Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams

Author:Tennessee Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Directions

BIG DADDY:

Now just don't go throwing rocks at—

[Suddenly Reverend Tooker appears in the gallery doors, his head slightly, playfully, fatuously cocked, with a practised clergyman's smile, sincere as a bird call blown on a hunter's whistle, the living embodiment of the pious, conventional lie.

[Big Daddy gasps a little at this perfectly timed, but incongruous, apparition.]

—What're you lookin’ for, Preacher?

REVEREND TOOKER:

The gentleman's lavatory, ha ha!—heh, heh . . .

BIG DADDY [with strained courtesy]:

—Go back out and walk down to the other end of the gallery, Reverend Tooker, and use the bathroom connected with my bedroom, and if you can't find it, ask them where it is!

REVEREND TOOKER:

Ah, thanks.

[He goes out with a deprecatory chuckle.]

BIG DADDY:

It's hard to talk in this place . . .

BRICK:

Son of a—!

BIG DADDY [leaving a lot unspoken]:

—I seen all things and understood a lot of them, till 1910. Christ, the year that—I had worn my shoes through, hocked my—I hopped off a yellow dog freight car half a mile down the road, slept in a wagon of cotton outside the gin—Jack Straw an’ Peter Ochello took me in. Hired me to manage this place which grew into this one.—When Jack Straw died—why, old Peter Ochello quit eatin’ like a dog does when its master's dead, and died, too!

BRICK:

Christ!

BIG DADDY:

I'm just saying I understand such—

BRICK [violently]:

Skipper is dead. I have not quit eating!

BIG DADDY:

No, but you started drinking.

[Brick wheels on his crutch and hurls his glass across the room shouting.]

BRICK:

YOU THINK SO, TOO?

BIG DADDY:

Shhh!

[Footsteps run on the gallery. There are women's calls.

[Big Daddy goes toward the door.]

Go way!—Just broke a glass . . . .

[Brick is transformed, as if a quiet mountain blew suddenly up in volcanic flame.]

BRICK:

You think so, too? You think so, too? You think me an’ Skipper did, did, did—sodomy!—together?

BIG DADDY:

Hold—!

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