Hoake McCarron

Twenty-three years old, Hoake is one of Eula Varner's suitors and, eventually, the biological father of her only child. He is a man of some means, having inherited his father's buggy and his maternal grandfather's estate. He possesses his "father's assurance in his face which was bold and handsome too" (150). He is "precocious, well-co-ordinated and quick to learn whatever he saw was to his benefit" (151). Unlike his father, however, Hoake is "a little swaggering and definitely spoiled though not vain so much as intolerant" (150). He is also aggressive and cruel, having grown up with a "negro lad for his sole companion," whom he pays "for the privilege of whipping the negro, not severely, with a miniature riding crop" (150-51). He begins his philandering ways early, possibly beginning with the wife of one of his agricultural college instructors. Returning home to his mother's substantial property, he spends two years riding about Mississippi on horseback, and passing through Frenchman's Bend, he happens to see Eula Varner and eventually makes the first conquest of her, with her assistance. When he learns of Eula's pregnancy, he abandons her, as do his three unsuccessful rivals.