Demon flees the truck stop and accepts a long-haul ride that carries him the wrong way into Nashville while he sleeps. Stranded, hungry, and broke, he dodges a roadside proselytizer who tries to take his last half-eaten apple, holes up in a foul single-stall bathroom, and then fails to catch an eastbound ride for hours.

He crafts a colorful “UNICOI” sign; a talkative, barefoot driver misreads it as “unicorn,” carries him toward Knoxville, and drops him at Love Creek. In the rain, Demon shelters behind a mini-mart dumpster, eats his last Slim Jim, and reflects on Mr. Golly’s childhood among “no-toucher” people and how hunger and kindness get tangled.

The next day brings three rides: a radio-absorbed trucker; a crude young driver who jokes about finding women; and an older preacher in a worn Caddy who listens to Demon’s whole story. The preacher warns that Unicoi folks can be dangerously vengeful, illustrates it with the story of a hanged elephant, promises prayers, and gives Demon a dollar before dropping him at a lonely road to Murder Valley.

Demon walks for miles, briefly rides with a slow farmer, and sleeps in a barn, haunted by memories of Tommy. On Sunday he reaches the valley—fields, scattered cemeteries, and a small church whose singing makes him ache for belonging. He searches graveyards and asks townspeople for Betsy Woodall; most dismiss or mock him.

At a feed store loading dock, men jeer about a witchlike woman before grudgingly give directions. Demon follows them to a lone yellow two-story on a hill, its yard ablaze with flowers. A tall, stern older woman in the garden brandishes a trowel and orders him away. He says he is her grandson. She removes her glasses, studies his red hair and face, and, shocked, sits down, recognizing him.