It was Taylor’s doing, leading Noah to the front porch of the store where the men had gathered—Taylor boasting about his day of fishing with Noah, saying Littleberry Davis would have thrown his rod into the water if he had seen the way Noah pulled in fish. Fast as he could drop the hook, Taylor vowed. Fish so eager to get on Noah’s hook, you could see them lined up in the water like tractors in a Fourth of July parade.

Whitlow Mayfield was on the porch, sitting in the chair that seemed to belong to him, and Howard Reynolds with his grandson, Matthew, and other men whose names Noah did not know, or had forgotten if they had been introduced to him.

“What’d you do with them fish?” one of the men asked.

A blush rose in Taylor’s face. “We ate them,” he offered, not saying they had had supper at Eleanor Cunningham’s home. He glanced at Noah and in the glance Noah knew to keep quiet. Taylor was not ready for any torment over Eleanor Cunningham.

“You sure you didn’t drop a stick of dynamite over in the river to catch all them fish?” Whitlow asked in a teasing way. “What they used to do around here when they was building the dam.”

“No sir,” Noah told him, taking a bite out of his sandwich. And then he said, “I just got lucky,” knowing it was an answer they wanted to hear.

“No such thing as that much luck,” Whitlow said. “I’m guessing you got a deal with the Lord or the Devil, one or the other.”

Noah smiled, did a tilt of his head, took a swallow of his Coca Cola.

“You ever hear about George Perry, down there in Georgia?” Whitlow asked.

“Name seems familiar, but I can’t place why,” Noah said.

“Back in nineteen thirty-two, George Perry caught the biggest largemouth bass anybody ever has,” Whitlow told him. “Weighed a little over twenty-two pounds. Got it on a little lake down there somewhere, fishing out of a bateau. I read about it lots of times.” He grinned. “Know what I like about that story, more’n anything else? Old George took that fish home and filleted it and they ate it. By God, he didn’t waste it by having it stuffed and hung from some wall. But I got to say, I wish I could of seen the head on that thing. It must of had a mouth you could run a elephant through.”

“I’ve heard about it,” Noah admitted. And he had. Had met men who knew George Perry. The men had described him as someone who just liked to fish and never made much over the catch. He had won some kind of contest from Field & Stream magazine. Got him a new rod and reel and a little money.

“You ever hook anything close to that big?” Howard asked.

“No sir,” Noah answered. “Nothing like that.”

“What’s the biggest you guess you ever caught?”