participate in a nightly local guitar contest. Seth returns to the kitchen and informs Bynum, Bertha, and Jeremy that he suspects a woman he knows named Martha Pentecost might be Herald’s wife. However, he refuses to tell Herald because Herald looks mean. At that moment, Mattie Campbell knocks on the door. She is seeking Bynum's help to find the man who left her and to make him return. Known as the local rootworker, Bynum has a reputation for “binding” people together, and Mattie seeks his expertise. Bynum hesitates, explaining to Mattie that his song only binds people who are already clinging to one another. He advises that while the roots are powerful, perhaps Jack Carper and Mattie are not meant to be together. Instead, he offers her a good-luck charm to help her forget about Jack Carper. During this conversation, Jeremy becomes interested in Mattie. He chats with her and invites her to join him at the guitar contest. When Mattie hesitates, Jeremy encourages her to take a chance on him and on life. Mattie agrees and leaves to get ready for the evening. As per the stage directions, the lights dim in the house and come up in the yard, where Zonia is playing and singing a song. Reuben, the boy next door, enters the yard and introduces himself to Zonia. Zonia tells him that she and her father are traveling to find her mother. From inside the house, Herald can be heard warning Zonia not to wander off. Reuben comments on Herald’s mean-looking eyes, and they leave together to look at the pigeons Reuben keeps.

Scene two begins on a Saturday morning, one week later. Bertha is once again at the stove, preparing breakfast while chatting with her husband, Seth. Seth reiterates his suspicions about Herald, insisting that something is off about the man. He mentions seeing Herald standing outside the church, watching it as if he plans to rob it. Seth finds it hard to believe that a good Christian woman like Martha Pentecost would be involved with someone as wild-eyed and unkempt as Herald Loomis.

Bynum walks through the kitchen and heads upstairs. As Seth watches him go, he starts to criticize Bynum's profession as a conjure man. Seth contemptuously refers to Bynum’s rootwork as “heebie-jeebie stuff” and mocks Bynum’s wandering ways. After exhausting this topic, Seth tells Bertha all he knows about Martha’s whereabouts. After leaving the South, heartbroken over losing her daughter, Martha moved with her church to Rankin, a town up the river, where she still resides. However, Seth makes it clear that he will not assist Herald in finding Martha, stating that he does not meddle in other people’s affairs.

Bynum returns to the kitchen, looking for breakfast. He inquires about the whereabouts of Herald and Zonia and informs Seth and Bertha that Herald plans to ask Selig for help in finding Martha. Coincidentally, Selig knocks on the door at that moment and immediately begins negotiating with Seth over payment for the dustpans Seth has crafted. Seth is an efficient and precise businessman. Just as they conclude their transaction, Herald enters and starts talking to Selig. He asks Selig to locate his wife, providing a description of Martha and the dollar fee. Selig explains that his family has been in the people-finding business for generations. His grandfather used to bring slaves over from Africa. His father tracked down runaway slaves for plantation owners. After slavery was abolished, and former slaves began searching for lost relatives or separated spouses, Selig continued the family business. He cannot guarantee that he will find Martha, but he agrees to make an effort. After Selig leaves, Bertha tells Herald that he just wasted a dollar.

Analysis
Imagery of roads and discussions about travel, along with the reasons and outcomes of migration, are prevalent at the beginning of this play. These elements introduce a key theme: the process of people losing and finding one another. Herald is searching for his missing wife, while Mattie longs for her man who has left her. Jeremy seeks a relationship but appears too young to commit seriously. Selig specializes in locating people, and Bynum binds them together. Seth’s boardinghouse serves as a place where individuals come together by chance, only to depart when the time comes, leaving both permanent and temporary residents behind. Notably, Seth is identified as the son of a free man. His impatience and distrust towards the wandering habits of Bynum, Jeremy, and Herald likely stem from the stability he experienced growing up in the North. Seth seems unable to relate to the travelers and migrants, possibly because he has never faced family separation. The themes in these initial scenes suggest that one legacy of slavery was the fragmentation of relationships and the ongoing desire among former slaves to find a partner or belong to a family.

A secondary theme closely linked to the road motif is the loss of identity. Slavery, chain gangs, and even migration (whether forced or voluntary) all contribute to an identity loss. As Seth mentions, newly freed slaves and their descendants have lost all memories of Africa, the implied "homeland" and source of cultural identity. This loss leads to mobility and wandering in search of identity, occupation, family, and a home. This theme is illustrated when Bynum shares the story of learning his unique song, passed down from his father, which gives Bynum his name. The "Binding Song" empowers Bynum to act purposefully in the world rather than wander aimlessly without self-awareness. It is no coincidence that he acquires his song/identity while traveling down a road and around a bend. For former slaves, as well as for new white immigrants to America, mobility, migration, and the quest for identity are intertwined.

Scene two is rich with dramatic irony. We discover that Selig’s grandfather was involved in the forced migration of Africans to the New World, and Selig’s father made a living by tracking and capturing runaway slaves to return them to plantations. This deepens the earlier theme of migration, highlighting how Africans were forcibly removed from their homeland by people like Selig’s grandfather and then fled the brutal conditions of plantation life. Bertha’s concluding remarks in the scene underscore this irony. She tells Bynum that Rutherford Selig can locate people because he is the one who initially takes them away. When people need to travel within the region, they go with him, as he is knowledgeable about the routes from his work as a peddler. Bertha bluntly states that Selig has never found anyone he hasn’t first displaced. Therefore, she implies that Selig is a people finder just like his forebears. His grandfather brought Africans to American plantations, and his father returned runaway slaves to those same plantations. Selig's father never “found” anyone that his own father hadn’t already taken away in some manner. Selig, along with his father and grandfather, benefited from relocating black people. Bertha’s observation allows the audience to see the continuity in their roles: by displacing individuals, Selig causes the loss of family connections and then profits from “helping” black people reconnect. Essentially, Selig continues the legacy of slavery—the fragmentation of families and loss of identity—albeit through different methods than those employed by white people.