Memphis: Union Station (Location Key)

The real Union Station in Memphis was right where Faulkner says it is in The Reivers, between "Second and Third streets" (137). But Faulkner gets ahead of history when he uses it as a location for this story set in 1905, since the station didn't open until 1912. Mink Snopes could have spent a night sleeping inside its "hollowly sonorous rotunda," since that scene in The Mansion takes place in 1946 - except, of course, for the Memphis policeman who tells him to "Beat it" (317, 318). In Reivers Boon and Lucius go inside the depot to buy their tickets for Parsham. They also use the station's trainyard, a "maze of loading platforms and tracks," to get their ill-gotten horse into an empty boxcar; he travels to Parsham without a ticket (141).