CORNELIUS: Nothin! [Lowers his voice.] While I was in Memphis, burying y’r brother, I wint to a clinic about this chronic digestive trouble of mine. This time I got a genuine diagnosis. It’s something called pancreatitis.

CHARLIE: They give you anything for it?

CORNELIUS: They give me a bottle of big green pills called— [Cornelius pulls bottle from pocket. Charlie squints at it.]

CHARLIE: C-O-T-A-zyme? Never heard a that.

CORNELIUS: Three before each meal. Offered me some relief but the expense is awful. When a man’s got to live off pills in the quantity at the price, extortionary, with only temporary relief at best, why, I say it’s time to quit hangin’ on, it’s time for a man to let go.

CHARLIE: If you feel that way about it, why that’s your decision, huh, Pop?

CORNELIUS: Damn right it is. And no concern of nobody but mine.

CHARLIE: —Under these circumstances, Pop, I hope it ain’t true that you allowed your insurance to run out.

CORNELIUS: With inflation completely out of control, I refuse to pay the new rates. People in this country have got to learn to refuse to pay more and more for ev’ry commodity or service which they purchase, including insurance rates.

CHARLIE: You’ve got Mom to think of.

CORNELIUS: You think a woman that pants louder’n an ole yard dog is going to outlive me? Doctor tole me privately that if she’d quit stuffin’ an bring down her weight, she could go on a year longer, but she won’t, no way, no way.

CHARLIE: You got no concern for her, then?

CORNELIUS: There’s cases in which continued existence is not desirable, Charlie. I mean when the mind is gone.

CHARLIE: I don’t think that’s true of Mom.

STACEY [quietly]: Lawd.

CORNELIUS: You haven’t observed her lately. A woman in her condition is not responsible for peculiar behavior and so you can’t blame her for it. I don’t, rarely do, no matter how peculiar it gets and it can get mighty peculiar. Don’t hear half what’s said to her anymore and imagines things not said to her. Now, Charlie, excuse me for discussin’ your mother’s folks which is half yours, too, but a good deal of this is hereditary with Bella. I mean, you know the Dancies. Ev’ryone on the Gulf Coast knows about the Dancies. Lunacy runs rampant among them, son. Was you old enough to remember that time your mother’s sister walked naked out of the house at high noon with just a hat on and the hat was a man’s? Sex confusion existed among them, Charlie, never among the McCorkles. Your just buried brother did not take after me, pathetic creature, typical of the Dancies.

CHARLIE: Not so loud, Pop, Mom’s in the dinin’ room, list’nin’.