“THERE WILL BE no smoking on the bus,” the driver announced, settling himself with practiced care into his seat. “If you’ve got a radio, use the headphones and keep the volume down. If you must chew gum, don’t pop it. And there will be no profanity, because there are ladies on the bus. We will be making stops in Dooley, Midway, Choctawhatchee, Snipes, High Ridge, Cottonville, Chancey, Bonnie View, Despera Springs, and Pensacola. Watch your step walking to and from the restroom.” Then he flapped his sun visor down and we made that snub-nosed turn into Tennessee Street and headed west into a late-fall afternoon.

There weren’t many people on the bus—just me in the front; across the aisle in the handicapped seat a dismal old man in cheap, worn-out clothes, whose mind was gone; and farther back a little boy traveling alone, with his hair parted neatly and combed wet, looking anxious and alert.

It was one of those late-fall afternoons when you can feel the lingering sweet languor of summer in the air, but in the slant of light you can also see the first glimpse of winter with its exciting cold and mysterious dark. I felt honored to be heading west in the front seat of a bus on that day, scooping in that rare afternoon through the wide windshield.

In downtown Dooley, the first stop, only two new people got on: a young man with a battered guitar case, his shirt unbuttoned and a long, curved tooth hanging down his chest on a black cord; and a little old lady wearing a flowered print dress, a tan moth-eaten coat and matching hat, and short white gloves. The young man struck a pose in the middle of the aisle with his legs spread, flung his greasy blond hair over his shoulder, and said, “Y’all ready for some music? ’Cause I’m here now.”

“Watch it, son,” warned the bus driver, and the young man swaggered down the aisle thumping the plaid backs of the seats and twitching his shoulders, then sat down across from the earnest little boy. The lady settled down in the front seat, arranged the folds of her coat carefully, turned to me, and said, “I have been to Dooley for a sad occasion. I have been to Dooley for the funeral of my brother-in-law’s wife.”

We turned around and around and around the Gadsden County courthouse and headed west again on 90.

“You sing songs?” the little boy asked the man with the guitar.

“Sing songs?” said the man. “What do you mean, ‘sing songs’?” Then he threw himself into a little rhythmic convulsion of thumping, tapping, and twitching. “I am a man of music. In fact, I am made out of music, body and soul. You cut me open, you know what you’ll find?”

“Guts?” said the little boy.