“She fell over dead at the stove, making jelly,” said the little lady, “knocked the pot of mayhaw juice onto the floor at a full rolling boil and the jelly bag still dripping over the sink.”

“Governor Wallace gave me a job, though,” said the bus driver. “He hired me to be his driver. That’s how I raised my kids, seventeen years driving the governor anywhere he wanted to go.”

“What’s your mama’s name?” the Man of Music asked the little boy. “I’m gon’ put her in my song.”

“Now my brother-in-law is bad to drink,” the little lady said, “and when he came in late that night and there she was on the kitchen floor laying in that red pool of mayhaw juice starting to jell and the lumpy jelly bag hanging over the sink, all he could think of was blood and hearts.”

“One night we were riding along, just me and him,” said the bus driver, “through some pine woods in south Alabama. It was dark. Nobody was talking. Then just out of nowhere he said, ‘Boy, there’s something about me you don’t like. What is it?’”

“Her name’s Alma, but they call her Sweetie,” said the little boy.

“Oooh, baby,” said the Man of Music. “True love! It’s gon’ be about a bus ride. Your mama ever ride the bus?”

“Well, that kind of put me on the spot,” said the bus driver. “’Cause he was right. There was something I didn’t like. But I just told the truth. I said, ‘Well, Governor, you know, I ain’t prejudice.’ And he sat right there and said to me, ‘Boy, I’ll tell you something not many people know about me. I ain’t prejudice either.’”

“My brother-in-law just couldn’t get it out of his mind,” said the little lady. “He’d go out on the porch, open up that freezer, that light would come on in that white freezer, and he’d just stand there and look in at all those Clorox jugs of plum juice and those gallon-size plastic bags of mayhaws she had stacked up in there, tears running down his face; all he could see was hearts and blood.”

“You know,” said the Man of Music, “I get around; I bet I’m gon’ run into your mama one day.”

“My daddy said she just couldn’t be satisfied,” said the little boy. “And that’s why she left.”

“I couldn’t stand to see him suffering like that,” said the little lady. “So the night before the funeral while he was asleep, I emptied out that freezer and made seventy-seven pints of jelly, stained up my hands so bad squeezing the bag I had to go out first thing in the morning and buy these short white gloves.”

“She’ll have a big pocketbook,” said the little boy.

“Yeah,” said the Man of Music. “I’ll know her by that pocketbook.”