who does cory talk with and how does this affect him?

Lyons and Cory talk for a while. Cory is getting married and Lyons tells him that he and Bonnie split up four years ago, about the time that Troy retired from the sanitation department. Lyons encourages Cory to stay in the military and retire early, that there is “nothing out here” for him in Pittsburgh. He tells Cory that he is in a workhouse right now, punishment for a check cashing scheme he was caught in. He remembers that Troy once told him that “you got to take the crookeds with the straights” and so that’s what he reminds himself of. He remembers how he once saw his father strike out three times in a row and then hit a home run right out of Homestead Field. “He wasn’t satisfied hitting in the seats…he want to hit it over everything!”

Lyons goes inside to eat breakfast and Raynell comes back out. She asks him if he used to sleep in her room and he says yes. She tells him that Troy always called it “Cory’s room” and that some of his football equipment is still in the closet. Rose sends Raynell in and stands on the porch talking to Cory. She shows him the rag, still tied to the tree, that Troy was swinging at with the baseball bat when he fell over and died. “Seem like he swung it and stood there with this grin on his face,” she tells him. Cory tells her that he is not going to go to Troy’s funeral and Rose refuses to hear it. He tells her that he can’t “drag Papa with me everywhere I go. I’ve got to say no to him.” Rose demands that he put his anger aside and that he needs to come to some peace about the whole thing. Cory wants to find a way to get rid of Troy, but Rose tells him that he is just like his father.

She tells him that Troy’s shadow in his life was nothing but “you growing into yourself.” She tells him, “Your daddy wanted you to be everything he wasn’t …and at the same time he tried to make you into everything he was.”