Hanceville, Alabama—this town is a wide spot in the road. Quaint downtown. Old houses with fading paint. Crowded barbecue joint. No bars.

The rehab center and nursing home is a cinder block building with keypad locks and alarm systems. White hallways. Fluorescent lights. Smells like Lysol.

I’m here today to play piano.

Christy is a therapist here. She’s been in this line of work for thirty-one years. She helps the elderly, the affected, and the injured find their seats.

“I love older folks. Always have. These people are everything to me.”

Here at the rehab there is plenty of love.

An older man in Auburn University colors arrives in the chapel. He drives a motorized wheelchair. He shakes my hand with his left hand—his right hand doesn’t work.

He speaks. His words are not clear. But his smile talks for him.

A woman rolls her chair behind him. She is not old. She is a middle-aged, blonde, blue eyes. Her hands don’t work well, but her mind is a razor.

She asks me to play “I’ll Fly Away.”

I play. She cries.

“My best

friend,” she says. “He died last week. They’re laying him in the ground today at two. I can't go to the funeral.”

She is grieving him hard today.

Another man introduces himself. An old man. His eyes become puddles when he stares at me.

“Oh my God,” he says. “I coulda swore you was my son. You look just like my boy.”

We shake hands. He has a firm grip.

Another woman arrives, riding in a reclining chair. A lady in scrubs positions her near the piano.

“I’m eighty-six,” she says. “Born in thirty-one, went through the Depression.”

We talk. I learn that she's endured more than a Depression. She endured it all.

Her father was murdered when she was twelve. Her sickly brother was bedridden. As a child she was a caregiver. A breadwinner. A…

It's late. She’s standing on a curb at the gas station, waiting. She’s wiry. Her neck is gaunt. She’s having a smoke.

When she finishes her cigarette, she touches the ember to a fresh one.

I’m filling my truck. It’s cold outside. She’s bundled. Whenever a gust blows, she pulls her jacket tight.

The weatherman is calling for snow.

I break the ice. “Cold, isn’t it?” I say.

She makes a familiar remark about a witch wearing a brass bra, and I love her.

She looks old, but is younger than she looks. She clocked off work an hour ago. Her daughter was supposed pick her up, but there’s a problem.

“Our car don’t work so good,” she says. “My girl’s gotta call her boyfriend and borrow his car.”

So she waits.

I wait with her for a few minutes. She’s cold and alone; I need something to write about.

So meet Karen. She raised her daughter on her own. It’s always been just the two of them. They’re best friends.

Her daughter is an honor student. A senior. The girl has been looking for colleges all over the U.S. She has scholarship opportunities.

There is sadness in Karen's voice.

“All them colleges she’s looking at,” she goes on, “they're outta state. That kid’s been my whole life for eighteen years. I can’t bear the thought.”

I offer her a ride. She refuses. I insist. She only laughs. Laughing leads to coughing. Coughing leads to hacking. Smoking hasn’t been kind.

Her daughter has taken a few road trips with her boyfriend to visit universities. One trip took them to Philadelphia.

“Fifteen hours away,” she says. “Might as well be Mars. Every time she leaves to visit a college, I see what it’s like without her. God, it's so quiet. Don’t know if I’m strong enough.”

The Great Depression. The orphaned family is riding in a Model-T. The oldest boy is driving, the boys are in back with their sisters.

To say life is hard doesn't even scratch the surface. Food is hard to come by. Money is a myth. Their parents are dead. No honest work can be found within five counties.

Only last night, they stole gas and cigarettes from a filling station. Now they're thieves, too.

Sometimes, it feels like they’re breathing borrowed air. They run from town to town, digging ditches, framing barns, loading mill trucks for pennies.

Today, the boys have been hired as roofers. A jobsite is where they are now. The bossman will pay them forty cents for a workday.

Forty cents. It’s highway robbery. Welcome to 1935, nobody's getting rich in Alabama.

It's a hot day. They’re weak from malnutrition. The boys are wearing homemade tool belts their sisters made. They haven’t eaten in days.

They stand in the shade. The workers are passing around breakfast—a bottle of milk spiked with liquor. It goes straight to the

boys’ heads and makes them dizzy.

The three brothers crawl on a three-story roof, pounding hammers. They’re dehydrated. Clumsy. They are inexperienced. Especially the youngest boy. He's fourteen. He is awkward on his feet.

He slips. It all happens so fast.

Game over.

He hits the ground so hard he bounces. The workmen all see it. The boy is face-down. Blood trickles from his mouth. His chest quits moving. No pulse.

The bossman comes running. There’s no doubt. The kid is gone.

They cover him with a tarp. The world has stopped spinning. The oldest brother is white with shock. His sisters are screaming.

Life is hell, the oldest thinks to himself. Childbirth took their mother. Pneumonia took their father. The bank took their home. Now tragedy owns their youngest brother.

The workers place the child’s body into the rear of…

Two brothers. Ages ten and seven. They had no heat. No food. No nothing. 1973 was a cold year.

To call it child neglect would be too soft. The single-wide was falling apart. Snow blanketed the leaky roof. They could see their breath in the bathroom.

And that is where they slept that winter. The bathroom. They huddled close, covered with garbage bags and quilts.

Their uncle was supposed to be raising them, but he’d been gone for weeks. Nobody knew where he was. Probably, they thought, in some gutter, drinking away his money.

“I’m cold,” said the youngest, trying to fall asleep.

“I know,” said the oldest. “Just wait, something good will happen.”

“But, how?”

“Magic.”

“Magic?”

“It always happens when you need it most.”

“What kinda magic?”

“The real kind.”

“Like in movies?”

“Yeah.”

It was only brother-to-brother talk. The oldest wasn't even sure he believed it.

Before school, they split a candy bar found in a barren pantry for breakfast.

After lunch, they dug through the cafeteria garbage looking for leftover scraps.

A teacher saw them do it.

That same day, a teacher gave the oldest boy two heavy grocery bags full of canned

goods.

A feast for supper. It was canned spaghetti, beans, and Campbell’s soup by flashlight. It was the first real meal they’d eaten in weeks.

Their smiles lit the inside of the dark trailer.

“Where’d you get all this food?” asked the youngest.

“Magic,” said the oldest.

“I like magic.”

“Me too.”

They ate so much they were sick. They slept in the bathtub with the door shut—towels tucked under the door to trap escaping heat. They shivered.

“My toes are cold.” the youngest said.

“It’s gonna be okay.”

“What’s gonna happen to us?”

“I don’t know. But don’t worry, it’s going to be alright.”

They woke the next morning. For breakfast: canned soup, Saltines, Ovaltine.

The oldest found something on the steps…

The bar is crowded and loud. A man on a small stage plays music, wearing a cowboy hat. His style is a cross between progressive electric rock and a short barrel Howitzer.

A silver-haired man sits next to me. He orders two beers. He sips the foam from one. He doesn’t touch the other.

“This beer’s for someone very special,” he remarks.

He’s worked up a healthy glow. He bobs his head in rhythm with the nuclear explosion that’s passing as music.

I introduce myself. He adjusts his hearing aid and says, “This band’s pretty good.”

Different strokes.

“Did you know,” he goes on. “My wife’n me were married when we were little kids?”

I discover that he’s telling the truth—sort of. They were nine-year-olds. She was a tomboy. He lived in town and built model airplanes. It was love at first sight.

“You know how you can remember stuff, like your first cigarette, or a first kiss? That’s how it was when I first saw her.”

“In fourth grade?” I point out.

“Yep, even in fourth grade. She was THAT special.”

When they were

nine, he kissed her on the cheek. She slugged him and threatened to tear his throat out. The next day, she kissed him.

They were married that same year in the court of Camelot. The Knights of the Round Table were in attendance. The royal ceremony took place behind the pumphouse.

They dated all through high school. He went away to college—living apart was misery.

One evening, he will never forget, he was on the steps of a fraternity house, missing her. A taxi rolled to his curb. The door opened. She was carrying packed suitcases.

“I can’t live without you,” were her first words.

He goes on, “Have you ever loved someone so much you can’t breathe when they’re not around?”

She lived with him through college—their parents never knew. Neither did their parents…

It’s raining in Montgomery. The Hank Williams statue downtown is getting his picture taken by tourists.

Teens huddle at the statue and holler, “War Eagle!” for a camera.

I visited Hank’s grave yesterday. A high-school choral group was there. They sang a rendition of “I Saw the Light” for a kid holding a cellphone.

I met a boy at the grave, too. He had Down syndrome. He spoke with labored tongue.

The man who was with him was older, white-haired. He was friendly. He told me about the boy.

“His mama was a friend of my sister,” the man said. “She just up and got rid of him. I told that judge he needed to give me and my wife that baby, we wanted to love him.”

I should’ve asked more questions. But it was their day out together.

Good barbecue isn’t as easy to find as you’d think in this town. At least not according to Laquina, a hotel maid.

Laquina made suggestions for lunch.

"There's Dreamland barbecue, downtown, but it ain’t great, too dry. Go to K&J Rib Shack. They got good ribs.”

Laquina is

raising three kids with her mother’s help. The father of her children is in a correctional facility. Her oldest is going deaf.

Tonight, she’s got choir practice.

“I take my oldest to choir so he learn all them good songs before his hearing is gone.”

She’s right about K&J Rib Shack. The fare is fall-off-the-bone good.

Only three miles away—one hundred years ago—Nat King Cole was born. Today, Nat has a colorful painted mural on Maxwell Boulevard.

I visited the mural. I met a young couple there. College age. We endured the light rain together, admiring art.

They told me they're photographers.

“Mostly, we do weddings,” the girl said. “Which is funny, ‘cause we haven’t had an actual wedding of our own.”

There’s a story here. Last year, they planned their big day,…