The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

The woman Lucas Beauchamp is married to 'appears' only once in this story, when the exasperated white man he works for tells Lucas to stay out of his sight: "When you need supplies, send your wife" (237). Her role as Molly and Mollie in other texts, however, gives her a much more important place in the census of Yoknapatawpha.

Roth Edmonds expects to find evidence that his missing mule has been loaded into a truck and taken to Memphis, which means he will report her as stolen to the Jefferson sheriff and the Memphis police.

This sheriff is not named in the story and appears only in Roth Edmonds' thoughts as someone who will have to be notified of the mule's theft. We're assuming it's the same man as the sheriff who actually appears in the companion story "A Point of Law."

A stableman on Roth Edmonds' place, Oscar helps search for Edmonds' missing mule. Along with the head stableman Dan, he recognizes the human as well as the animal footprints they are following (229).

The head stableman on Roth Edmonds' place, Dan helps search for Edmonds' missing mule. He recognizes her footprint, and "later Edmonds would realize" that he and his co-worker Oscar "had recognized the man's footprints too" (229).

The men who run the company that makes or markets the metal detector work in Saint Louis and do not appear directly in the text. The salesman whom they send to Yoknapatawpha gives us a good idea of their strictly capitalist ethic when he expresses disbelief that these executives would "send this machine out without any down payment" (228).