CHICKEN: I ain’t goin’ to Sunset. I wouldn’t go up to Sunset if I had my own car to go in, so don’t worry none about that.

FEMALE VOICE: I ain’t worried about it, it’s your worry, not mine, but we got word that ole man Sikes might dynamite his south bank levee tonight to save his nawth bank levee an’ if he does, you’ place’ll be under at least ten foot of water, you know that.

CHICKEN [shouting at them]: I’d sooner be caught in my house by ten foot of water than caught in the mud on a road between here an’ Sunset an’ drown like kittens tied in a sack with rocks. Cause anyhow in this house there’s something I can climb onto, I can climb on the roof, I can climb up on the roof and set on the roof with the chickens till the water goes down. I done that before and I can do it again, that’s how I got my name, they named me Chicken because I set on the roof with the chickens one time when this place was flooded eighteen year ago, spring of 1932.

FEMALE VOICE [shrill, spiteful above bawling children]: A person could git awful hungry on that roof befo’ th’ water wint down.

CHICKEN: Shit, if I got hungry I’d bite the haid off one of them other chickens and drink its blood.

MALE VOICE: I seen a man do that in a freak show once.

FEMALE VOICE [cackles shrilly]: Let’s go, daddy, we’re cold. [Motor roars and splutters.] Sorry we don’t have room fo’ you in th’ car! [Her voice has a mocking inflection: fades under roar of motor and bawling children.Weak lightning flickers in the dull grey afternoon light. Chicken enters the kitchen, lights kerosene lamp, repeating to himself several times the woman’s mocking shout, “Sorry we don’t have room for you in the car.” He is about to pour himself some coffee in a tin cup when another car is heard. Lot and Myrtle appear in back of the house. Chicken leans over the kitchen table as if peering out a window in the open wall of the set.]

CHICKEN [to himself]: Him! Him and a woman!

[Lot is a frail, delicately pretty youth of twenty. Myrtle is at least ten years older, a short, stocky woman, ample of hips and bosom, recklessly wearing a pair of tight, checkered slacks and a red leather belt.]

MYRTLE [imitating the wind that whines about the house]: Wooo, woooo, wooo.

LOT [calling out]: Chicken? Hey, Chicken!

[Chicken crosses to the door frame and makes the motion of opening the door]

Surprised to see me?

CHICKEN: How come they let you out of the Memphis hospital?

LOT: A hospital ain’t a jail, when you want to get out, you get out.

CHICKEN: You look worse than before you went in.