On this soft afternoon, the Middle Prong seemed to embody the idea of the Golden Mean: enough water to be lively — exuberant, even — but not so much as to seem menacing or ominous. Heartened by the river, I felt my own current moderating, settling into the mid-range of its spiritual channel. I slowed the truck, rolled down the windows, and took in the sounds and smells of the Smokies: the gurgling, seething water; the bracing tang of hemlock needles and, underneath their aroma, the rich dankness of mossy rocks and moldering leaves.
Two miles upriver from the turnoff, the asphalt gave way to gravel and the river tumbled more than it flowed. Then — after another three miles — the road ended at a looping turnaround area; beyond it a footbridge crossed the river to a trail that continued upstream. A dozen or so parking spaces were notched into the trees lining the loop’s outer rim. On weekends the spaces would all be claimed, but today I had complete choice. I parked near the footbridge and walked to the midpoint of the steel span; twenty feet below me, the river churned swift and cold and clean. Ten miles downriver these waters would get dammed and dreary, but here they danced and sang.
On the far side of the footbridge, a wooden sign announced the mileage to various points up the Middle Prong Trail, the letters and numbers carved into the dark wood by a router and painted white: PANTHER CREEK, 2.3; JAKES CREEK, 4.6; APPALACHIAN TRAIL, 8; CUCUMBER GAP, 8.5. As I contemplated these destinations, none of which I had the time or the footwear to reach, I heard the crunch of tires on gravel, then the brief beep of a vehicle being locked by a remote key. The electronic beep startled and jarred me, so to dodge trailside small talk with the new arrival, I set out. A small, unmarked trail branched off to the right of the main trail, and I decided to follow that one, rather than the Middle Prong Trail, which was wide enough for a jeep and throngs of hikers. The road less traveled, I thought, ducking beneath hemlock branches and clambering over a pair of fallen trees.
A hundred yards up the path, I came to another footbridge, a makeshift one this time. Less than two feet wide, this bridge was made from a steel girder laid across the stream on its side; vertical posts had been welded to it, and steel cables threaded the posts to form flimsy hand railings. Gingerly I stepped onto the span. The girder flexed beneath my weight, bouncing slightly with each step. I paused near the center, gripping an upright with one hand and a cable with the other. Ten feet below, a small stream whose name I didn’t know — the Left Prong? the South Prong? Frothy Creek? — hurled itself from boulder to boulder. Upstream it came rushing at me from a tunnel of dark, glossy rhododendron, leaping off a four-foot ledge before careening back and forth between the rocks.
I was just turning to look downriver when three things happened at the same instant: A brief flash lit the shadowy lacework of a hemlock sapling on the near bank; the air ripped and zinged beside my left ear; and a sharp crack reverberated within the narrow gorge of the stream. By the time my brain realized that I’d just been shot at, my body had already begun reacting instinctively, ducking and darting across the swaying I-beam toward the far side of the stream. The crack of another shot mingled with the clang of a bullet slamming into the steel bridge. As I reached the far bank, a third shot chipped the rocky embankment beside my head, sending shards of stone into my face and neck.
Jesus, I thought, the TBI’s shooting at me. Then I thought, No, that can’t be. I’m a TBI consultant. I’ve worked with them for years. They might want to arrest me — they surely want to question me — but they can’t possibly want to kill me.
But someone obviously did. Sinclair, I thought, but then, How can it be Sinclair? The FBI arrested him yesterday. A fourth shot whanged into the rocks. I guess he got out, I decided. I ran, chased by a fifth shot.
I couldn’t have said how far I ran; all I knew was that I ran, up and up the twisting trail, until I stopped to vomit from the exertion. My gasping breath was interrupted by the heaves of my stomach — heaves that left me gasping even harder for air. The edges of my vision began to go black, and I dropped to my hands and knees, fighting to control my panic and desperate breath. Once my heaves dried up and my breath slowed down, I took stock of my situation, and I didn’t like what I saw. Somewhere below me was a person who had a gun and a wish to kill me, so heading back down the trail didn’t seem to be the path of wisdom. I recalled two other trails in this section of the park — the West Prong Trail, which began at the point where Tremont Road turned from pavement to gravel, and Bote Mountain Trail, which the West Prong Trail hit at a T junction. It seemed possible, or even likely, that this trail would intersect one of those two trails and lead me safely to the road.
I stood and continued up the trail, shakily at first, then with more strength and confidence. Judging by the direction of the sun, I was heading southwest — the general direction of the Bote Mountain Trail, if my memory was correct. But judging by the angle of the sun, I didn’t have much daylight left in which to find it. I checked my watch: It was four-thirty, and that meant I had an hour, maybe ninety minutes, before darkness would catch me in the mountains.
I hiked for half an hour, hoping to hit the intersection with the Bote Mountain Trail. As the trail continued to climb, the sun continued to drop; so did the temperature, and gradually my breath began to fog. Soon the trail snaked up a shaded slope through a patch of snow and ice — not a good sign. Off slightly to my right, perhaps ten miles away and thousands of feet below, I caught a glimpse of Cades Cove, a bowl in the mountains that had been settled and cleared in the early 1800s. Seeing Cades Cove gave me a better fix on my location, but the knowledge was unsettling. The trail, I realized with a sinking feeling, was taking me up to the crest of the mountains — probably up Thunderhead Mountain, the highest peak in the western part of the Smokies. The clothes I was wearing were fine for a warm afternoon in the sun, but not for a night on Thunderhead at five thousand feet.
Would anyone come looking for me — anyone besides Ray Sinclair? Nobody from the Anthropology Department, surely. Miranda had resigned. No one else would have given a thought to my early departure, and no one else would expect to see me before Monday. My one hope — the one silver lining to being suspected of committing fraud and theft — was that the TBI might somehow follow my trail to the mountains. But how? I’d told no one where I was heading, and I doubted that the TBI considered me worthy of an urgent manhunt.
I had two other options, as I saw it. One was to backtrack, hoping that whoever had been shooting at me had given up and gone away. The other was to bushwhack: to cut directly down the mountainside, then follow the small stream I could hear churning far below. I felt certain that the stream fed into the West Prong of the Little Tennessee River; I could even, in my mind’s eye, picture the very bridge where the West Prong flowed beneath the highway. I decided to bushwhack. Veering off the trail, I began scrambling — half running, half falling — down the mountainside. But could I reach the highway by dark?
I could not. Twilight caught me at the confluence where the small stream joined the West Prong. The river gorge had darkened sooner and faster than the higher slopes, and the terrain was steeper and rockier along the water. My side of the river, the south bank, appeared rugged as far as I could see, with stone bluffs and thickets of rhododendron. The north bank looked more passable, but getting to it would require crossing the river. I scanned the stream for a narrows where I might be able to rock-hop across, but I didn’t see one, and I was running out of time to search. Sitting down on a boulder at the water’s edge, I shucked off my shoes, socks, pants, and underwear, then waded in, clutching my rolled-up clothes above my head and wearing my shoes draped around my neck by the laces, like a primitive tribal token of victory over some L.L. Bean — shod academic rival.