CASS: The nights would go better if this family just talked a few things out.

GRANDMA: People don’t like to get down and cut into all the monstrous things that’s happened in a family. Scatter it all around and remember monstrous things.

CASS: Vehicular homicide ain’t so monstrous.

GRANDMA: Say now, she wasn’t dozing at the wheel. She bargained down from Murder in the First. We don’t need to cut into the rot of all those things.

CASS: The rot’s not in the things. It’s in us.

GRANDMA kisses his forehead.

GRANDMA: Well, you’ve just got a verse for everything. You’re the Living Bible.

Pause.

The Most Wanted show is on tomorrow night. I love that show. All day Saturday I look forward eagerly to America’s Most Wanted. But then all day Sunday I just can’t find anything on. Sundays are as long as Death Row…

CASS: There’s plenty of sports. Sports that older people can enjoy. Senior people. Mature citizens. Like golf.

GRANDMA: Like golf?

CASS: Like tennis…

GRANDMA: But golf is so silly it makes my skin to crawl! It makes me ashamed and embarrassed just to think about golf. At least tennis is back and forth. Golf is just on and on over hill and dale like a man chasing a red-breasted robin! It just hops a little farther, and hops a little farther…and they’re all too witless to give up chasing it. I wonder, did God Almighty invent golf to drive people away from the televisions so we’d spend Sunday afternoon with the Holy Bible? I watch the news on Sunday at five at night on Channel Four. Otherwise—Oh! Goodness! We’re missing the news! Do you know how many underground shopping malls have burned up? Twenty-six underground shopping malls have burnt!

CASS: Is that true?

GRANDMA: Twenty-six!

BRO, in his hiding place, can’t stand it anymore.

BRO (behind the couch): YOU’VE JUST SEEN THE SAME NEWS REPORT TWENTY-SIX TIMES, YOU SENILE OLD WOMAN.

GRANDMA (after a fright): I knew you were there!

BRO: No you didn’t.

GRANDMA: Cass is going into the Starlight to get his drinking dried up. You should do the same. Unless it’s me that stinks like cheap port. Good night, all.

BRO: Aaaah—

GRANDMA (leaving): No, it’s fine, I’ve got a real good little TV in my room that don’t sass its own grandmother LIKE A CONVICT.

Pause. CASS thumbs the remote. BRO grabs it away.

TV:—buried irretrievably at the bottom of the Sound. There were no survivors. Meanwhile, authorities declined to speculate as to—

BRO hits the mute.

BRO: What’s the longest you been clean, Cass? And sober?

CASS: Ninety-seven days.

BRO: What’s the shortest? Since you started with the AAA.

CASS: Thirty-two days.

BRO: And you’ve had several such glorious interludes of sparkling clarity.

CASS: What’s it to you?

BRO: I’m your bro.

CASS: My ride is my ride. No need for your concern.

CASS hit the remote.

TV: Am I my brother’s keeper? We plague ourselves with—

BRO hits the mute.