Noah looked at the shoreline. The fish were gone.

“You got time, I can take you over to the Chatuge. Just me and you. It’s got some good size bass in it,” Littleberry told him.

“I appreciate it, but I got to be leaving,” Noah said.

Littleberry removed his hat, showing a bald spot on the top of his head. He ran his finger along the sweatband in the habit of farmers working out thought. After a moment, he said, “Sorry to hear that. I’d sure like to fish with you.”

“Maybe next time I come through,” Noah replied.

“Uh-huh,” Littleberry mumbled. The look on his face carried disappointment. He turned his body toward the shack. “You been staying in Arch Wheeler’s place up there?”

“Yes sir,” Noah said.

“Lord, last time I was down here was years ago,” Littleberry said quietly, still holding his hat. “Used to be this old fellow who was always talking about a fish the size of a barn out in that lake, and I come down here with two or three boys to see about it. We stayed the night there. Only bite we got was from mosquitoes. Made old Hoke mad, the jawing he took about that fish.”

“What did you say his name was?” Noah said.

“Hoke Moore,” Littleberry answered. “Took so much joking about that fish, he said he’d come back to haunt us when he died.” He laughed in a soft way, an easy chuckle. “We got to calling this place the Lake of No Fish. Old Hoke would cuss up a storm when he heard that.”

“What happened to him?” Noah asked.

“He died a few years ago,” Littleberry answered.

“Died?” Noah said in surprise.

Littleberry let his body nod in answer. “Unless somebody dug him up, he’s still up there where we put him in the church graveyard.” He laughed softly, the way a man laughs over memory, then he added, “Or, unless he shoveled his own way out just to get back at me and some of the others, like he said he would.”

A shiver ran through Noah, causing his hands to tremble, causing him to go weak. He remembered asking Hoke Moore if he planned to return to the valley, remembered Hoke Moore’s answer: “About all I ever think about, you want to know the truth of it, but it’s a long way off for old legs. If I go back, somebody’ll have to throw me over his shoulders and carry me. You take a mind to go on down there, I’ll consider I’m along for the ride.”

“Hoke was a fishing fool,” Littleberry said. “After he quit farming, he took to carrying his fishing stick around with him just about everywhere he went, except maybe to church, and I guess it was in his car, even then. I used to fish with him a lot before he got put off with me over the teasing I done about this lake. Lord, Jesus, he got mad. I went to see him when he was dying, trying to make some amends, but he wouldn’t have no part of it. Told me to get out of his house. Said he didn’t want a man like me nowhere around him when he was about to meet Jesus.”