LYMON: Nigger—you crazy! That piano weighs five hundred pounds!

BOY WILLIE: I got three hundred pounds of it! I know you can carry two hundred pounds! You be lifting them cotton sacks! Come on lift this piano!

(They try to move the piano again without success.)

LYMON: It’s stuck. Something holding it.

BOY WILLIE: How the piano gonna be stuck? We just moved it. Slide you’ end out.

LYMON: Naw—we gonna need two or three more people. How this big old piano get in the house?

BOY WILLIE: I don’t know how it got in the house. I know how it’s going out though! You get on this end. I’ll carry three hundred and fifty pounds of it. All you got to do is slide your end out. Ready?

(They switch sides and try again without success. DOAKER enters from his room as they try to push and shove it.)

LYMON: Hey, Doaker . . . how this piano get in the house?

DOAKER: Boy Willie, what you doing?

BOY WILLIE: I’m carrying this piano out the house. What it look like I’m doing? Come on, Lymon, let’s try again.

DOAKER: Go on let the piano sit there till Berniece come home.

BOY WILLIE: You ain’t got nothing to do with this, Doaker. This my business.

DOAKER: This is my house, nigger! I ain’t gonna let you or nobody else carry nothing out of it. You ain’t gonna carry nothing out of here without my permission!

BOY WILLIE: This is my piano. I don’t need your permission to carry my belongings out of your house. This is mine. This ain’t got nothing to do with you.

DOAKER: I say leave it over there till Berniece come home. She got part of it too. Leave it set there till you see what she say.

BOY WILLIE: I don’t care what Berniece say. Come on, Lymon. I got this side.

DOAKER: Go on and cut it half in two if you want to. Just leave Berniece’s half sitting over there. I can’t tell you what to do with your piano. But I can’t let you take her half out of here.

BOY WILLIE: Go on, Doaker. You ain’t got nothing to do with this. I don’t want you starting nothing now. Just go on and leave me alone. Come on, Lymon. I got this end.

(DOAKER goes into his room. BOY WILLIE and LYMON prepare to move the piano.)

LYMON: How we gonna get it in the truck?

BOY WILLIE: Don’t worry about how we gonna get it on the truck. You got to get it out the house first.

LYMON: It’s gonna take more than me and you to move this piano.

BOY WILLIE: Just lift up on that end, nigger!

(DOAKER comes to the doorway of his room and stands.)

DOAKER: (Quietly with authority.) Leave that piano set over there till Berniece come back. I don’t care what you do with it then. But you gonna leave it sit over there right now.