MYRTLE: We had an awful trip down here.

CHICKEN: Is this woman your nurse?

LOT: No. Myrtle’s my wife. Myrtle, this is my half-brother Chicken, Chicken this is Myrtle. We met in Memphis two days ago and got married yesterday.

CHICKEN: You met on the street?

MYRTLE: Woooo! Let us in, please, you’re standing there blocking the door.

LOT: Bring these bags in, Chicken, I can’t lift ‘em again.

[Lot and Myrtle enter. Chicken follows with their luggage and set it just inside the door. They look at each other and the dry sunflowers rattle beside the house. Nothing is said for a moment.]

CHICKEN: So they let you out of the hospital and you met this woman and got married to her and drove her down here through the flood, is that the story, have I got it straight?

MYRTLE: I smell hot coffee somewhere in this house.

LOT: I wanted to get home and so did Myrtle.

MYRTLE: Hell or high water wouldn’t have stopped us. Lot was determined to get here.

CHICKEN: I’ll tell you something that might be int’resting to you, now that you got here. This time tomorrow both floors of this house will be full of flood water.

MYRTLE: My God. What’ll we do?

CHICKEN: You’ll have two choices. One is drown and the other is climb on the roof.

MYRTLE: Lot, baby, let’s try and drive back.

CHICKEN: Why don’t you do that, Lot?

LOT: I don’t have the strength to drive back. I just have the strength to get upstairs to bed.

MYRTLE: If I could drive a car—

LOT: You can’t, so don’t think about it, since even if you could, the car would run out of gas and we already hocked the spare tire to buy us gas on the road.

MYRTLE: What are we going to do?

CHICKEN: I told you. You can climb on the roof and wait for a helly-copter to pick you up or the flood to go down.

LOT: I’m going upstairs to rest. [He starts up the stairs, slowly, with difficulty: disappears above the proscenium.]

MYRTLE: Is there any hot coffee?

CHICKEN: There’s coffee in the kitchen.

MYRTLE: Good. I sure could use some.

CHICKEN: Well, come on in.

MYRTLE: I’ll take some up to Lot soon as I’ve had some myself. [They enter the kitchen.] I had no idea he’d just been let out of the hospital when I met him.

CHICKEN: You want just coffee or coffee with liquor in it?

MYRTLE: I reckon I could use both, under these circumstances. [He pours liquor into her coffee cup] That sort of humming, that sort of low roaring sound, does that come from the river?

CHICKEN: It sure don’t come from the land.

MYRTLE: Well, Jesus has always took care of me. Knock wood.