MYRTLE: Don’t he care what happens to people below him?

CHICKEN: No. Mr. Sikes is like God, he’s got more to think about than people below him.

MYRTLE: Let’s go back in the kitchen and shut the door, and sit close together. You know, I feel like Lot was already gone.

CHICKEN: You got a marriage license?

MYRTLE: We got some kind of a paper.

CHICKEN: Well, go up and bring it down here. If I get rid of that paper I’ll be more likely to help you up on the roof. All right. All right.

[She goes quietly but rapidly upstairs. Chicken takes the lamp again to the wall with the colored nude picture tacked on it. Myrtle hurries back down.]

MYRTLE: Got it. Here it is.

CHICKEN: Tear it up.

[Myrtle tears it in two.]

Give it here, I’ll tear it up. [He tears it into fragments, goes to the doorframe with them and scatters the fragments outside. Returning—] The frogs and crickets out there don’t seem to know the place is gonna be flooded. Ignorance is good for them. How was Lot?

MYRTLE: Didn’t look at me. Said nothing. And I said nothing to him. I feel like our marriage is finished. He touched the maternal chord in me. That’s always been too strong a chord in my nature and he took advantage of it and told me nothing but lies. I pity him still. I think he’s just waiting to die. But I lost respect for that boy when I found out how he’d lied to me.

CHICKEN: Hm. Speaking of lies, this lie about my mother. Those people who say my mother had colored blood in her are telling a god-dam lie. I’m one eight Cherokee and the rest is white, pure white, as white as Lot is, despite me being a good deal darker complected, from working out in the fields like a field hand.

MYRTLE: I been lied to so many times in my life it’s finally made me distrustful.

CHICKEN: Well, this lie, someone or other is going to tell you this lie if you stick around here. You’re bound to hear it.

MYRTLE: I could only stay here if I was staying with you.

CHICKEN: We’ll talk about that on the roof, under a blanket. But anyhow, now, you know the set-up, don’t you?

MYRTLE: I honestly don’t want it any way but the way you want it. —I’d like to ask you a question. How come you don’t have a woman living with you? Some woman or girl to live with you? Colored or white?