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?'
'Yes. You can do that in the morning.'
'I need to pee.'
'You've got the whole forest.'
'Is it safe out there?'
I thought of telling her to watch for timber rattlers, but she probably wouldn't get out if I did. 'This is the safest you've been in twenty-four hours.'
She climbed out of the truck and moved out of the light but didn't close the door. This illuminated us like a lantern in the woods. She took a long time, and I started to feel anxious. Then raindrops began hitting the wind¬shield, and I heard her squeal. She scrambled back into the truck with her jeans unbuttoned and yanked the door shut.
'It's pouring!' she cried, fastening her pants.
'Rain's good for us. It deadens sound when you walk in the woods.'
She pulled a sleeping bag over her chest and shud¬dered. 'I don't want to offend you, but this sucks. We couldn't stay in some cheap motel?'
'No one in the world knows where we are now. So no one can find out. That's the way we want it. Go to sleep.'
She nodded and settled against her door.
I sat listening to the symphony of rain and the ticking engine, recalling predawn vigils with my father and brother, waiting for our chance at ducks or deer. I was exhausted, but I knew I'd wake before the sun. Some primitive part of my brain that lay dormant in cities awakened in the wilderness and whispered the forest rhythms to me with unfailing accuracy. That whisper told me when dawn was close, when rain was coming, when game was moving. I pulled my sleeping bag up to my chin.
'Good night,' I said to Rachel.
Steady breathing was her only reply.
I woke as the first dim shade of blue showed through the trees. I blinked several times, then surveyed the scene without moving my head. Seeing nothing, I gently shook Rachel awake. Again she jerked erect, but not in quite the panic of last night.
'Time to go,' I said.
'Okay,' she mumbled, but she looked ready to go back to sleep.
I got out and relieved my bladder, then unloaded the gear from behind the seat. I put most of it into my own pack, giving Rachel only her sleeping bag, some canned food, and a couple of fuel bottles. When she got out, I handed her a Silent Shadow camouflage jumpsuit, heavy socks, and boots.
She made a wry face, but she took the clothes and went behind the truck. While she changed, I fixed the quiver and compound bow to my pack. Then I slipped into my jumpsuit and boots. As I shouldered my pack, the
