BERNIECE: I ain’t selling that piano, Boy Willie. If that’s why you come up here you can just forget about it.

(To DOAKER.)

Doaker, I’ll see you later. Boy Willie ain’t nothing but a whole lot of mouth. I ain’t paying him no mind. If he come up here thinking he gonna sell that piano then he done come up here for nothing.

(BERNIECE, AVERY, and MARETHA exit the front door.)

BOY WILLIE: Hey, Lymon! You ready to go sell these watermelons.

(BOY WILLIE and LYMON start to exit. At the door BOY WILLIE turns to DOAKER.)

Hey, Doaker . . . if Berniece don’t want to sell that piano . . . I’m gonna cut it in half and go on and sell my half.

(BOY WILLIE and LYMON exit.)

(The lights go down on the scene.)

SCENE 2

(The lights come up on the kitchen. It is three days later. WINING BOY sits at the kitchen table. There is a half-empty pint bottle on the table. DOAKER busies himself washing pots. WINING BOY is fifty-six years old. DOAKER’s older brother, he tries to present the image of a successful musician and gambler, but his music, his clothes, and even his manner of presentation are old. He is a man who looking back over his life continues to live it with an odd mixture of zest and sorrow.)

WINING BOY: So the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog got Sutter. That just go to show you I believe I always lived right. They say every dog gonna have his day and time it go around it sure come back to you. I done seen that a thousand times. I know the truth of that. But I’ll tell you outright . . . if I see Sutter’s ghost I’ll be on the first thing I find that got wheels on it.

(DOAKER enters from his room.)

DOAKER: Wining Boy!

WINING BOY: And I’ll tell you another thing . . . Berniece ain’t gonna sell that piano.

DOAKER: That’s what she told him. He say he gonna cut it in half and go on and sell his half. They been around here three days trying to sell them watermelons. They trying to get out to where the white folks live but the truck keep breaking down. They go a block or two and it break down again. They trying to get out to Squirrel Hill and can’t get around the corner. He say soon as he can get that truck empty to where he can set the piano up in there he gonna take it out of here and go sell it.

WINING BOY: What about them boys Sutter got? How come they ain’t farming that land?

DOAKER: One of them going to school. He left down there and come North to school. The other one ain’t got as much sense as that frying pan over yonder. That is the dumbest white man I ever seen. He’d stand in the river and watch it rise till it drown him.