Then the car hurtled out of sight around the curve, the driver extending his middle finger high into the air above the roofline of the peacemobile.
I took the highway south, past the airport, then angled east through Maryville and Townsend to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which was forty-five minutes from Knoxville but a world away. A mile inside the park, I turned left at the road that led to the educational camp at Tremont, where virtually every kid in East Tennessee, including my now-grown son, spent a week of middle school learning about the flora and fauna of the Appalachians. The road to Tremont meandered up the Middle Prong of the Little Tennessee, a free-flowing river whose emerald pools were strung together with strands of white, tumbling rapids. At its low, the Middle Prong could be crossed in numerous places by the adventurous rock hopper; at its high-water mark, it could test the skill of serious kayakers, or drown those foolhardy enough to take to the torrent in inner tubes.
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.