In photography there is no such thing as memory. The image is either caught on film or it doesn’t exist. I raised the Nikon to my right eye so I might bring this instant in Herb Kowalsky’s life into being. At that moment the part of me that aimed the lens cared nothing about Herb Kowalsky or his daughter or the river or federal law. I clicked the shutter again and again until my film ran out, then jammed in another roll. It’s only about light and angle and texture, I told myself. Whatever these photos do for me or anyone else is not a motive. I’m just an observer, showing what’s already there.

Gnats circled Kowalsky’s head and I saw him blink his right eye several times in quick succession. He raised his index finger to brush one of the insects from his eye, and I took a last photograph.

CHAPTER 5

“Did you tell Miller he’d be talking not only to a journalist of the first rank but a newly certified expert on western Carolina barbecue?” Allen asked, as we drove back up the logging road. “That was part of your job, to convince him I’m an all-around great guy so he’ll feel privileged to be in my presence.”

“It’s too late for that,” I said, doing my best to match Allen’s playful tone. “Luke’s read Death and Life in Rwanda. He says you’re a sentimentalist.”

We came to the end of the road. No vehicles were coming in either direction but Allen kept his foot on the brake. He glanced in the rearview mirror, as if Luke had uttered the words from the backseat.

“What did he mean by that crack?” Allen asked.

Never underestimate the egos of journalists, I reminded myself. Especially Pulitzer finalists.

I repeated what Luke had said about the wider lens that took in the past and the probable future of the massacred.

Allen shook his head slightly as I spoke. His lips clamped shut and held.

“It’s nothing to get huffy about,” I said. “Luke believes most people are sentimentalists.”

“I’m not being huffy. It just pisses me off when people who never witnessed that kind of suffering try to shrug it off with some utilitarian strategy learned in philosophy class.”

“But he has seen it,” I said. “He was in the Peace Corps for eighteen months.”

“But not in Africa,” Allen said.

“Yes, Biafra to be exact. Or at least what used to be called Biafra. He was there during the worst of the famines.”

“It was a different situation,” Allen said brusquely.

Allen lifted his foot from the brake, and I half expected him to floor the accelerator and leave a plume of dust rising where he swerved off the dirt and onto the blacktop. Instead, he pulled out slowly, keeping silent as we headed back to the motel.