I arrive exhausted: Ducktown behind me, nine miles in three hours; I've proved ill prepared for this adventure, backpack 20 pounds overweight, too many unexpected inclines. Dusk shrouding the Smoky Mountains, Turtletown attained, I've met my goal: the quaintest, closest and only name on the map. Yet another Baptist Church along 68 North, a banner for the revival meeting next weekend, two double-wide trailers equipped with decks and garages, one chained, drowsy dog are all to be found in Turtletown: AAA and cartographers take note.

He's here, too. A vision: John Deere hat stained and dripping, back bent shoveling, clearing the train-tracks on the south-side of town, turning to face me, his gray beard is slick with Skoal. I beg for a ride and he obliges.

His name is Wade Abrams. "Been here 59 years and been shot three times." Thinking he's joking, I quickly learn otherwise: A rusty 12-gauge greets me on the passengers seat.

"Don't mind that," Wade laughs, slipping the shotgun into the truckbed beside my backpack; no gun racks here, too subtle. "That one's never loaded, probably backfire anyway," he continues, now sitting behind the wheel, opening his Carhart jacket to reveal a shiny .45. "This one is always loaded..."

Wade isn't the most likable sort, but he has wheels and knows the area. His ancestors apparently owned every plot along Route 68 at one time or another. He offers to take me up to the nearest store. ("Homemade biscuits but the gravy's gritty...") It's by his farm, the original homestead with the family burial plot in the back. He asks me where I'm from.

"New York City, now."

"Sorry about 9/11." Quietly, no hesitation, then, "Do you like Bubba's bitch?"

Thinking, wondering, I get it. "Hillary?" Amazed that this man, the one I'd found on the side of 68 clearing the tracks, would be interested in my state's junior senator. "Why you ask?"

"I hear she's a hawk." Shocked into silence, watching another Baptist Church zip past, I know now that, if anything, Wade is no redneck. "Well? Whatcha know?"

"She's fighting for our piece of the pie. Inventing defense contractors to get funding, but still fighting."

"New York is a big target." He nods, gives me a glance, "I did a job up there in the 70's off Flatbush with some Seneca and Mohawk, good folks, steel work is in their blood. I know New York."

Slowing to pull into Turtletown's only store, where he is to let me out, we see it's dark and locked. "Everything closes here at dinnertime..." We drive on. Passing his farm, he points, and we both sigh.

I need to find a camping site.

"I wanted to escape for awhile," I tell him. "New York can have me next week. Right now I need a good spot, pitch for the night... And I definitely need a beer."

Wade howls. "Boy! You're in the Baptist Belt! Smack dab in the center of five dry counties!" Skoal spews on the dashboard and he slaps it clean with his hat, adding, "There's good camping by the river."

I'm relieved. I didn't want biscuits or dubious gravy anyway. I just wanted to camp for the night. A beer would have been nice, but a site by the river sounds perfect.

Wade isn't done with me yet, though. "These yahoos down here think we need to protect our dams. I hope Bubba's bitch grabs all she can. You need it worse than we do."

He decides to let me in on a local secret where there's beer, plenty of it. He takes a right off 68 onto a dirt path into the woods, crossing that river he mentioned. I'm beginning to like him.

The only problem I have with Wade is that he quit drinking. I have no issues with non-drinkers, but he should have shared this fact with me much earlier. I suppose it's both easier and harder to not drink when living in the middle of five dry counties, but Wade's admission puts me in a terrible bind. One, I want to buy him several beers as thanks for the ride; and two, when he decides to tell me, we're idling outside the local "cider shack."

Cider shacks are only found deep in the woods on back roads. Baptists drink, too; they just don't openly admit it. This particular cider shack ("The Open Road Bar" is painted on the side) is under new ownership. Wade notices the neon and seems impressed, but he won't take me up on that drink, not even a quick Coke. He remains courteous, though, lugging my backpack inside, introducing me to the regulars, then departing rather abruptly—too tempted, I figure—leaving me surrounded by backwoods boozers.

I'm originally from western New York, where being called a redneck is a compliment and drinking in the woods is a given. These regulars are a swell group. They let me snap their picture, offer a stool, order me a Bud and start a conversation. They like that I'm from New York. None has ever been there, but they still like it. And me—mostly because I live in Brooklyn, not Manhattan.

"You Yanks make the ammo, we'll do the shooting!" says Ron. He's a redheaded sheet-rocker from North Carolina, teetering on the stool to my right. When I seem surprised that he's from so far away, Ron slaps me on the back, "Shit! Don't you know where you are?" I obviously don't, so Ron stumbles to his feet and starts to hop about, "I'm in Carolina! Now I'm in Tennessee! You're sitting on the border! Shit! You're nowhere!"

Charlie is to my left; the others call him "Indian," but his wrinkled brow says he prefers Charlie. He's retired and aging rapidly. The asbestos mine he worked in his entire life went bankrupt—there's still plenty of asbestos in these hills, but no pensions or health coverage for its former-miners. I later learn that Charlie grows marijuana in the wilds to make ends meet.

I never learn the name of the guy at the end of the bar, the one with the eyepatch. I'm grateful for that. He isn't jovial or swashbuckling whatsoever; just a drunk, quiet and drowning.

Ron asks me why I'm in these parts and I tell him, and everyone. It's a brief break from Brooklyn. I started in Atlanta and made my way to Knoxville, hiking Cherokee National Forest between reading and signing events for my latest book. It's about my family, four generations of knife-makers, dozens of cousins who have been competing against one another since the Civil War. Inebriated but interested, Ron wants to know when we first arrived in America.

"1630's, that's as far back as I could trace us," I tell him.

Pausing, Ron offers that, "I don't know what year or ship we all came over on, but we was fucking the Cherokee right quick."

The others burst into laughter, and I realize then and there the levity of this moment, this place. We are sitting where the Trail of Tears started. From here clear on to Oklahoma, Andrew Jackson drove tens of thousands of Native Americans 150 years ago. A guy nicknamed Indian to my left, a national forest bigger than Connecticut surrounding us, yet probably not a single full-blooded Cherokee to be found.

And Ron just keeps on talking. Locals love sharing secrets with outsiders. "You wanna know something else?"

"Sure," I say after a sip, not really interested but eager, like listening to Tom DeLay's latest defense.

"Less than five miles from here, that's where Eric Rudolph surrendered."

"Really?" I wonder, "Surrendered?"

"You bet, in Murphy, that's North Carolina, where he gave up. Five miles from here." Leaning close, Ron then whispers in my ear.

"And he wasn't digging through garbage or scrounging like the Feds want you to think, either."

"No?"

"Nope. The whole time the FBI was searching these mountains, Rudolph's working beside me, building a new gas station in Murphy."

"He painted my sister's brother's house," adds Charlie.

Then, out of nowhere, it happens, again, before I can ask Charlie how his sister's brother isn't his brother, too.

"What do you think of Hillary?"

The question came from behind the bar, from Rick, a retired biker from Orlando to whom the new owners of "The Open Road Bar" have entrusted this place, and it seems, the peace.

"Hillary?" I stammer, astonished. "Clinton?"

"Yahhh," Charlie says, "Hillerreee."

I don't know how to respond. Tattooed and friendly, but in a distant bartender way, Rick is too quick to flash open his tactical knife when Ron asks to see it.

"Now THIS is a knife! Punch through the side of a Hummer. Armored Hummer..." says Rick, handing it to Ron, handle-up, of course. Ron's obviously seen the blade before, he's just asking so I can see it, too. I feign interest—I know too much about knives already.

Still, the question remains.

"I like Hillary. She isn't Bill, and she's no Rudy."

Silence, then.

"At least she ain't Condi."

A low mutter from a full bottle at the end of the bar. The eyepatch has spoken, said it all, it seems. The others nod and Ron and Rick exchange cheers.

We all know what he meant and I wait for what should follow. But a swig turns into a chug, and soon, that bottle at the end of the bar is empty.

So Rick hands him another, on the house.