CHICKEN: I don’t need no wife. I went out with a girl around here for three years and then she got knocked up by some fellow. She claimed that it was by me and wanted me to marry her but I wouldn’t. Now she’s gone North but not till after she circulated that story about my mother having some nigger blood in her. Since that story there’s no white girl in the county that I could go out with. But that’s all right. I don’t bother about it. Every heard Gypsy Smith?

MYRTLE: Who’s he?

CHICKEN: The preacher.

MYRTLE: Oh, yes, that preacher. No, I never heard him, just heard of him.

CHICKEN: He saved me last spring. It last two months and then I started backsliding. Like everyone does. But that was an awful two months. You know how they preach about how you should keep the gates down on the lustful body? I put up a struggle against it but I wasn’t cut out for that kind of a struggle. Either you’re saved or you ain’t and I think you’re a hell of a lot better off with the hope of salvation cut off absolutely than putting up a struggle that’s bound to be useless. Sooner or later you backslide and then that’s that.

MYRTLE: I never did bother with it.

LOT [off]: Myrtle!

CHICKEN: Go on and see what he wants.

MYRTLE [crossly]: I’m comin’, Lot!

CHICKEN [reflectively, after a pause]: It’s like the preacher says, the gates of the soul is got to close on the body and keep the body out or the body will break down the gates and overrun the soul and everything else that’s decent in a human. But the fack of the matter is I never seemed to have no gates to close. Some people are made without ‘em. I’m one of that kind.

MYRTLE: That sure is the case with me.

CHICKEN: But I did put up a struggle after that Gallaway girl told those stories about me and I was pretty lonesome around here for a while with Lot in the Memphis hospital.

MYRTLE: That was this spring?

CHICKEN: Last spring. I’ve quit thinkin’ about it.

[She sits on the edge of the table.]

CHICKEN: I guess I should of had more schooling or something. I never think of anything much to do but drinking and screwing and trying my damnedest to make something out of the place and not having much luck at it. I guess if a fellow could pick up a book at night, that ought to make a good deal of difference to him.

MYRTLE: Can’t you read?