An American career-convict and serial escaper, Christopher Gay, is back behind prison bars at Volusia county branch jail in Daytona Beach, Fla., trying to convince police that his latest jailbreak was one big misunderstanding.

His adventure began a week ago while being transported from Texas to Alabama, where he was due to stand trial for stealing cars and trucks. At Hardeeville, just north of the Georgia state line, the prison van pulled in to a service station so Gay, 32, could take a lavatory break. As soon as his handcuffs were off, so was Gay.

His destination was the suburb of Pleasant View, north of Nashville, some 500 miles away, to see his seriously ill mother who had been told she had only days to live.

To get there, Gay, who also has six outstanding warrants for his arrest in Tennessee and Alabama, stole a pick-up truck. Fifty miles into his journey, its engine gave out, and he traded it for a tractor-trailer at a Georgia junkyard. By the time he got to Manchester, Tenn., that too broke down, so Gay staked out the local Wal-Mart. When a truck driver took a break, he stole his keys from the diner counter and made off in his rig.

This time, the truck made it all the way to Nashville, but the long journey had taken its toll on the runaway. Gay careered off the road and into a field. Barely had he come to a stop — just 50 yards from his mother’s home — than police, passing in a patrol car, stopped to help at what they thought was an accident. Gay took fright and ran into a nearby wood. He ran and ran through four miles of thick forest, with 19 officers in hot pursuit.

Emerging into another Nashville suburb, he stole Crystal Gayle’s 20-year-old blue-and-silver Prevost tour bus, which was sitting in a parking lot while she was singing at a nightspot. Realizing the police would be staking out his mother’s home, Gay cut his losses and headed toward Florida.

Ms. Gayle’s bus was to be his downfall. “I could fib to you and say we finally tracked down young Mr. Gay using good old-fashioned police footwork and investigation,” a Daytona Beach police sergeant, Jeff Hoffman, said. “But I’m afraid it was a bit more Keystone Cops than that. To be honest, I was driving home on Friday evening when Ms. Gayle’s bus passed right by me.”

Sergeant Hoffman stopped Gay, who told him he was working for the racing driver Tony Stewart and needed directions to the Daytona speedway. But once the officer discovered the bus was Ms. Gayle’s stolen Prevost, he and a posse of police trailed Gay to the racetrack and finally arrested him. “He wasn’t violent, and he wasn’t weird,” Sergeant Hoffman said. “In fact, he apologized for lying earlier.”

Ms. Gayle has forgiven the culprit. “My heart does go out to him,” she said yesterday. “It must be awful to be locked up in prison while your mom is dying.”