“What’s he doing?” Allen asked.

“Making sure he’s part of whatever is going to happen,” I said.

In a few minutes Brennon and his men came back down the trail with the remainder of their equipment. Kowalsky and the diver joined them, as did Sheriff Cantrell and Ronny and Walter Phillips.

“So what do you want to meet about?” Brennon asked Phillips, not looking at Phillips as he spoke but at his men checking the equipment.

Walter Phillips looked weary beyond his years. If he’d slept at all last night it had been very little. I wondered if what had kept him awake was frustration, stress, or, perhaps, guilt. Maybe he had someone he could confide in, a close friend or relative, but that person was not in Oconee County. This morning he was seemingly alone.

“I want to know why I should believe this dam of yours will work any better today than it did yesterday,” Walter Phillips asked.

“The water’s lower today,” Brennon answered brusquely. “Wilkinson said it’s down to one point five.” He gestured toward the river. “Look how clear it is compared to yesterday.”

“If that dam can’t hold up at one point eight,” Phillips asked, “why should I believe it can hold up at one point five?”

“We’re wasting time here,” Brennon said. “It may start raining again.”

“We’re not rushing this,” Phillips said, and as he spoke I looked at his hands and saw they were clinched as they’d been in my photograph. His shoulders seemed to widen slightly, his stomach tightening as if preparing to receive a blow. Or maybe deliver one.

“He puts it up, I’ll go in,” Ronny said and pointed to Brennon’s diver. “He don’t have to go. It’s my brother in there. I’ll take the risk.”

“I’m not afraid to try it,” Brennon’s diver said, as much to Ronny as Phillips.

“Then we’ll both go in,” Ronny said.

Walter Phillips spoke softly, so softly no one seemed at first to understand what he had said.

“What did you say?” Herb Kowalsky asked.

“I said nobody’s going in. That dam’s not going up, not until I’ve got good reason to believe it will hold.”

“You can’t do this,” Brennon said. His face flushed with anger. “You heard what Luckadoo said last night. He said if I was confident the dam would work to go ahead. He didn’t say you. He said me.”

“Luckadoo isn’t here,” Walter Phillips said. “This is going to be my call.”

At that moment I knew Walter Phillips might well be kissing whatever career he hoped to have with the Forest Service goodbye. I suspected he understood this as well, and tomorrow or ten or thirty years from now he could conceivably look back with regret on this moment.