Joel spoke, his voice soft but loud enough. “We know enough not to let a twelve-year-old girl wade out in the middle of it during spring flooding.”

“God damn you for saying that,” Kowalsky shouted at Joel. Brennon grabbed Kowalsky’s arm, holding him back.

That was enough for Walter Phillips. He joined Brennon and Kowalsky beside the lectern. “Let’s try to keep this civil,” he said, but we were way past that now. The room had grown as loud and animated as a tobacco auction. Groups formed near the front and in the aisles. Shouting among themselves, Luke and his river rats formed the largest, the most strident. Phillips stood behind the lectern and let people have at it a few minutes, maybe hoping that it would go out on its own, like a brush fire.

Joel turned and walked toward the door in slow, measured strides. He’d had his say and saw no further reason to hang around.

I looked at Allen. He leaned forward in his chair, his attention fixed on Kowalsky.

“Joel was out of line saying that,” Billy said, “but I can hardly blame him, especially after that hillbilly crack. Kowalsky started badmouthing the Search and Rescue Squad soon as he got here. They’ve put up with a lot from that man.”

Allen turned to Billy, his face incredulous.

“That man’s lost his daughter,” Allen said. “He just wants to get her out of the river, for God’s sake.”

Allen’s outburst surprised me as much as it did Billy. In his book Allen had written about a massacre of Tutsis inside a Catholic church. In precise clinical detail he’d described the two hundred men, women, and children strewn around the altar. One phrase in particular had stuck in my mind: “a jigsaw puzzle of human limbs.”

It was good to see him react emotionally, for as much as I had admired Allen’s writing I’d found its unflinching gaze disconcerting. Reading his book had made me wonder, not for the first time in my life, if seeing too much suffering could overwhelm the heart. In my more generous moments I had wondered the same about Luke.

“PHILLIPS HAD BETTER WATCH OUT,” BILLY SAID, AFTER SEVERAL minutes passed, “or this thing is going to get ugly real fast.”

Sheriff Cantrell must have felt the same way, because he quickly stepped to the lectern and spoke to the ranger. Hubert McClure edged down the wall closer to Luke’s group.