“So tell me the realities, Luke,” I said, looking away.

“A father who’s lost his daughter to a river and can’t accept it. A businessman getting free national advertising for his product. A developer using this incident to weaken environmental regulations.”

Up close, I was surprised at how much older he seemed, not just the lines on his face and thinning hair but also his voice. It was as if the river had worn him down the way it might a rock or bank.

“So what’s your reality, Luke?” I asked.

“The river. That’s the reality that matters. It’s natural law and, I might add, federal law as well.”

“There was a time you weren’t quite so enamored of federal law, a time when you didn’t have any problem breaking laws, federal or otherwise, to block a logging road or grow a few pot plants.”

“The law’s on the right side now.”

Ronny and Randy waded out of the river. They unknotted the ropes from their waists as they talked to Brennon.

“So Allen Hemphill’s covering this?”

“Yes. He’ll probably want to talk to you.”

“Sure, I’ll give him the party line, but it won’t do any good. He’ll get his story from Kowalsky. That’s the only one he’s interested in.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because I’ve read his book. Those blurbs on the back, ‘Allen Hemphill is a journalist who casts a cold eye on life, on death,’ blah, blah, blah—that’s utter bullshit. He’s a sentimentalist. By the time most people finish his book, Hemp-hill’s manipulated them into weeping and gnashing their teeth.”

“How do you expect people not to be outraged by the massacre of children?”

“A good photographer should know the answer to that question.”

“Enlighten me, Luke.”

“You use a wider lens. You show what would have happened had these children not been massacred. You ask what’s really crueler, being hacked to death in a few seconds or dying from starvation or AIDS.”

“Maybe that can be changed as well.”

“It would be nice to believe that, but human history argues otherwise.”

Luke fixed his eyes on mine, and this time I did not avoid his gaze.

“You getting sentimental on me? Or are you just a little sweet on Hemphill? I see the way you lean in to catch his words, the way you keep glancing upstream to make sure he’s still there. You can’t fool me. I know you too well.”

“Maybe I’m not the same person I was eight years ago.”

“I think you are,” Luke said. “You just conceal it better now.”