LYMON: They never get me back down there. The sheriff looking for me. All because they gonna try and make me work for somebody when I don’t want to. They gonna try and make me work for Stovall when he don’t pay nothing. It ain’t like that up here. Up here you more or less do what you want to. I figure I find me a job and try to get set up and then see what the year brings. I tried to do that two or three times down there . . . but it never would work out. I was always in the wrong place.

BERNIECE: This ain’t a bad city once you get to know your way around.

LYMON: Up here is different. I’m gonna get me a job unloading boxcars or something. One fellow told me say he know a place. I’m gonna go over there with him next week. Me and Boy Willie finish selling them watermelons I’ll have enough money to hold me for a while. But I’m gonna go over there and see what kind of jobs they have.

BERNIECE: You shouldn’t have too much trouble finding a job. It’s all in how you present yourself. See now, Boy Willie couldn’t get no job up here. Somebody hire him they got a pack of trouble on their hands. Soon as they find that out they fire him. He don’t want to do nothing unless he do it his way.

LYMON: I know. I told him let’s go to the picture show first and see if there was any women down there. They might get tired of sitting at home and walk down to the picture show. He say he wanna look around first. We never did get down there. We tried a couple of places and then we went to this saloon where he met Grace. I tried to meet her before he did but he beat me to her. We left Wining Boy sitting down there running his mouth. He told me if I wear this suit I’d find me a woman. He was almost right.

BERNIECE: You don’t need to be out there in them saloons. Ain’t no telling what you liable to run into out there. This one liable to cut you as quick as that one shoot you. You don’t need to be out there. You start out that fast life you can’t keep it up. It makes you old quick. I don’t know what them women out there be thinking about.