“A camera or a raft accepts the river and its corridor as is, Harley. Nothing is altered.”

“Touché,” Billy said softly.

“Maybe we are worried a little too much about the river and not enough about people,” said a man near the front I’d never seen before.

“Who’s that?” I asked Billy.

“Tony Bryan.”

“So that’s Bryan.”

“Yes,” Billy said. “In the whole of his carpetbagging flesh.”

I’d expected him to be older, at least in his fifties, not closer to forty. He was dressed in a green short-sleeved cotton shirt and khakis. What looked to be a Rolex glistened on his wrist.

“Well,” said Billy. “Seems we’ve got all the major players present and accounted for.”

Laurel Mist was Bryan’s development. He’d built it two years ago and already sold all forty houses. According to the full-page ads I read each Sunday in The Messenger, he was ready to begin Phase Two, forty new homes bordering Licklog Creek, right up against the Tamassee’s buffer zone.

“I agree with this man,” Bryan said, nodding toward Harley. “Maybe the Tamassee should be allowed to serve all the people in this community.”

Billy snorted. “Harley’s exactly the kind of person Bryan built that guardhouse to keep out.”

“Anybody can use that river who wants to,” Luke said, standing up now and facing Bryan. “You can fish in it, float it, swim it, and picnic on its banks. You just don’t have the right to destroy it.”

“Who said anything about destroying it?” Bryan said. “You tree huggers never see beyond your own narrow focus. I’ve got just as much of an investment in keeping the Tamassee pristine as you do. That river’s natural beauty is the best selling card I’ve got. Why would I hurt my own investment?”

The girl beside Luke stood up. “By the time the damage is evident, you’ll have those lots and houses sold. And you know that, you bastard.”

Bryan shook his head and smiled. “The greedy developer come to destroy Eden. That’s the oldest cliché in the environmental-wacko handbook, isn’t it.”

“No,” Luke said, “just the truest. Something only becomes a cliché when it happens repeatedly.”

“Anything else?” Walter Phillips asked quickly, and you could tell he hoped hard there wasn’t. “Then this meeting’s adjourned.”

I took my Nikon out of its case and shot Kowalsky as he said something to Phillips, then took a couple of shots of the crowd as they dispersed.

“I’m going up and talk to the father,” Allen said, and moved through the crowd toward the front.

Luke and his entourage had left their seats and were heading for the door. I wondered if he’d seen me.

“Luke did pretty well,” Billy said, standing up as well once the aisles cleared. “He was downright diplomatic, at least by his standards.”

“Yes, he was,” I said.