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Obviously, you couldn’t do both But what Keller had come to see was that you couldn’t do either one, not if you wanted to remain safe

If you holed up, if you found one place and stayed there, you would keep running into the same people over and over Sooner or later one of the he’d do was pick up a phone

And if you ran for the border, there you’d be, going through post-9/11 security with no passport and no driver’s license and a face every cop in the country was looking for And if soot you across the border, you’d be in so with cops and inforitives Not exactly where he wanted to be

So the trick, as far as he could make out, was to steer a course between the two extre too far or too fast One hundred miles a day, two hundred tops, and pick safe places to sleep and safe ways to get through the days

You couldn’t beat daytime movies The theaters were virtually eht you couldn’t do better than a motel room, with the door locked and the TV on, but the sound turned down so nobody would coinia, off I-81, he’d walked up to the door of a typical independent motel only to pick up some sort of vibe that stopped hiht back to his car Just nerves, he told himself, but whatever had prompted the i that night in a rest area, and woke up with a big truck parked close on one side and what looked like the entire Partridge fa a picnic on the other He was sure soht and the sun was shining away, but he’d slept sitting up with his head tilted forward and the cap hiding his face, and he got out of there without incident

Two nights ago, in Tennessee, he’d left it too long, and he cans lit He spotted a sign, FARM FOR SALE, and drove half a mile on a dirt road until he cahts in the farmhouse, no vehicles to be seen except for an old Ford with its wheels re into the house, if an actual break-in was even required; it seeether possible the doors had been left unlocked

And if sohbor with a place farther along on the dirt road noticed his car as he drove by?

He drove instead to the barn, and parked his car where it wouldn’t be seen He shared the barn with an oho made more noise than he did, and some unidentifiable rodents, whothe owl as he was on avoiding hus The place smelled of animals and hay ured he was a long ways away fro He spread some straw around, setting a good night’s sleep for his troubles

On his way out the nexthe went and had a look at the Ford The wheels were off, as he’d noted earlier, and soine, but the old car still sported a pair of license plates TENNESSEE / THE VOLUNTEER STATE, he read, and there didn’t see on the plate to indicate the year Rust made one of the bolts hard to turn, but he kept at it, and when he drove out of there the Sentra had Tennessee tags, and his Iowa plates were tucked out of sight under some straw in a corner of the barn

The n on the counter indicating that one Sanjit Patel was its proprietor, but evidently this particular Patel had raised himself to that level of the American dream where he could hire people outside his fa ht-skinned African-A identified hi oval face and short hair, wore glasses with heavy black ri a lot of teeth "Bart Simpson! My main man!"

Keller smiled in return, asked the price of a room, learned it was 49 He put three twenties on the counter and pushed the proffered registration card an inch or so toward the young man "Maybe you could fill this out for me," he said After a pause he added, "I wouldn’t need a receipt"

Wheldon’s eyes were thoughtful behind the thick lenses Then he sain and handed over a rooht to coe struck hiood compromise, because the state of Mississippi wouldn’t see the tax, anymore than Sanjit Patel would see any of the fifty dollars

"And IBart Simpson when anybody can see that’s his daddy Ho, Mr Simpson"

Sure, and I never saw you, sir