She looked out the window again. "Let's not talk about this."

"We don't have to talk at all. But we need supplies. I'm going to stop at an all-night Wal-Mart in Winston-Salem or Asheville. That gives you a couple of hours to sleep."

"I am exhausted," she admitted.

"Come here."

"What?"

"Lean over here."

"On your shoulder?"

"No. Be brave. Curl up on the seat and lay your head on my lap."

She shook her head, but not in refusal. I kept my eyes on the road. After a few moments, she pulled off her shoes, then folded her legs on the seat and laid her head on my right thigh. I sensed that her eyes were open, but I didn't look down. I lowered my right hand and began to stroke her forehead, sliding my fingers back into her hair.

"This reminds me of when I was a little girl," she said.

"I'm not talking to you. Close your eyes."

After a while, she did.

We hit Asheville at 10:30 P.M. A brightly lit Wal-Mart store appeared like an oasis out of the dark, and I pulled off the interstate. Rachel's head was still in my lap, and my right leg was nearly numb. She didn't respond when I spoke. I was tempted to leave her in the truck while I went into the store, but I didn't want her to wake up alone in the parking lot. There was also a chance that the local police had received an APB on the fisherman's stolen pickup. To avoid being ambushed when we came out of the store, I awakened Rachel and posted her just inside the glass doors, where she could see anyone who took an undue interest in our maroon Ram.

I went straight to the sporting goods department and began piling items beside an unattended cash register. A two-man tent. Sleeping bags. Backpacks. A Coleman lantern, a stove ring, and fuel. From another aisle I selected two Silent Shadow camouflage jumpsuits, camo headgear, rubber camo boots, and insulated underwear. One aisle over again, I chose a compound bow, eight arrows, and a quiver. I topped off my pile with a com¬pass, a pair of binoculars, a Gerber knife, water purifi¬cation tablets, a Maglite, and two battery-powered walkie-talkies. Then I went in search of a salesperson to ring it all up.

The young Mexican woman I found was suspicious of my cash. While she checked each hundred-dollar bill for authenticity, I went to the toiletries section and got toothpaste, toothbrushes, and soap. The total purchase came to $1429.84. After paying, I pushed my cart to the front of the store and left it with Rachel, then took another to the grocery section and grabbed enough basics to keep us alive for a couple of weeks, plus some bottled water. As I went through the checkout aisle, I thought how amazing it was that I could pull off the highway late at night and in one stop outfit myself for long-term survival in the wilderness. My father wouldn't have believed it.

Rachel made an "okay" sign with her hand while I checked out, and I breathed a little easier. The rent-a-cop at the exit stopped me, but only to check my receipt against what was in my cart. Ten seconds later we were walking through the parking lot. I tossed everything behind the seat, then helped Rachel inside and started back toward I-40.

Just before we reached the interstate, I turned into the parking lot of a Best Western motel and parked between two trucks on the back side. One was a blue Dodge Ram with a horse trailer attached. Using a screwdriver from our glove box, I removed the Texas license plate from that Ram and exchanged it for the plate on our maroon one. Then I drove up the access ramp to I-40 and headed west toward the Tennessee line, which lay somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains before us.

Soon Rachel was snoring softly, her head on my lap again. I tuned the radio to a station playing David Gray and let my eyes blur until all they tracked were the edges of the road. We were driving into my past, into the forests of my youth, a world of strange contrasts and indelible memories. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory was one of the most high-tech installations in the coun¬try, yet it was nestled in thickly forested wilderness. There I had gone to school with the children of brilliant men and women from Chicago and New York, and the children of emaciated men and women who'd never left the county where they were born. Some of the scientists found the rural setting boring, if not downright disturb¬ing, but for my family the wooded mountains surround¬ing Oak Ridge had been a paradise.

There were several isolated spots around Oak Ridge where we could hide, but one was perfect for us. Last year, I'd heard from a boyhood friend that because of budget constraints, the government was closing the Frozen Head State Park. My brother and I had camped there countless times, and by now the mountainous park would be deserted but for a few fanatical hikers who wouldn't bother anyone enjoying the same illicit recre¬ation they sought.

We crossed the Tennessee line at the south end of the Pisgah National Forest. Then we broke out of the big trees, and by midnight we were passing through Knoxville. I continued west on 62 and in less than thirty min¬utes we were driving through Oak Ridge, America's "secret city" of the Second World War. Today it is known worldwide for its nuclear facilities, but during World War Two it hadn't even existed on maps. Between 1945 and 1975-the year I left it for Alabama-Oak Ridge had grown into something resembling a normal American town. But it never quite was. There was always a shared sense of mission in Oak Ridge, and the proof of the town's value was invisible but ever present. We who lived there knew that in the event of nuclear war, we would be vaporized in the first few minutes. Even in the dark I could see that the city had grown since I'd left it. There were more franchise restaurants on the strip, more chain stores, but the town's heart was still the laboratory and the old wartime uranium piles, which drew tourists curi¬ous to see the tools that had won the war against the Japanese.

Leaving Oak Ridge on Highway 62, ours was the only vehicle on the road. We skirted the base of Big Brushy Mountain, on the far side of which lay the state penitentiary. Three county lines intersected in this iso¬lated area, a mist-shrouded world populated by the descendants of coal miners and moonshiners. They clung tenaciously to existence in the shadowy hollows and along the abandoned strip mines that still scarred these mountains.

I turned north on 116, a narrow road that wound past the hamlet of Petros and then the prison, a starkly depressing enclosure lit by a harsh mercury glow and surrounded by razor-wire fences. North of the prison, the road began to twist back upon itself like a wounded snake. I turned left on a track that had no map number, but which I remembered well. Before long, I would come to the gate of the abandoned state park, which would probably be barricaded now.

A half mile from the gate, I slowed and began looking for an opening in the trees. When I saw one, I braked and turned off the road, and in ten seconds we had van¬ished. I drove until the woods became too thick and the grade too steep to go farther. Then I parked and shut off the engine.

Rachel hadn't stirred. I reached back and pulled our sleeping bags from the gear behind the seat. As I unrolled them, she snapped awake and popped up out of my lap, staring wide-eyed in the dark.

"What are you doing?"

"Take it easy," I said. "You're fine. We're there."

"Where?" She tried to look out the window, but there was no light beneath the trees. We could have been in a cave.

"We're outside Oak Ridge, at a place called Frozen Head. It's an abandoned state park."

"Frozen Head?"

"You've been asleep for hours."

She shook her head. "I can't sleep in cars."

"Well, keep on not sleeping. I'll wake you just before dawn."

She blinked as though coming out of a trance. Then she put her hand to her mouth and grimaced. "Did you buy us toothbrushes?"