Ronny, who were in their wet suits.

“He may already know it, but I’d better go tell Phillips it’s raining upstream,” I said.

“You want me to go with you?” Allen asked.

“No, I’ll just be a second.”

I walked upstream to where Phillips stood with Brennon and Herb Kowalsky.

“It’s raining upriver,” I said, “probably near the Georgia line.”

“We know that,” Phillips said. “Earl Wilkinson called a few minutes ago.”

“But it’s not a real heavy rain,” Brennon said, as much as to Phillips as me. “The river may not go down anymore, but it won’t go up much either.”

“What does Earl say the level is now?”

I was asking Phillips, but Brennon answered. “It’s an even two feet. We’re still fine.”

“I think you’d better postpone this awhile,” I said to Phillips.

“This has been decided,” Brennon said. “Not by me or Mr. Phillips here but by Superintendent Luckadoo. Nothing can stop that dam from going up now.”

“The Tamassee can stop it,” I said, and pointed upstream where the big white oak balanced on the boulders. “If it can do that, it can knock down a piece of polyurethane.”

I turned to Phillips.

“Luckadoo’s lived in the piedmont all his life. He doesn’t know anything about white water either. Only the people up here know.”

Brennon was a man who had revealed little of himself. I did not know if he was being paid by Kowalsky or had volunteered his time and equipment. I didn’t even know if he had children himself. But in the last twelve hours there had been glimpses, first his compassion and now a much less noble attribute—arrogance.

“I keep hearing that,” Brennon said, “and it’s going to give me a lot of satisfaction when I prove all you self-proclaimed experts wrong.”

Phillips didn’t speak for a few seconds. His eyes scanning the river’s edge, he looked like a man trying to read a language he didn’t understand.

“You’re positive this dam’s going to work,” Phillips finally said, his eyes steady on the river.