Y’know what he wanted? He wanted to call me a whore, that’s all he wanted. I won’t stand being called names, so I went right out. He’s jealous because we’re down here talking. I said, I asked him, who else but Chicken is going to save me from drowning? Lot could never get me up on the roof if the house is flooded.

CHICKEN: I’ll tell you how I look at it. A man can’t be soft in this world. I think that life just plain don’t care for the weak. Or the soft. A man and his life both got to be made out of the same stuff or one or the other will break, and the one that breaks won’t be life. Because life’s rock. So man’s got to be rock, too. Life, rock: man, rock. Because if they both ain’t rock, the one that’s not rock won’t be life. The one that’s not rock will be man, so man’s got to be rock, too. The soft one is broke when the two things come together, and life is never the soft one. And this is how I look at it, too. There’s nothing in the world, nothing in this whole kingdom of earth, that can compare with one thing, and that one thing is what’s able to happen between a man and a woman, just that thing, nothing more, is perfect. The rest is crap, all of the rest is almost nothing but crap. That one thing’s good. And if you never had nothing else but that, no money, no property, no success in the world, but still had that, why then I say this life would still be worth living, and you had better believe it. Yes, you could come home to a house like a shack, in blazing heat, and look for water and not find a drop to drink, and look for food and find not a single crumb of it. But if on the bed you seen you a woman waiting, maybe not even very young or good-looking, and she looked up and said to you, “Daddy, I want it”— Why, then I say you got a square deal out of life, and whoever don’t think so has just not found the right woman. —That’s how I look at it, that’s the way that I see it.

LOT [from above]: Myrtle!

MYRTLE: I guess I better go back up there.

CHICKEN: Go on up an’ make him stop that bawling!

MYRTLE [calling]: Awright, awright, I’m coming! [She goes upstairs.]

[Chicken picks up the jug and goes out on the kitchen stoop. He seems to be reflecting, with satisfaction. He speaks aloud to himself.]

CHICKEN: Spiritchel gates, you’re no where . . . .

[Myrtle comes downstairs.]

MYRTLE: Chicken! Oh, my God. Lot’s fighting to breathe!