OZIE: This is a waste o' time! Let's mo...

OZIE: This is a waste o' time! Let's move on!

HAYWOOD: (to audience): He be talkin' about Judge Callahan now. The one who replace Judge Horton after he lose his election.

OLEN: That ol' cracker never even graduated college--let alone go to law school.

OZIE: I don't see the importance of that!

HAYWOOD: All these things Ozie sayin' is quotes.

OZIE: What is the use of that? You have gone over that!

OLEN: He was one son-of-a-bitch, tellin' everybody he gonna cut the Scottsboro case down to size.

OZIE: Nobody gonna touch my ding-dong!

(A beat. Then the others can't help but laugh.)

HAYWOOD: (to the audience, smiling) That ain't the judge he quotin' now. That be somethin' else.

OZIE: Nobody ever touch the ol' ding-dong.

WILLIE: Uh-oh. He gonna tell it now.

HAYWOOD: What Ozie sayin' here is there a certain place where you can always hide your dutch.

CHARLIE: Gotta tell 'em what you mean by dutch, Haywood.

HAYWOOD: A dutch can be anythin', pretty much, that you work on 'til it get razor sharp. Then you make a little slit and hide it in the zipper part of your pants. 'Cuz like Ozie say, even though they pat you down for weapons, no white man wanna touch a black man's privates.

(More snickers from the others.)

ANDY: We all carried some kinda protection. Had to, you gonna survive where we was.

OZIE: (muttering) I'll kill the son-of-a-bitch. I'll kill the mother-fuckin' son-of-a-bitch.

HAYWOOD: (to the other boys) Okay now, let's be clear to the people what went on. Since there been all kind of accusation.

OZIE: White mother-fuckin' bastard.

HAYWOOD: Charlie, how 'bout you be Sheriff Sandlin? Andy, you be Deputy Blalock. And Ozie, you and Clarence and Leroy be like you was, handcuffed together in the back seat of the car.

ANDY: I ain't doin' it with Ozie! Forget that, he's too crazy. Probably kill me!

OZIE: (still muttering) Seventy-fuckin'-five. Might as well be dead.

HAYWOOD: (responding to ANDY) Okay, okay. Willie, how 'bout you be Ozie?

WILLIE: All right.

(The five appointed push together scenery, and then take seated positions, as if in a car. Meanwhile...)

HAYWOOD: (to audience) What Ozie mean just now by seventy-five is that we be comin' back from bein' convicted for the fourth time. And once again we watch as another bunch of white men end up sayin'...

OZIE: (nasal white southern accent:) We the jury find the defendants guilty as charged and fix the punishment at seventy-five years in the state penitentiary.

HAYWOOD: (taken aback) Well shut my mouth. There's progress. Leibowitz thought so, at least. For the first time in the history of Alabama, a black man convicted of rapin' a white woman wasn't given death. Just seventy-five years.

OLEN: Which I never understood. What was the point? That since they realize we innocent, we only get seventy-five years?

HAYWOOD: I think that about sums it up, yeah.

OLEN: I don't get that! If they know we innocent, why they keep convictin' us?!

CLARENCE: They hate blacks, Olen. Is that so hard to understand?

OLEN: For me it is.

HAYWOOD: Maybe Mr. Brodsky got it right. That they had to create hatred, to keep the system in place.

OLEN: Maybe. I don't know.

CHARLIE: Whatever it was, once again, we's handcuffed together and taken back to jail. Big police escort. Three to a car. Ozie and Clarence and Leroy be in the middle car.

OZIE: Be a lot better off get rid of that lawyer.

HAYWOOD: (to audience) Afterward they say Ozie and Clarence and Leroy try to make an escape.

OZIE: Get yo'self a good, Christian Alabama man.

HAYWOOD: (to audience) Now I want you to understand, this here's a two-door car. With two police officers, armed with pistols, sittin' in the front seat, which, if you in the back, gotta be push forward in order to get out.

OZIE: You niggers never gonna get out long as you got that New York Jewboy.

HAYWOOD: Got cops in the car behind. Cops in the car ahead. Not to mention National Guard. And them three handcuffed together tryin' to escape??

CLARENCE: Wasn't no escape that started it. Was Deputy Blalock, up front, makin' remarks about Mr. Leibowitz.

LEROY: 'Til Ozie finally fed up with it, make some remark back.

OZIE: You be quiet.

(In response to this, ANDY, seated up front as if he were Deputy Blalock, turns and slaps WILLIE, depicting Ozie, across the face. For a moment, there is silence.)

CLARENCE: Ozie, after that slap, didn't do nothin'. Didn't say nothin', either. No one did. We just drives another couple miles, each keepin' our own thoughts, until--

(CLARENCE is interrupted by WILLIE grabbing ANDY by the head and slashing his neck.)

OZIE: MOTHER FUCKER! MOTHER FUCKER!...

(ANDY hollers as OZIE'S rant continues. LEROY and CLARENCE scream.)

CHARLIE: (depicting Sheriff Sandlin) Hey!! Hey!!

EUGENE: All we know in the third car is that the car up ahead suddenly be swervin' this way and that!

(CHARLIE gets up and runs around to where WILLIE, seated by the window, is now struggling with ANDY, still hollering as WILLIE is now trying to grab his gun.

(Throughout, OZIE is continuing to shout "MOTHER FUCKER!" over and over as...)

OLEN: Then when it skid to a stop, the sheriff jump out, drawin' his gun, and run over and open the car door and...

CHARLIE: BAM!!

(OZIE'S shouts suddenly stop. A pause.)

CLARENCE: Leroy and me, we right away holds up our hands--which also lift up Ozie's floppy hand--and we say...

CLARENCE / LEROY: Ain't us, boss! We ain't got no part of this! / We didn't do it! We don't done nothin', boss!

CLARENCE: And by then, the other cars has pulled to a stop, and they all around us with their guns and rifles ready.

LEROY: And Ozie's just slumped over dead.

CLARENCE: And the deputy he slashed is staggerin' outa the car now, clutchin' at his neck.

LEROY: Blood seepin' out past his hands. And blood splattered on the windshield. And all over the car. All over us.

CLARENCE: One of the police start to uncuff Ozie from me and another yell, "You leave them niggers like they are! Drive 'em on over to the nearest jail and this time leave the door open!" And another of 'em say, "Naw, we can't do that. We gotta get this nigger to a hospital." And another of 'em say, "Don't look like there no need for that."

HAYWOOD: Deputy Blalock they rush to the hospital in the nearby town of Cullman, Alabama. Where they stitch him up and he be home that night.

OZIE: I ain't never been shot before.

CLARENCE: Holy Jesus!

LEROY: I admit, I about peed in my pants when he said that!

HAYWOOD: Turned out, ol' Ozie wasn't dead! So they drove him to Hillman Hospital, where they treat the colored... (turning to the others) ...which was how far, would you say?

CLARENCE: Forty miles. And they take their time, too.

HAYWOOD: Doctors there found the bullet one inch inside Ozie's brain. Give him a fifty-fifty chance. But damn if ol' Ozie didn't live!

OLEN: Ain't ever been the same though.

HAYWOOD: Yeah, well...who of us is, Olen?

(OLEN, finding he has no answer, turns away; goes off to his personal space.)

CHARLIE: Ozie's mama come to see him in the hospital.

ANDY: But the police only let her in after she show a furniture receipt, with her name on it, to prove she was his mama.

CHARLIE: And o' course they in there listenin' to everythin' she say. "Here your mama, boy. She come to see you."

CLARENCE: Ozie lyin' there all doped up.

CHARLIE: "Ozie," she say, "do you hurt?"

OZIE: Not now.

CHARLIE: "What you do that for, child? Why you cut that man?"

OZIE: I done give up, mama. Everybody mad at me.

ANDY: Nobody mad at you personal, Ozie.

HAYWOOD: And then come the last thing he say to her. Tell 'em, Ozie.

OZIE: Don't let Sam Leibowitz have nothin' more to do with my case.

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