MYRTLE: Oh, no. Oh, no. I wouldn’t take the place, not under no conditions. You don’t have to think about that.

CHICKEN: You can sing one tune tonight and another one later.

MYRTLE: I swear I’d never take it, my right hand to God. No. Never.

CHICKEN: Lot couldn’t get on the roof and I don’t think you could either. In fact, I’m sure you couldn’t. I’d have to haul you up there. So you see the situation I got to decide. Whether or not to haul you up on the roof when the river comes in the house, tonight or tomorrow.

MYRTLE: I like sitting down here with you. A kitchen has always been my favorite room in a house. —If we have to go on the roof, we have to lie close together to keep each other warm.

CHICKEN: Yeah. We’ll see about that. Has Lot told you the set-up, the arrangement between us.

MYRTLE: No, no, Lot told me nothing.

CHICKEN: Well, here’s the set-up . . . Lot and me are half brothers. Dad got him in marriage, but I was just a wood’s colt he got off a woman he lived with in Alabama but never married, so the place went to Lot when the old man and Lot’s mother died a few years back. When they did and the place went by law to Lot, I cleared off it and went to live in Meridian, and Lot tried to work it himself but he couldn’t do it, so he sent for me to come back here, which I finally did with the understanding between us that it would be my place whenever Lot dies which I think’ll be soon now, specially with the floor about to come in the house. —What have you got to say about all that? Something or nothing?

MYRTLE: Nothing but what I told you. I don’t want, I wouldn’t accept no place in the country if it was offered to me. I’m a city girl, born and raised, I’d feel lost in the country.

CHICKEN: You need to feel a sidewalk under your feet?

MYRTLE: I need companionship, lots of people around me. I tell you, if it wasn’t for you being here, I would die of fright. I would. That river sounds louder to me. Don’t it seem louder to you?

CHICKEN: That river in flood has got a mighty voice.

[He crosses to the door-frame: the river sound swells to a muted lion-like roar.]

MYRTLE: Oh, don’t go and leave me alone.

CHICKEN: If God had a voice that’s the way it would sound.

MYRTLE [beside him at the door]: How will you know if—

CHICKEN: It’s gonna flood the house? I’ll know for sure when I hear Mr. Sikes dynamiting the south end of his levee to save the rest from breaking.