BROTHER LOVE’S TRAVELING SALVATION SHOW

Written by Neil Diamond

Performed by Neil Diamond

Recorded at American Sound Studio, Memphis, Tennessee, 1969

Drummer: Gene Chrisman

They were quiet with one another as they crossed into Mississippi the next morning just as the sun burst into a bright yellow lemon behind them. The sunshine lightened their mood.

“More hills,” remarked Ray. “Bus don’t sound too good.” He was eating an apple.

Norman grimaced as he drove. “It’ll get us there. Don’t worry.”

“I’m worried,” said Molly. Her hair was tidy in its ponytail once again. She tuned the radio as they drove, looking for AM stations playing the Weekly Top Forty records.

They stopped for gas in Southaven. Norman once again checked the oil and added a quart. Ray and Molly wordlessly watched a brown-skinned girl with hair that glistened in the morning sun walk down the road past the service station. She carried a baby on her hip. As they pulled out of the gas station and began to pass her, Molly spoke up.

“Maybe she needs a ride, Norman.”

“Who?”

“That girl!” The girl watched the bus drive by. Her baby, black curls bouncing, waved at the bus.

“She probably lives here,” said Norman.

“That doesn’t mean she doesn’t need a ride,” said Molly. “She might have a long way to walk.”

Norman kept driving. Molly watched the girl and her baby recede as the bus windows clicked past her like movie frames.

“Now we’ll never know what happened to her! Just turn around, Norman!”

“No! She’s none of our business! She’s just walking down the road!”

Ray tossed the core of his third apple out the window and said, “You mean you’re not gonna offer her a ride? She’s a girl with a baby.”

“Because I said I’d get you to Memphis for breakfast!”

“I don’t live in Memphis,” said Ray. “I live in Mississippi. You can drop me right here, right now.”

When Norman didn’t answer immediately, Ray said, “Stop the bus, man. I’m off.”

“Gaaaaa!” Norman beat on the steering wheel. “Fine. We’ll pick her up.”

He turned around in the Farm Bureau parking lot. They headed back toward the service station. The girl was gone.

Norman pulled into two spaces at the far end of the Winn-Dixie parking lot and put the bus in park. Ray stood in the aisle and hoisted his knapsack. Molly started to cry.

“What?” Norman stood up and faced them both.

“I don’t like good-byes,” Molly said.

“Look, man,” said Norman. There was nothing he could do about Molly. It was hot. He was frustrated. He began unbuttoning his white oxford shirt. His white T-shirt gleamed underneath it. “You don’t have to get off. You said yourself last night it would be easier to find a ride south from Memphis.”

“Don’t want to ride with nobody who won’t pick up a body in need. Two bodies.”

Norman draped his shirt over the back of the driver’s seat. He wiped his palm across his forehead. Sweaty.

“I will,” he said flatly. “From now on I’ll pick up every hitchhiker I see. But I would like to point out that she wasn’t thumbing a ride, and she’s gone now, so she probably walked from the service station to her house.” He gestured at the shotgun houses lining this stretch of road.

Ray looked at the houses and then at the Winn-Dixie. Molly blew her nose into an Aunt Pam napkin. Ray turned his attention to her.

“You sure do …” started Ray, trying to find a word that wasn’t cry.

“Emote,” finished Norman.

“Yeah,” said Ray.

“You can leave if you want,” said Norman. “I’ll pick up the ‘bodies in need,’ whether you stay or not.”

“Promise you’ll do it,” said Ray. “It’s important.”

“I promise.”

Molly stood up from her seat behind the driver. “Look! There she is!”

The girl came out of the Winn-Dixie with her baby and a paper sack.

Ray gave Norman his fiery stare. Well?

Norman sighed and opened the bus door, clambered down the steps, and waved at the girl, who was still far away. “How far you going?” he shouted.

The girl looked behind her, then back at Norman, stunned then scared.

Ray hopped off the bus. “That’s not how you do it! You all lily white and tall and got a bus and calling to this girl. You’re in Mississippi, man!”

He strutted to the girl and had words with her that Norman couldn’t hear. He pointed to the bus. They talked and the baby played with his hands. The girl smiled. Molly stood on the bottom step of the stepwell, at the folding door, and watched.

Soon the three of them — Ray, the girl, and the baby — approached the bus.

“This here is Emily,” said Ray. “And her baby, Christian. Emily, this is Florsheim and Molly.”

Norman winced at the name.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Emily. Baby Christian gurgled and hid his face in Emily’s neck.

“She ain’t going far, and I told her we can tote her.”

“Happy to,” said Norman. “How far?”

“Just a mile up this road, back the way we came, jag right, then left.”

Norman took the grocery sack and Ray took the baby, who stared at him with wide brown eyes. Emily stepped onto the bus where Molly met her with still-damp eyes. She raised a hand in greeting and Emily nodded, then hesitantly took a seat opposite Molly, so she was at the front of the bus sitting behind the same half-high silver partition wall Ray had banged into two nights ago.

Ray, arms outstretched, handed Christian back to his mother, and Norman started the bus. Ray sat in the seat behind Emily. No one spoke.

A mile later, then a jag right and left, they were in front of an AME church.

“Right here,” said the girl.

“At the church?” asked Norman.

“You can turn around easily here, in the parking lot,” Emily said. “I live next door. My father’s the pastor.” The lawn next door was freshly clipped. Azaleas grew across the porch in front of the house. A sidewalk traveled in a curve from the church to the parsonage.

“I get off here, too,” said Ray.

“Wait!” said Molly.

“We’ve got people here who can get him home,” said the girl with a smile. “Thank you for the ride.”

Norman opened the door for them and stood up.

Ray followed Emily as she got off the bus with Christian. “I’ve got him,” she said when Ray tried to take him. So he picked up the paper sack instead and saw that it held a bottle of milk.

“Good luck, man,” said Norman, a catch in his throat. He stuck out his hand and Ray took it.

Molly’s eyes filled with tears. “I hope … I hope you’ll be all right over there,” she said.

“You got the address of my company,” said Ray. “You write, I’ll write back.”

“Okay.” Molly sniffed. This would not do. Ray was not Barry. But Ray was … Ray. She knew someone who was going to Vietnam. It was heartbreaking.

She started to say something more, but Ray was gone as suddenly as he had come.

Norman watched him follow Emily to her porch, where a door opened and someone — someone who had been waiting there for Emily and Christian — ushered them all inside.

Norman thumped back into the driver’s seat, grabbed the steering wheel, and rested his head between his hands. “The world is a scary place,” he said.

Molly already knew this. She said nothing.

“Those white kids at school,” continued Norman, lifting his head. “The ones fighting in the lunchroom …”

Molly wouldn’t go into the lunchroom anymore, either. “What about them?” she asked finally.

Norman engaged the clutch and put the bus in gear. “They don’t know anything.”