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about that.
    Just then, I heard the grown-ups talking as they left the dining room. Lucas Fitzgerald came over to me. “Son, we’ve got a date,” he said. “That is, if you still want to help me at the museum.”
    I looked at Biggie.

    “Sure, you can go,” she said. “I’m going to have a little nap, then maybe go exploring in the shops for a while. We’ve put off our meeting until tomorrow morning.”
    As Mr. Fitzgerald and I walked across the street to the museum, I saw Rosebud get into the car and drive off. I wondered where he could be going.

7
    W hen we got to the tall red-brick museum building, which Lucas told me had been the original First State Bank, Lucas stopped at the tall marble steps and took a deep breath. “Look around you, boy,” he said, sweeping his arms up toward the green trees and blue sky. “It’s far too fine a day for messing around with dusty old papers. What say, you and me take a carriage ride around town?”
    “Sure!” I couldn’t have agreed with him more.
    We walked down the sidewalk past little shops and offices, past the post office and a drugstore, until finally we came to the end of the business district. After that, we crossed another street and climbed a hill that took us through a neighborhood of houses, small but old. At the end of the next block, we came to a little park with tall trees, picnic tables, and playground equipment. Back toward the back, I saw a shed, open on three sides, and
beside it stood an old gray horse hitched to a black carriage. The carriage had three pairs of seats, one behind the other, and a bench up front for the driver to sit on. A large man wearing a straw hat was giving the horse water from a bucket.
    “Hidy, T.C.,” Lucas said. “How’s business?”
    The man looked up and grinned, showing that he had three teeth missing in front. “Slow for a Saturday,” he said. “Ask me if I care. The city pays me and Belle here whether we ride or not. Belle was just tellin’ me, she’d ’bout as soon stand right here in the shade as to tote a bunch of tourists around.”
    Lucas laughed. “Reckon whether she’d mind taking me and my friend here for a little spin? This is J.R. Weatherford from over in Job’s Crossing, and he’s never been to Quincy before.”
    “Hop aboard.” T.C. emptied the bucket and hung it on a hook in the shed, then untied the reins from the hitching post before swinging himself into the driver’s seat. “Y’all want the five-buck spin around town or the ten-buck all-you-can-see?”
    Lucas looked at me.
    “I got nothin’ to do,” I said.
    “The works, then.” Lucas threw his cane aboard and hopped into the carriage. I wondered why he carried that cane in the first place. He seemed spry as a cricket to me.
    T.C. clicked his teeth and pulled the reins to the left. Belle gave us a sorrowful look, then began to edge toward the path that led through the park. The old buggy creaked and moaned as we bumped over the curb and into the street.

    T.C. picked up a little speaker from the seat beside him and commenced telling us in a singsong voice what we were looking at. You could tell he’d told the same story at least a thousand times before.
    “On your right, you’ll notice the old one-room schoolhouse, built in 1871. It ain’t been in use as a school since the early 1900s when the town built the new school over on Kelly Street. The city was about to tear it down and build a parking lot when Miss Hannah Byrd and her sister, Anna, bought it. Now it’s home to Hannah’s Handmade Fashions. And if you’ll look to your left, you’ll see the old cotton gin. It’s now an artist’s studio and gallery.”
    We went up and down a slew of streets lined with houses and buildings while T.C. droned on about what they used to be and when they were built. Lucas added comments and bits of information to T.C.’s spiel. The rocking of the carriage and the warm sun made me awful sleepy. In fact, I was dern near asleep sitting