“I like him,” Noah said quietly.

“So do I,” she said. “When Boyd was alive, and before Granny moved in, Howard used to bring him by the house and I’d read to him. He liked stories that had rhymes in them, the kind of things you’d read to a first-grader. Sometimes, he would say the line before I could, and I’d clap for him and he’d laugh like somebody being tickled.”

Noah offered a smile.

“Howard was telling me about the fishing yesterday,” she said. “He said he’d never seen anything like it. Told me Matthew couldn’t stop talking about it. He said he wanted to be a fisherman like you.”

“I had some luck,” he said, taking the chair across from Eleanor.

“Not the way Howard describes it,” she said. “He said it was more than luck. He said you were the talk of the valley, especially with the school fishing contest coming up this weekend.”

Noah took a sip of his coffee, but did not reply.

“How did you get your name? Noah, I mean?” she asked.

“My mama told me she liked the story of Noah and the Ark,” he replied. “I guess that’s were it’s from.”

“I’m reading a book that’s got a character with the name of Noah in it,” she told him.

He looked at her with surprise. It had never occurred to him that his name could be in a book other than the Bible.

“It’s called The Grapes of Wrath. It’s all about people moving out to California to get away from the dust bowl,” she said. “A man named John Steinbeck wrote it. Noah’s last name was Joad.”

Again, Noah gave her a quizzical look.

“Rhymes with toad,” she said, smiling. “I’d hate to have had a name like that. I can hear all the kids in school, saying, ‘Joad the toad, Joad the toad.’” She let the smile play over her face. “It was bad enough with the nickname I had. L. Just that. The initial L. ‘L for Eleanor. L from hell,’ the boys used to say, and I’d get mad and start acting like that was exactly where I was from. I guess I was something of a tomboy growing up. I had my share of fights.”

Noah let his head bob in understanding, and Eleanor told a story of a fight with a boy named Hoyt Rivers. A bully, she called him. Always aggravating girls, pinching them, pulling up their skirts, shooting spitballs at them with rubber bands stretched over his fingers. One day, he had made a girl named Christina Brooks cry, and Eleanor—”L from hell,” she said—slapped him hard enough to knock him off his feet and to send him running off in shame, ducking through the cheers of everyone watching what had happened. After that, he stuck to himself.

“He became a preacher,” she said. “From what I understand, he’s got a big church over in Chattanooga, Tennessee.” She paused. “Who knows, maybe I helped God open his eyes.”