The Reivers , 3 (Event)

The first two words of the novel are written, or spoken, by Lucius Priest III, the grandson of the man (Lucius Priest II) who tells the rest of the story. Although often addressed directly throughout the rest of the narrative, this grandson never speaks again, and so this truncated framing device - Lucius III looking back at Lucius II looking back at his younger self - is left unexplained. There is no way to know exactly when the younger Lucius is re-telling "grandfather's" story, though it has to be between 1961 (when grandfather told it) and the novel's publication in 1962. Nor is it clear where either Lucius is in the present that this narrative technique creates. We are locating both narrators and the telling of the story in "Courthouse Square," the project's default location for places in Jefferson or Yoknapatawpha that cannot otherwise be identified.