Much of the story takes place at what the narrative refers to as "the penitentiary" (49). This location includes a cell, the warden's house, the mess hall, and the death house. The narrative never refers to it by name, but it's likely that Faulkner was thinking of the Mississippi State Penitentiary, better known as Parchman Farm - a maximum security prison located in the Delta in the northwestern part of the state. It has been in operation since the first decade of the 20th century.
Boon, according to Quentin, "didn't have any profession or trade, or even job: he just did whatever Major de Spain told him to do" (185). He is part of the hunting party out of his fidelity to Major de Spain. He is "part Indian," descended in this one story from Indian royalty: his grandmother was a "Chickasaw woman, niece of the chief who once owned the land" where they hunt (184). In "Lion" he is about forty years old and, as elsewhere, he is described as six feet, four inches tall.
Memphis, Tennessee, is the city closest to Yoknapatawpha. Many of the people who live in Faulkner's mythical county regularly read "the Memphis [news]papers" (50).
Bill Terrel, whom Monk meets in the penitentiary, was convicted for manslaughter in another part of Mississippi than Yoknapatawpha, though the name of the county isn't given. In rehearsing Terrel's crimes, the story mentions the "filling station . . . near a railroad" where the killing took place (58), the train tracks onto which he and an accomplice threw the body of the man he killed, and the "courtroom" where his children refused to support his (false) alibi (59).
At separate points in the story, both Monk (who had never ridden on a train before) and Gavin Stevens have significant emotional moments while traveling between Jefferson and the penitentiary. The story isn't specific about the route either of them take, but we assume they leave Jefferson on the tracks that run north and, like train riders in other fictions, change somewhere for a train that will take them to Parchman.
Fraser sends Monk to a "country school," "for one year" of "first-grade work" (48). But Monk himself cannot "remember where the school was" (48), nor does the narrative provide any details about it. "Country school" probably means a one-room school house, and presumably it is not far from Fraser's.
Mrs. Odlethrop is buried somewhere in the vicinity of her house, perhaps on her own property but more likely in one of the many country grave yards that can be found in Yoknapatawpha.
