CHARLIE: Lemme take care of it, Mama.

BELLA [staggering up from sofa]: Not sure I put all ingredients in it. Onions, yais, but not the bacon an’ cheese—an’ should have some ketchup on it. Om’lette’s got to be watched—scawch quick—not sure if—

CORNELIUS: Charlie, you reckon you could get her back to the kitchen where she seems to be headed? —Did you hear me, Charlie?

CHARLIE: You know I think we need somebody to help her out, a—a able-bodied young woman to—

CORNELIUS: What people need and what people can afford are two diff’rent things.

CHARLIE: Well, if I got married, for instance—

CORNELIUS: Unemployed? —First get you a job you can hold, then think about matrimony.

[Low wail from Stacey in shadow on the landing. Charlie lifts a warning hand.]

CHARLIE: Pop, I know your retirement pay was adequate when you received it, but hasn’t kept pace with this run-away inflation.

CORNELIUS: Shit, what could keep pace with it except a hawss that won the Kentucky Derby by ten lengths?

CHARLIE: Some people think we’re haided into depression. ’Sthat your opinion?

CORNELIUS: Opinion, no, conviction, yais. It’s not the President’s fault but the fault of the system which don’t adjust to the population increase, here and world-over, too many stomachs to feed. Why, I read somewhere that by the year 2030 which you might survive to enjoy, world population will have doubled. Starvation, pestilence, war after war after war, that’s what you’ll live to enjoy. I’m glad I’ll be departed. Oh, they tole me when I run for Mayor of Pascagoola on the independent ticket, I hadn’t the chance of a fart in a wind-stawm with a radical opinion such as that but I don’t compromise with principles and convictions and so got only ten votes out of two hundred at the Moose Lodge, why, even your Mom said she couldn’t git to the polls though offered transportation and still in reasonable health.

CHARLIE: Ten votes only for Mayor of Pascagoola? Sorry about that, Pop.

CORNELIUS: I don’t regret it. Who needs political office in times like this? Only crooks that line their pockets with bribes.

CHARLIE: Might of been profitable to you. However this house is a piece of Gulf property, Pop.

CORNELIUS: This house is held up, why it’s literally supported by termites!

CHARLIE: House, maybe, but not the grounds. What would it be worth if we was obliged to sell it when you, if you ever—after you’ve—

CORNELIUS: Departed?—Why are you so int’rested in my value as a cadaver?

CHARLIE: You misunderstand me completely. It just seems to me—

CORNELIUS [cutting in sharply]: —What are your plans for employment?

CHARLIE: Why, anything good that comes up.

CORNELIUS: That don’t require any effort? —Emerson Sykes, at the Moose Lodge, my closest friend among ’em, is branchin’ out.

CHARLIE: Which way?