We had a ways to go yet before we got to Nashville, but at least when we stopped for gas in Alyson Forest, Tennessee, we had something closely resembling a plan.
Formulating an action plan left us feeling far less helpless, like maybe drifting across the South in this rented raft might not last until eternity, after all. Had he been from Texas or Oregon or even Canada, I probably would have punched Thumper in the face just for opening his mouth. I initiated precisely no conversation, and every couple of miles when he’d breathe out the start of a sentence, I’d gird myself and prepared to be annoyed. But his Afrikaans accent tickled my ears just enough that it ended up being okay that he was talking. We had established that Jeremy was off-limits as a topic, and listening for the hint of Afr
