The play’s second act opens with loud sounds of carpentry (hammering, sawing) in the darkness. Lights come up to show Wesley in the same kitchen, nailing together a new door, and Emma at the table making a new 4-H chart. Dirty laundry is still piled on the table, and a pot of artichokes boils on the stove. Emma asks Wesley if he thinks their mother is “making it” with Taylor. The siblings discuss whether Ella and Taylor are after each other’s money, assuming that the family’s property, sold as lots, will raise any. Emma suggests that their mother also seeks “esteem,” i.e., to live a more prestigious life. Emma says Taylor and their mother are probably halfway to Mexico by now and imagines aloud their hedonistic journey along the Baja coast, ending when their car breaks down outside a small town. The only mechanic, Emma says, will be her, but they won’t recognize her because she’ll have become so steeped in the culture. Emma, in her daydream, swindles them by stealing their car engine and reselling it for a “small mint.” Irritably, Wesley tells her to make sure the artichokes aren’t burning. Emma does so, while critiquing his rudimentary attempt to rebuild the door, which she thinks might “turn off potential buyers” (162).

Dejectedly, Wesley tells her that no family will buy their house. The new owners, he says, will be Taylor and his “land development” agency, which “means more than losing a house. It means losing a whole country” (163). Taylor, he warns, is at the head of a “zombie invasion,” which will demolish their home, farm, and orchard and replace it with the soulless “zombie architecture” of steel girders, “cement pilings,” and hideous prefabricated walls. Emma wonders if their parents will ever come back, and Wesley says he may leave too, possibly for Alaska, an “undiscovered” frontier teeming with “possibilities.”

Suddenly, Weston stumbles in, drunker than before, and confusedly asks Wesley what he’s building. He has completely forgotten that he destroyed the door two nights ago. Seeing his dirty laundry still heaped on the table, he demands to know where Ella is, and Wesley answers evasively. Finally, Emma tells him that she left with a lawyer named Taylor for a “business lunch” a day ago and hasn’t returned. She wonders if they might have had an accident. Weston shouts, “In my car! In my Kaiser-Fraser! I’ll break his fucking back!” (165). Weston shows signs of impaired memory, shouting furious questions about the boiling artichokes (which he bought) and about what his son is building, which Wesley already told him is a door. However, he seems to recognize Taylor’s name.

Turning the subject back to his unwashed laundry, he testily refuses Emma’s offer to wash it, insisting that it’s her mother’s “job.” Changing the subject again, he asks his children what they think of the house and property. Wesley offers that he certainly wouldn’t sell it because they’re living on it. Sarcastically, Weston praises his son’s “sound reasoning” and announces his decision to sell the place. After a “long silence,” Emma jumps up and leaves. Wesley informs his father that he intends to stay on until he’s forced to leave, and Weston commends his “courageous outlook.” He says bitterly that his own outlook is “infected” with “poison,” which he inherited from his father, against his will: “His poison in my body. You think that’s fair?” (167). Weston describes how poison passes down from father to son, comparing it to strychnine placed in a dead lamb’s belly to kill coyotes. Weston recalls how his father lived on the “sidelines,” in “the midst” of family yet always apart; only Weston, he says, “saw him.”

After another long silence, Weston says the buyer he found owns a bar called the Alibi Club. The cash, he says, will pay his passage to Mexico, where “they” can’t touch him. Incensed by Wesley’s questions, Weston asks why he’s always “watching” him. Finally, Wesley tells his father that Ella is also plotting to sell the place—through her lawyer friend, Taylor. Weston explodes, threatening to kill both Ella and Taylor, and then screams that his whole family is a nest of “vipers” who have conspired against him. Shouting that the house is his to sell, he tries to stand up but collapses to the floor; finally, he hoists himself onto the kitchen table, pushing off the dirty laundry and 4-H charts, and passes out. Concerned, Wesley approaches him, and Weston revives, shouting at him not to get too close. Wesley tries to talk him out of selling, arguing that they could still make the place viable by joining the California Avocado Association. However, Weston broods only on revenge, daydreaming out loud about murdering Ella and Taylor, as well as the swindler who sold him the worthless land. His time in the “war,” he says, taught him how easy it is to kill, and Taylor isn’t “counting on” the “explosiveness” in his blood. Finally, still rambling about his days as a bomber pilot, when he flew “giant machines,” he drifts off to sleep.

Ella enters stage right with a bag of groceries, which she transfers to the refrigerator, scornfully pulling out the artichokes Weston bought. Her chatter reveals that she knows about Weston’s worthless land purchase. Wesley immediately suspects that the “venomous” Taylor sold Weston the piece of desert. Ella denies it but admits that Taylor is a “speculator” who knows all about real estate. Beyond that, she doesn’t delve into his “private affairs.” Gloatingly, she tells Wesley that her “deal” just needs her signature and then the whole “shooting match” will be over: The house, orchard, animals, equipment, beat-up cars, everything, will be gone. However, Wesley tells her she’s too late because his father already sold it all. Calling him “crazy,” Ella says Weston lacks the competence or intelligence to “sell a shoestring” (173). Wesley warns her not to wake his father, but Ella says she’s tired of “tiptoeing” around, like a “foreigner” in her own house. Grimly, Wesley says his father intends to kill her and Taylor. After a moment of stunned silence, Ella says “it” all goes back to a “curse,” invisible but always present: “We inherit it and pass it down, and then pass it down again. It goes on and on like that without us” (174).

Ellis, the burly, tattooed owner of the Alibi Club, enters, smiling. He wears a shiny yellow shirt, a gold cross, and many rings. Seeing Weston asleep on the kitchen table, he makes coarse jokes about alcoholism and the room’s “piss”-like aroma of boiled artichokes. When Ella rebukes him for walking into the house like it’s his, Ellis says that it is his: With a flourish, he pulls $1,500 from his pocket. Saying the lump sum will settle Weston’s debts, he adds that Weston was such a sucker that he signed the house over to him with a mere oral promise of cash; only sheer honesty, he says, brought him here with the money. When Ella protests that she already sold the place, Ellis pulls out the deed: “Signed, sealed, and delivered” (175). As Ella tries to shake Weston awake to question him, Ellis tells Wesley that his father has a long history of crackpot schemes and constant borrowing and that he owes money to some “pretty hard” fellows. Alarmed for his father’s safety, Wesley insists on delivering the purchase money to his father’s creditors himself. Over the objections of Ella, who calls the money “tainted,” Ellis reluctantly hands the $1,500 over to Wesley.

Ella first denounces the legality of the exchange and then tries to get Wesley to give her the money; he refuses. Meanwhile, Ellis muses aloud about turning the place into a steak house, possibly with a Japanese garden and miniature golf course. As Wesley counts the money, Taylor enters stage right carrying an attaché case; he says the “final draft” is ready for Ella’s signature. Ellis and Taylor argue fiercely over the rights to the property, Ellis insisting that his deed is perfectly “above board” and Taylor claiming that Weston lacks the legal competence to sell land. Wesley, who suspects that Taylor is the swindler who sold his father the worthless desert land, accuses him of hypocrisy. Taylor bristles at this, noting that Weston has a jail record and a history of violence, as well as a revoked driver’s license, no insurance, and no steady job. No court, he says, will honor his signature on a contract. As both Wesley and Ellis order him to leave the premises, Taylor’s threats become more sweeping: Telling Wesley that he has “corporations” and “people of influence” behind him, he warns him that if he doesn’t “play ball,” he’ll be “left high and dry” (179).

Taylor’s diatribe is interrupted by the arrival of Sergeant Malcolm, a highway patrolman, who tells the family that Emma was arrested. According to the officer, she rode a horse through Ellis’s bar (the Alibi Club), and shot it full of holes with a rifle. Luckily, he says, no one was hurt. Ellis, in a rage, snatches his money back from Wesley. Taylor slips away and escapes, despite Wesley’s calls for his arrest; the sale of “phony land,” apparently, falls outside the patrolman’s “jurisdiction.” Ellis, who believes that Weston sent Emma on her shooting spree, tells Ella that he’ll sue her husband “blind,” adding darkly that he has “friends in high places” (180). Insisting that he “owns” the house now, Ellis exits angrily, pursued by Wesley, who’s intent on getting the money back from him.

Left behind with the police officer and her sleeping husband, Ella seems shocked and hurt by Taylor’s change of behavior toward her; he wasn’t at all “nice,” she sulks. Sergeant Malcolm asks her about her plans for her daughter, who, if Ella doesn’t want her back home, must be arraigned in juvenile court. Ella says that by the next day there won’t be anyone left here, since they all must leave. As Malcolm exits, Ella, dazed, says to herself, “Everybody ran away” (181). With a jolt, Weston wakes and sits up on the table, startling Ella, who runs offstage. Weston looks around and then goes to the refrigerator and peers in, as the lights fade.