He confessed he had failed in his own marriage. “Took me a Methodist from down in Hiawassee,” he said, “but she found more favor with a banker down in Gainesville a couple of years after we made that great walk of torture down the aisle. Left me high and dry, but, Lord, I don’t guess I can blame her much. It can get a little tiresome around here.”

Things had changed, though, Taylor observed. Little by little. Season by season. Year by year. Changed with death following death, changed with the building of roads, changed with the coming of the automobile, with the depression, with the construction of the Chatuge, with the war, changed with the selling of land to strangers by descendants of the settlers, the descendants having moved off to larger towns and cities. The Valley of Light had lost more men to the war than any community in North Carolina if you took the size of a place into consideration, he said. Some good men.

It was like the pruning of an old and damaged tree. The more limbs taken off, the more the tree was left with only a trunk.

His own family was an example, Taylor offered, and he told the story of the settling of the valley by his great-grandfather, who had built the first store in the community. Had fathered nine children. Once it was easy enough to find a Bowers under every rock in the county, but that had been long ago. Now there weren’t enough of them left to fill a small room, and the ones still alive were a peculiar group—himself included, if you took the word of some people in the community. He had a cousin, Pete, who was a barber in Hayesville. Joe Bowers, an uncle, was in his eighties, and a man with the sour personality of a hermit. Joe’s two sons, Carson and David, were both traveling salesmen, both with the con artist’s shifty-eyed look. Once they found they had a liking for the road, they had seldom returned to the valley. Holidays, maybe.

Taylor paused, made a little laugh. “Don’t know why I’m talking about Carson and David,” he said. “Used to think about being a traveling man myself when I was growing up. Probably would have, too, except I always knew I’d have the store one day, and it didn’t make a lot of sense to go off looking for something, when I had something looking for me.” He paused, wiggled his fishing line in the water, shrugged, made a small sighing sound. “Listen to me. Sounds like I’m griping, don’t it? And, good Lord, that’s the last thing I ought to be doing, out here fishing for the first time in a thousand years, it seems like.” He laughed. His voice became suddenly merry. “Fish Seller,” he chortled, “why don’t we go into business? Me and you. Set us up a little fish house on the side of the road going down to Hiawassee. You catch and clean and I’ll cook. We’ll call it Noah’s Ark.”