BERNIECE: I’m gonna teach her the truth. That’s just where she living. Only she ain’t got to stay there.

(To MARETHA.)

Turn you’ head over to the other side.

BOY WILLIE: This might be your bottom but it ain’t mine. I’m living at the top of life. I ain’t gonna just take my life and throw it away at the bottom. I’m in the world like everybody else. The way I see it everybody else got to come up a little taste to be where I am.

BERNIECE: You right at the bottom with the rest of us.

BOY WILLIE: I’ll tell you this . . . and ain’t a living soul can put a come back on it. If you believe that’s where you at then you gonna act that way. If you act that way then that’s where you gonna be. It’s as simple as that. Ain’t no mystery to life. I don’t know how you come to believe that stuff. Crawley didn’t think like that. He wasn’t living at the bottom of life. Papa Boy Charles and Mama Ola wasn’t living at the bottom of life. You ain’t never heard them say nothing like that. They would have taken a strap to you if they heard you say something like that.

(DOAKER enters from his room.)

Hey, Doaker . . . Berniece say the colored folks is living at the bottom of life. I tried to tell her if she think that . . . that’s where she gonna be. You think you living at the bottom of life? Is that how you see yourself?

DOAKER: I’m just living the best way I know how. I ain’t thinking about no top or no bottom.

BOY WILLIE: That’s what I tried to tell Berniece. I don’t know where she got that from. That sound like something Avery would say. Avery think cause the white man give him a turkey for Thanksgiving that makes him better than everybody else. That’s gonna raise him out of the bottom of life. I don’t need nobody to give me a turkey. I can get my own turkey. All you have to do is get out my way. I’ll get me two or three turkeys.

BERNIECE: You can’t even get a chicken let alone two or three turkeys. Talking about get out your way. Ain’t nobody in your way.

(To MARETHA.)

Straighten your head, Maretha! Don’t be bending down like that. Hold your head up!

(To BOY WILLIE.)

All you got going for you is talk. You’ whole life that’s all you ever had going for you.

BOY WILLIE: See now . . . I’ll tell you something about me. I done strung along and strung along. Going this way and that. Whatever way would lead me to a moment of peace. That’s all I want. To be as easy with everything. But I wasn’t born to that. I was born to a time of fire.

The world ain’t wanted no part of me. I could see that since I was about seven. The world say it’s better off without me. See, Berniece accept that. She trying to come up to where she can prove something to the world. Hell, the world a better place cause of me. I don’t see it like Berniece. I got a heart that beats here and it beats just as loud as the next fellow’s. Don’t care if he black or white. Sometime it beats louder. When it beats louder, then everybody can hear it. Some people get scared of that. Like Berniece. Some people get scared to hear a nigger’s heart beating. They think you ought to lay low with that heart. Make it beat quiet and go along with everything the way it is. But my mama ain’t birthed me for nothing. So what I got to do? I got to mark my passing on the road. Just like you write on a tree, “Boy Willie was here.”