LYMON: About that much. Maybe a little more.

BOY WILLIE: You think that piano will fit up in there?

LYMON: If we stack them watermelons you can sit it up in the front there.

BOY WILLIE: I’m gonna call that man tomorrow.

WINING BOY: (Returns with his shoes.) Here you go . . . size nine. Put them on. Cost you three dollars. That’s a Florsheim shoe. That’s the kind Staggerlee wore.

LYMON: (Trying on the shoes.) You sure these size nine?

WINING BOY: You can look at my feet and see we wear the same size. Man, you put on that suit and them shoes and you got something there. You ready for whatever’s out there. But is they ready for you? With them shoes on you be the King of the Walk. Have everybody stop to look at your shoes. Wishing they had a pair. I’ll give you a break. Go on and take them for two dollars.

(LYMON pays WINING BOY two dollars.)

LYMON: Come on, Boy Willie . . . let’s go find some women. I’m gonna go upstairs and get ready. I’ll be ready to go in a minute. Ain’t you gonna get dressed?

BOY WILLIE: I’m gonna wear what I got on. I ain’t dressing up for these city niggers.

(LYMON exits up the stairs.)

That’s all Lymon think about is women.

WINING BOY: His daddy was the same way. I used to run around with him. I know his mama too. Two strokes back and I would have been his daddy! His daddy’s dead now . . . but I got the nigger out of jail one time. They was fixing to name him Daniel and walk him through the Lion’s Den. He got in a tussle with one of them white fellows and the sheriff lit on him like white on rice. That’s how the whole thing come about between me and Lymon’s mama. She knew me and his daddy used to run together and he got in jail and she went down there and took the sheriff a hundred dollars. Don’t get me to lying about where she got it from. I don’t know. The sheriff looked at that hundred dollars and turned his nose up. Told her, say, “That ain’t gonna do him no good. You got to put another hundred on top of that.” She come up there and got me where I was playing at this saloon . . . said she had all but fifty dollars and asked me if I could help. Now the way I figured it . . . without that fifty dollars the sheriff was gonna turn him over to Parchman. The sheriff turn him over to Parchman it be three years before anybody see him again. Now I’m gonna say it right . . . I will give anybody fifty dollars to keep them out of jail for three years. I give her the fifty dollars and she told me to come over to the house. I ain’t asked her. I figure if she was nice enough to invite me I ought to go. I ain’t had to say a word. She invited me over just as nice. Say, “Why don’t you come over to the house?” She ain’t had to say nothing else. Them words rolled off her tongue just as nice. I went on down there and sat about three hours. Started to leave and changed my mind. She grabbed hold to me and say, “Baby, it’s all night long.” That was one of the shortest nights I have ever spent on this earth! I could have used another eight hours. Lymon’s daddy didn’t even say nothing to me when he got out. He just looked at me funny. He had a good notion something had happened between me an’ her. L. D. Jackson. That was one bad-luck nigger. Got killed at some dance. Fellow walked in and shot him thinking he was somebody else.