BERNIECE: I ain’t playing with Boy Willie. I got Crawley’s gun upstairs. He don’t know but I’m through with it. Where Lymon go?

DOAKER: Boy Willie sent him for some rope just before you come in.

BERNIECE: I ain’t studying Boy Willie or Lymon—or the rope. Boy Willie ain’t taking that piano out this house. That’s all there is to it.

(BOY WILLIE and MARETHA enter on the stairs. MARETHA carries a hot comb and a can of hair grease. BOY WILLIE crosses over and continues to screw the wheels on the board.)

MARETHA: Mama, all the hair grease is gone. There ain’t but this little bit left.

BERNIECE: (Gives her a dollar.) Here . . . run across the street and get another can. You come straight back, too. Don’t you be playing around out there. And watch the cars. Be careful when you cross the street.

(MARETHA exits out the front door.)

Boy Willie, I done told you to leave my house.

BOY WILLIE: I ain’t in you’ house. I’m in Doaker’s house. If he ask me to leave then I’ll go on and leave. But consider me done left your part.

BERNIECE: Doaker, tell him to leave. Tell him to go on.

DOAKER: Boy Willie ain’t done nothing for me to put him out of the house. I told you if you can’t get along just go on and don’t have nothing to do with each other.

BOY WILLIE: I ain’t thinking about Berniece.

(He gets up and draws a line across the floor with his foot.)

There! Now I’m out of your part of the house. Consider me done left your part. Soon as Lymon come back with that rope. I’m gonna take that piano out of here and sell it.

BERNIECE: You ain’t gonna touch that piano.

BOY WILLIE: Carry it out of here just as big and bold. Do like my daddy would have done come time to get Sutter’s land.

BERNIECE: I got something to make you leave it over there.

BOY WILLIE: It’s got to come better than this thirty-two-twenty.

DOAKER: Why don’t you stop all that! Boy Willie, go on and leave her alone. You know how Berniece get. Why you wanna sit there and pick with her?

BOY WILLIE: I ain’t picking with her. I told her the truth. She the one talking about what she got. I just told her what she better have.

BERNIECE: That’s alright, Doaker. Leave him alone.

BOY WILLIE: She trying to scare me. Hell, I ain’t scared of dying. I look around and see people dying every day. You got to die to make room for somebody else. I had a dog that died. Wasn’t nothing but a puppy. I picked it up and put it in a bag and carried it up there to Reverend C. L. Thompson’s church. I carried it up there and prayed and asked Jesus to make it live like he did the man in the Bible. I prayed real hard. Knelt down and everything. Say ask in Jesus’ name. Well, I must have called Jesus’ name two hundred times. I called his name till my mouth got sore. I got up and looked in the bag and the dog still dead. It ain’t moved a muscle! I say, “Well, ain’t nothing precious.” And then I went out and killed me a cat. That’s when I discovered the power of death. See, a nigger that ain’t afraid to die is the worse kind of nigger for the white man. He can’t hold that power over you. That’s what I learned when I killed that cat. I got the power of death too. I can command him. I can call him up. The white man don’t like to see that. He don’t like for you to stand up and look him square in the eye and say, “I got it too.” Then he got to deal with you square up.