CHICKEN [entering kitchen]: That lung must have broke down on him.

MYRTLE: My God, Chicken, what am I going to do?

CHICKEN: Well, you could call the doctor.

MYRTLE: Is there a doctor?

[Chicken crosses to kitchen table and turns up the lamp.]

MYRTLE: Where? Where is the doctor?

CHICKEN: Half a mile down the road.

MYRTLE: What’s his telephone number?

CHICKEN: It’s on the wall.

MYRTLE: Which, which wall?

CHICKEN: Which wall do you think it would be on? Don’t you think it would be on the wall which the phone is on?

LOT [weakly, from above]: Myrtle! Myrtle! Myrtle!

MYRTLE: What is the name of the doctor?

CHICKEN: His name is Stenson.

MYRTLE: Dr. Stenson?

CHICKEN: That’s right, Dr. Stenson.

MYRTLE: You don’t remember the number?

CHICKEN: It’s on the wall by the phone.

MYRTLE: I can’t see good. Turn the lamp up higher.

[He takes lamp off table and crosses leisurely toward her. She stares blindly at wall.]

Now! Now, where?

CHICKEN: Right in front of your nose.

MYRTLE: This wall is covered with numbers. Names and numbers. Gallaway! Is that it?

CHICKEN: Gallaway is the girl I laid last summer. That told them lies about me.

MYRTLE: What was the name, then? What was the name of that doctor?

LOT: Myrtle! Myrtle!

MYRTLE: Tell me the name again.

CHICKEN: The name is Stenson.

MYRTLE: Oh, yes, Doctor. Stenson. I don’t see no Stenson here.

CHICKEN: You must need glasses.

MYRTLE: Yes, I do, I’m near-sighted.

CHICKEN: I’ll help you out a little. Here is the number.

MYRTLE: Oh! Four-eight-two is the number!

CHICKEN: Four eighty two is the number.

[She picks up the receiver, panting and sobbing.]

MYRTLE: Give it to me again. I can’t get hold of myself.

CHICKEN: FOUR! EIGHTY! TWO!

MYRTLE [into the phone]: Four eighty two! [The phone is dead.] HEY! OPERATOR! OPER-A-TORR!—nobody answers me, I cain’t git no answer!

CHICKEN: Of course you can’t git no answer. That phone is deader than Lot, there’s no phone service in this county tonight. Did you think there was? Have you got any kind of a brain at all in your head?

MYRTLE: How can you be so mean? Your ha’f brother’s dying up those stairs and you, you don’t do a thing!

CHICKEN: Yeah, I do.

MYRTLE: What?

CHICKEN: Just what I’m doing. Standing here looking with love at the face of this kitchen clock and listening to its tick, ’cause the tick of this clock is like a song of angels ’cause each tick is the footstep of Lot’s death coming which makes me king of this place and everything on it.

LOT [weaker, more despairing]: Chicken!

CHICKEN: He’s given up calling you and’s calling for me.

MYRTLE: He might as well call to a rock. [Sounds from above.]