And he read me poetry written and set in distant places, as though I had first to see another world to see my own. That very thing happening when Wordsworth wrote of a mountain spring’s “soft inland murmur” or Hopkins described “rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim.” In my literature classes at Clemson I had enjoyed poetry, but it had seemed exotic. Luke brought it into the world I knew.

And after Bartram and Kephart and the poets, he had me read Edward Abbey and Wendell Berry and Peter Matthiessen to learn how ephemeral a wild place could be.

He told me about Biafra as well.

Their eyes were the only thing that remained alive and human, Luke said. Lifting them had been like lifting kites, because that was what their bodies had become, stick bones with papery flesh glued to them.

After a week in the aid camp, Luke believed the situation was hopeless. The victorious FMG had herded three million Ibo refugees into a region of only 2,500 square kilometers, an area the war had turned into a wasteland of destroyed homes, markets, and hospitals. A few of the ravaged had risen from their cots and gone home, but too often they returned. Most died within twenty-four hours of their arrival. There was never a shortage of replacements to fill the cots.

Luke’s assignment there had been for six months but he’d stayed eighteen.

“Long enough to earn my lifelong furlough from any other obligations to humanity,” he’d told me one night when a bottle of wine made him more talkative than usual. “The day I flew out of Owerri, I looked out the plane window and watched it disappear. Free to love or not love, care or not care. Free to find one good, pure thing in the world and save that thing. That’s all you can do anyway.”

He was saying the same thing now. I looked across the river at a girl only slightly older than I’d been when I’d read Luke’s books, slept in his bed.

“I’m sorry I’ve disappointed you,” I said. “Maybe you’ll have better luck with her.”

“Maybe I will. Carolyn was majoring in chemical engineering when I met her, gearing up to spend the next thirty years as a lackey for Dow Chemical. Now she’s studying environmental law.”

“So you’ve saved her soul.”

Luke did not smile. “Those are her words, not mine.”

“What’s her reading assignment today?”

“Matthiessen’s Wildlife in America,” Luke said. “One of your favorites, as I recall.”

“So when can Allen talk to you?”

“Six o’clock at Mama Tilson’s. Grassroots environmentalists don’t have expense accounts, so tell him he’s paying. We’ll eat and then talk. You be there too. Sounds like you need some review on what’s at stake.”

He looked over at Ronny and Randy, who had put on their T-shirts and boots.

“Looks like they’re through for today, so I guess I’ll go on.”