Joe Turner’s Come and Gone: Act Two: Scene One Summary & Analysis

The next morning, Seth raves at the kitchen table, telling Bertha he’s going to kick Herald out after the scene he made the previous night. Bertha tries to reason with her husband, saying that Loomis was probably just drunk, but Seth refuses to listen and resolves to banish him as soon as he sees him. Soon Molly enters the kitchen, followed shortly thereafter by Bynum, whom Seth thanks for helping calm Herald down. “Mr. Loomis alright, Seth,” Bynum says. “He just got a little excited.” When Mattie comes down for breakfast, she asks if Jeremy has already left for the day, and Bynum assures her that he has, since he has to be at the bridge before the sun rises.

When Herald enters the kitchen, Seth informs him that he’s going to have to leave, but Loomis points out that he has already paid for the week. “Alright,” Seth concedes. “Fair enough. You stay till Saturday.” After glaring at Seth, Loomis leaves for the day, and Bertha ushers Seth out the back door to go work on his pots and pans. At this point, Molly asks Bynum if he’s “one of them voo-doo people,” and the old man explains that he has the power to “bind folks,” telling her that his father also practiced folk magic, though his power was in healing people. Molly expresses her skepticism, saying she doesn’t want to “be bothered with that kind of thing” because it’s “too spooky.” Upon hearing this, Bynum leaves the kitchen, and Molly turns to Mattie, saying she hopes she didn’t offend the old man.

Molly and Mattie talk about men, and Mattie explains that she and Jeremy are “keeping company till maybe Jack come back.” Molly, for her part, asserts that she doesn’t trust men. “They wait just until they get one woman tied and locked up with them…then they look around to see if they can get another one,” she says. When she learns the babies Mattie had with Jack both died, she says this is for the better, since men get women pregnant and then leave. “Molly Cunningham ain’t gonna be tied down with no babies,” Molly says, explaining that she was once in love but that one day she came home and her man was leaving. “Say he was gonna send me a Special Delivery some old day,” she says. In light of this, Molly resolved to not be around to receive the package, deciding to take to the road.

Mattie leaves for work, and Seth comes inside just before Jeremy also reappears. Seth asks why Jeremy isn’t at work, and Jeremy admits he was fired. “White fellow come by told me to give him fifty cents if I wanted to keep working,” he says. “Going around to all the colored making them give him fifty cents to keep hold to their jobs. Them other fellows, they was giving it to him. I kept hold to mine and they fired me.” Seth is beside himself upon hearing this, saying, “Boy, what kind of sense that make? What kind of sense it make to get fired from a job where you making eight dollars a week and all it cost you is fifty cents.” In response, Jeremy says, “It didn’t make no sense to me. I don’t make but eight dollars. Why I got to give him fifty cents of it?”

Seth remarks that Jeremy is going to “learn the hard way,” pointing out that without his job he has “nothing.” “Don’t make me no difference,” Jeremy replies. “There’s a big road out there. I can get my guitar and always find me another place to stay. I ain’t planning on staying in one place for too long noway.” When Seth leaves again, Jeremy sits down next to Molly and flirtatiously asks how she’s doing. She remarks that he could probably return to work the following day without his employers even noticing, but he confesses that he’s glad to have gotten fired. “I’m tired of working anyway,” he says. Changing the subject, he says, “You sure look pretty.” She ignores his advance, but he presses on, suggesting that they run away together. 

Responding to Jeremy’s suggestion that they elope, Molly reminds him that he’s “tied up with that Mattie Campbell,” but he upholds that they’re merely keeping each other company. He tries to convince her that they could travel around together, but Molly says she can “make it nice by herself too” and that she doesn’t need anybody else to help her do so. Still, Jeremy insists that he can bring his guitar and they can go around making money at dances. Suddenly interested, Molly says he’ll have to do more than play guitar, and he assures her he’s good at gambling, too. “Molly don’t work,” Molly states. “And Molly ain’t up for sale.” Jeremy promises she won’t have to work, and this seems to convince her. “There’s one more thing,” she says. When he asks what it is, she says, “Molly ain’t going South.”