The little boy said, “My daddy said he should have known something wasn’t right when she took that big old pocketbook to the grocery store when all she needed was a can of tuna fish and a box of crackers.”

“I didn’t know any better,” said the bus driver. “I didn’t know a twelve-year-old boy couldn’t just walk right into the governor’s mansion and say, ‘I come to see the governor.’ So I just did it.”

“When you’re a man of music you don’t even need an instrument,” said the Man of Music. “You can make music out of anything. Did you know that Carl Perkins’s first guitar was made out of nothing but a cigar box and a broomstick?”

“My granny keeps her money in a cigar box,” said the little boy. “She don’t have a big pocketbook.”

“So I just did it,” said the bus driver. “I’d sneak off from home two, three times a week and ride the bus up to Montgomery. ‘I come to see the governor,’ I’d say. Pretty soon they started getting used to me, they let me come on in. I’d just sit there in his office and visit with him, just me and Governor Wallace.”

In the seat next to us the old man had slumped down so far his knuckles were scraping the floor. “You need to sit up straight,” the little lady told him. “You’re gon’ fall out in the floor. Do you want a cookie?” But the old man didn’t seem able to do anything for himself, so at the next stop, High Ridge, the Man of Music came up to the front of the bus, stood in the aisle facing the old man, and hitched up his own britches. “I’m gon’ straighten you up, old buddy,” he said, and wrapped his arms around the old man and hauled him back upright.

“Pull his sweater down,” said the little lady. “He’s cold.” The Man of Music pulled the sweater down over the old man’s slack, bare belly and gave him a pat.

“Here,” said the lady. “Give him a cookie.”

The Man of Music said, not unkindly, “He don’t want a cookie, ma’am,” then squatted down and leaned over to get his face in the old man’s sagging line of vision. “Old buddy, listen to me. Pretty soon me and you gon’ get off this bus and smoke us a cigarette. Lucky Strike.”