CORNELIUS [softening with exhaustion or possibly even pity]: Bella, the dog is at the door to go out like you sensibly suggested, so why don’t you let him go do it? [Bella lets Sweet Boy out.] Now shut the door, a sharp wind’s blowin’ in, not good for arthritis. What’s the diff’rence between osteo-arthritis, as the Memphis specialist called it, and regular arthritis? I ast him. He didn’t explain.

BELLA: Maybe age was the only explanation. It’s started rainin’ again. He’ll want back in as soon as he’s done his business in the yard.

CORNELIUS: Smells to me like he’s made some business transactions in the house.

BELLA: On the papers I spread out beside his feed-bowl in the kitchen.

CORNELIUS: The stink of it makes me sick. [Cornelius crosses off by swinging upstage door to kitchen. Bella gasps slightly as she notices a muddy pair of boots by the fireplace.]

BELLA: Cornelius!

CORNELIUS [returning from kitchen with can of beer]: Now what?

BELLA: Look at what’s by the fireplace! Charlie’s boots; he’s back!

CORNELIUS: Been fired again, I guess.

BELLA: This late he must be asleep. I’ll call him but not loud. [Goes panting up to landing and calls softly.] Charlie? Charlie?

CORNELIUS: Bella, you’ve been warned to move slow. Now you run up those stairs like a mountain goat.

CHARLIE’S VOICE ABOVE: —Yeh, Mom, are you back?

CORNELIUS: Hears you call him and asks if you are back.

BELLA: Sweetheart, come down here, baby!

[Two voices, one male and one female, are heard above.]

CORNELIUS: He’s got him a woman up there, brought some hooker here with him.

BELLA: Cornelius, be nice, he didn’t expect us this early.

CORNELIUS: This early is late, twelve twenty-five.

[After a slight pause their younger son Charlie, about twenty-five, appears on the landing in shorts.]

BELLA: Baby, baby, seen your boots by the fire, I knew you were home! [She embraces him, sobbing.]

CORNELIUS: What’s detaining your lady-friend upstairs?

CHARLIE [detaching himself from Bella]: —Aw, yeh, her, Stacey, my steady from Yazoo City. Come down an’ meet my folks.

STACEY [from above]: Just a minute, hon.

CORNELIUS: Gettin’ into her clo’se?

CHARLIE: Both of us was so tired we went straight to bed.

CORNELIUS: I bet.

CHARLIE: How was the funeral, Mom? Did it go off all right?

CORNELIUS: Yeh, perfect. Grave dug. Body interred.

BELLA: We’ll talk about it tomorrow. I can’t discuss it tonight. —You all had supper? Want me to fix you some food? How about an om’lette? Haven’t checked the ice-box but think there’s eggs.

CORNELIUS: Still calls the fridge an ice-box.

CHARLIE: That would be wonderful, Mom.

BELLA [crossing upstage to kitchen door]: With cheese and tomatoes an’ bacon. [She exits to kitchen.]

CORNELIUS: So you lost another job, huh?

CHARLIE: That job was misrepresented to me completely.