"Now I don't mean to be nosy or nothing. But could you answer me one question," asks the woman truck driver. "Do you make good money at what you do?"

I told her it probably wouldn't sound good to somebody in trucking, but I did pretty much what I wanted, being single and all. The woman laughed and turned to another woman friend her age.

"We keep coming to places like this, looking for the answer. But we never find it!" They both laughed.

Nick turned to me and said that although quite a few amazing things had occurred, we might yet be surprised. "If we don't watch it, we might end up back at the motel with two old ladies."

The woman spoke of her favorite country singers; she didn't share my enthusiasm for Waylon Jennings, but liked Hank Williams. The best country music show she'd ever seen was the time Buck Owens appeared on television with his former wife and her present husband Merle Haggard, and Buck's son, borne by the very same former Mrs. Owens. They all sang together. The woman's eyes shone as she told me what that incredible reunion meant to her.

With his ninth beer, the gallant and the Pygmalion was coming out in Nick. The young girl with the woman truck driver was her daughter, 27 years old and unsure of herself, said Nick. As he explained it, "she needs a lot of help getting out of herself. I don't know who'd have the time."

It turned out, Nick did. After a while, the shy girl passed Nick a note. One of the flared sideburns crew asked what it was. Nick deftly covered. "It's a poem," he said. It was her name and address. "That was a challenge," said Nick. "She didn't believe a stranger would go to the trouble to find out where that address was and go there at three o'clock in the morning."

After some heart-to-heart talking with the mother. Nick and she agreed that the girl needed to develop some confidence in herself. The woman drew a map on a napkin, and Nick drove me back to the motel on the expressway.

"I'll be back in the morning," said Nick. I sank into a state of twitchy purgatory in the empty motel room as the lightning grew louder and closer. I had stopped drinking at two beers and was further from comprehension than if I had matched Nick's pace. Why had he left? The day was nearing 22 straight hours of highway unraveling followed by the unraveling of events at The Wheel. The sound of an approaching freight train rent the air, rising above the flailing of rain. That's the sound people hear when the funnel is about to scoop them up. It turned out to be only a train.

NICK returned about 10 a.m. and woke me up. It was still raining. I asked him how he could face Penny right after that episode.

"Timmy, if we were together, that wouldn't happen. But we're not. It's not a question of taking love away from someone. It's giving. The only trouble was, that girl didn't help me AT ALL."

After a few vehement philosophical reservations, I suspended judgment. Nick is again possessed by Penny, and we will visit the Country Music Hall of Fame before setting out for the small town where she lives in the early afternoon.

The plan was to get Nick into Penny's two o'clock music class before it started, and to have the music teacher, a friend and ally of Nick's, ask Penny to report to his office to talk with him. Penny had no idea Nick was in town.

Stalking into town nervously we soon discovered that no one was in school that day because of flooding and the tornado watch. We toured the town of three or four thousand a little too thoroughly for my taste, then holed up at the Kentucky Fried Chicken place by a pay phone to call Penny's go-between Jilly. There weren't many other places. A Spin-a-Pin six-lane bowling center, a few 7-11s, and the remnants of a destroyed drive-in movie screen torn up by a tornado while Gone With the Wind was playing, said Jilly. It's that kind of town. Sixteen churches, a tiny one-room newspaper and a loan office. The head shark, as fate would have it, is Penny's daddy. Everyone in the county owed him money at one time or another. So whether or not he was well liked, the strings of influence were everywhere.

All day long, rain drops drip No Penny. We return in sadness to Nashville. Taking one last shot. Nick has me call her house. In my best high pitched southern voice, I say, "Hello. Is Miss Penny there?"