photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS jAn FBI investigator searches under a bridge near where authorities believe Eric Robert Rudolph was camped.

ANDREWS - To believe this young couple, the federal government has run amok.

Eric Robert Rudolph might not be a saint, said Sarah and Rodney Anderson, but he's not guilty of all those sins. They don't believe he's entirely responsible for the two people killed and more than 100 wounded when nail-laden homemade bombs ripped through sites in Atlanta and Birmingham, Ala., from 1996 through 1998.

"I think they're just pinning stuff on him," said Sarah Anderson, 20, as she ate and kept an eye on her 2-year-old son, Payne, who was playing nearby. "I'm sure he did some of it. Other stuff, I don't think so."

The Andersons had stopped to eat lunch Sunday in the McDonald's restaurant in Andrews on their way home to neighboring Robbinsville. The couple believes Rudolph got help while eluding authorities for five years. Others have guessed the same.

Rodney Anderson, a Robbinsville native who has hunted and fished these mountains for almost all of his 21 years, doubts even a skilled outdoorsman such as Rudolph - who as a teen went camping in several inches of snow carrying nothing but a poncho - could survive unaided.

His wife says not even the $1 million reward for his capture would have enticed her to tip the FBI if she'd spotted him. Rodney Anderson adds that he's disappointed by the way the Rudolph saga ended, with one of America's most wanted fugitives groveling on his stomach behind a strip mall at the end of a rookie cop's gun.

"I thought there was going to be a whole lot bigger ending," he said as his wife shushed him.

Hillbilly coverage

One day after Murphy Officer Jeff Postell, 21, arrested Rudolph, 36, folks in far Western North Carolina said they weren't particularly eager to step back into the media limelight. They remember all those photographs five years ago of overall-clad men, quotes from residents on how they hoped Rudolph wouldn't be caught and sound bites from neighbors about their support for the bomber's anti-abortion views. They said they didn't recognize themselves or their community in the picture painted by the media.

Never mind that some men here do wear overalls, or that some regret Rudolph's capture and many are anti-abortion. The coverage rankled many, Andrews native Randy Hogsed said just after services at the First Assembly of God, a storefront church on Main Street in this Cherokee County town.

"It makes you mad when you see people stereotype people here as hillbillies, just because people here have conservative values and believe abortion clinics need to be closed," he said.

Former Cherokee County Sheriff Jack Thompson, 72, was in office during the height of the manhunt, when hundreds of heavily armed federal agents unsuccessfully combed the half- million acre Nantahala National Forest hunting for Rudolph.

The people here, he said, are conservative but law- abiding.

"They may not believe in abortion, but they don't believe murder is the answer," Thompson said at his home just outside Murphy.

Hashing it out

At Bateman's service station in the Nantahala community in the northwestern corner of Macon County, three men and one woman played out a scene repeated almost daily. Between selling bottles of soft drinks and packages of fishing bait, the clan - two are Bateman's by blood, two by marriage - were busy hashing out the national political scene and the latest news about the community's most notorious resident.

"If he'd come to my house, I'd surely given him something to eat," said James Bateman as he perched on a patio chair parked next to a stone-cold Fisher wood stove.

Behind Bateman, a yellowing poster of Rudolph bedecked with antlers continued to relay a joke also gone cold: "Christmas is cancelled this year because the Feds can't find Rudolph."

Bateman wishes Rudolph hadn't gotten nabbed. It isn't because the economic boom he brought Nantahala is forever gone, when reporters and federal agents stood in lines to get gasoline at the station.

"I hated he got caught. I don't know why," Bateman said in wistful tones, as if he'd just learned that Elvis was dead, or that the family's 49-year-old store had burned.

Arvel Williamson, a relative, piped up.

"You're innocent until proven guilty," he said.

Asked if he thinks Rudolph is guilty, Williamson shrugged and said yes.

Pickin' on a Sunday

A few miles from the Bateman cabal, away from the community's main byway, a scene was unfolding that would have thrilled the hearts of out-of-town journalists the world over. Local residents had gathered on Brenda Holland's porch on Long Branch Road to pick the Sunday afternoon away.

With a handful of Nantahala residents and friends sitting in the shade of a white pine tree, the bluegrass players made the cove ring with the melodic sounds of two mandolins, a fiddle, banjo, two guitars and a bass made out of a large white bucket. On the bucket, stickers proclaimed "God is so good" and "Jesus is my best friend."

"Do y'all want a chair?" Holland asked politely. "How about some refreshments?"

Introductions offered and made, the group returned to making music. Rudolph, who moved as a teen to Nantahala, lived a few ridges over. A teacher at the high school he attended was among those enjoying the beautiful late spring day and lively music. "He was real quiet," Judy Morgan said, eager to help out a reporter, but limited because she never actually taught the young Rudolph.

And, the topic isn't of much interest here. "That name hasn't even been brought up," Holland said.

Music is the reason they had gathered.

At that, the small group nodded at one another and launched into another tune, "Little Church in the Wildwood."

Contact Ellison or Ostendorff at 452-1467 or QEllison@CITIZEN-TIMES.com

or JOstendorff@CITIZEN-TIMES.com