Allen shook hands with Kowalsky and Brennon at the podium while Myra Burrell sat at the table writing. Walter Phillips stood off to the side, watching the last of the crowd file out the door. The symbolism was perhaps a little too obvious, but as long as the caption wasn’t something heavy-handed like A man alone or Man in the middle it could be a striking photograph. I raised my camera, focused on Phillips, and kept snapping until I’d used my remaining film.

Walter Phillips did not notice his picture being taken. He had appeared timid, even intimidated, during the meeting, but his profession tended to attract people more comfortable in solitude than in public. He was also new. I hoped that in these unguarded moments I might get one shot that revealed more about the man than had been discernible so far.

“I’m out of here,” Billy said. “If you’re still around tomorrow night, come by the store. Randall and Jeff are going to play. We’ll get Margaret to sing.”

In a few minutes everyone had left except for Allen, Brennon, Kowalsky, and Bryan, who had joined the other men up front. Phillips was waiting to lock up. There had been only three other reporters and one photographer in the room. Evidently the rest felt the real action was on the river itself.

I returned my camera to its case and walked outside. The air was cool, rinsed of the humidity of Columbia. The evening’s first lightning bugs sent off their tiny flares as they hovered over weed tops. A bullfrog grunted in the creek that ran behind the community center as night settled into the valley like a slowly filling bath.

Luke had nearly drowned on a June evening like this one. Three days of rain had transformed the Tamassee into a brown torrent, but Luke wanted to run Bear Sluice in his kayak. We were on shore with several of the other river rats, all excellent kayakers themselves and not above taking a few risks. We’d been watching the river since midafternoon, waiting for it to clear and settle back into its banks. The others weren’t about to go in and urged Luke to wait for morning as well. But Luke went in anyway and, as always, refused to wear a life jacket. Wearing one was cheating, he always said.

The hydraulic caught the kayak, sucked it in. A few moments later the kayak bobbed up like a cork, but Luke was still underwater. It seemed he was under an hour, but no more than three or four minutes passed before he emerged, neck and knees tucked to his chest as if shot out of a cannon.