Still, they had not been churchgoers, nor had they tried to convince him or his brother, Travis, that their way was the right way, choosing to let them keep their journey in such matters private and personal. Yet, they had made a path for him and for Travis, like an animal following its own scent. On Sundays, they spent the morning in rest, often in walks around their farm, making observations they might have missed during the blindness of weekday work. In afternoons, they would do small tasks in the home, or around it, or they would accept visits from neighbors, or make visits of their own.

At his father’s death in 1939, the neighbors had gathered in force at a small Baptist church near them, and a young minister who was a stranger to the community had said kind words about his father’s gentle nature, taking hints from his eavesdropping of the neighbors. And that, too, had affected Noah. A man who had never met his father had issued the petition to have God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost accept his father into the society of heavenly hosts. It had been a simple ritual, as quietly conducted as the Sunday morning walk of his parents.

Noah did not know about his mother’s funeral. She had died of a stroke while he was in Germany nestled against the stock of a rifle in a soggy foxhole, with gunsmoke angels floating in the air around him. He had visited the gravesite only once, bringing flowers, which he divided-half for his mother, half for his father. Side by side in the ground, dirt mounded over them like a red wool blanket, they had seemed as peaceful in death as they had in life.

• • •

He was awake early, as was his habit, and made his breakfast of grits and coffee-enough for two cups. Knowing it was Sunday, he did not think of fishing. There would be no reason. On Sunday, in the Valley of Light, no one would buy fish, but it was the same everywhere he went. Sundays were not used for buying or selling. If he fished on a Sunday, it was for himself, sometimes for pleasure, sometimes for food. Mostly, Sunday was a day for travel, for the leaving of one place and the search of another. Sometimes on his travels he passed churches with services and could hear voices singing old songs from hymnals, and he knew the people doing the singing were only holding the hymnals, not looking at them. No reason to look. The songs had been committed to memory over years of singing them. Often, he had stopped near the churches, out of sight, and listened and later would find himself humming the songs as he walked, even singing the remembered verses in a voice so quiet only he could hear it. “Just As I Am” was his favorite.

It would be a squandered day for him, one he would spend walking the valley, studying it, maybe going to the lake that Hoke Moore had called the Chatuge, maybe walking to Hayesville if he could find the right road. The eye-patch man, who had identified himself as Howard Reynolds, had invited him to services at the Church of the Resurrected Christ, telling him it was the only church in the valley, and he had said he would think about it, but had not made a binding promise. In the exchange, both men knew the invitation and the reply had been only an exercise of civility. Still, it had been a good meeting with Howard Reynolds, who had been astonished at the fish delivered to him. Howard Reynolds had said, “You stick around, boy, you’ll be taking home twenty dollars from the fishing. Not a man around here could of done what you done in that short of time, not as bad as fishing’s been lately. Not one, not even Littleberry Davis.”