DOAKER: How your people doing down there, Lymon?

LYMON: They alright. They still there. I come up here to see what it’s like up here. Boy Willie trying to get me to go back and farm with him.

BOY WILLIE: Sutter’s brother selling the land. He say he gonna sell it to me. That’s why I come up here. I got one part of it. Sell them watermelons and get me another part. Get Berniece to sell that piano and I’ll have the third part.

DOAKER: Berniece ain’t gonna sell that piano.

BOY WILLIE: I’m gonna talk to her. When she see I got a chance to get Sutter’s land she’ll come around.

DOAKER: You can put that thought out your mind. Berniece ain’t gonna sell that piano.

BOY WILLIE: I’m gonna talk to her. She been playing on it?

DOAKER: You know she won’t touch that piano. I ain’t never known her to touch it since Mama Ola died. That’s over seven years now. She say it got blood on it. She got Maretha playing on it though. Say Maretha can go on and do everything she can’t do. Got her in an extra school down at the Irene Kaufman Settlement House. She want Maretha to grow up and be a schoolteacher. Say she good enough she can teach on the piano.

BOY WILLIE: Maretha don’t need to be playing on no piano. She can play on the guitar.

DOAKER: How much land Sutter got left?

BOY WILLIE: Got a hundred acres. Good land. He done sold it piece by piece, he kept the good part for himself. Now he got to give that up. His brother come down from Chicago for the funeral . . . he up there in Chicago got some kind of business with soda fountain equipment. He anxious to sell the land, Doaker. He don’t want to be bothered with it. He called me to him and said cause of how long our families done known each other and how we been good friends and all, say he wanted to sell the land to me. Say he’d rather see me with it than Jim Stovall. Told me he’d let me have it for two thousand dollars cash money. He don’t know I found out the most Stovall would give him for it was fifteen hundred dollars. He trying to get that extra five hundred out of me telling me he doing me a favor. I thanked him just as nice. Told him what a good man Sutter was and how he had my sympathy and all. Told him to give me two weeks. He said he’d wait on me. That’s why I come up here. Sell them watermelons. Get Berniece to sell that piano. Put them two parts with the part I done saved. Walk in there. Tip my hat. Lay my money down on the table. Get my deed and walk on out. This time I get to keep all the cotton. Hire me some men to work it for me. Gin my cotton. Get my seed. And I’ll see you again next year. Might even plant some tobacco or some oats.