Nat spends the three weeks between her father and her husband's arrests in "Jackson" (220), presumably as part of Lucas' plan to avoid being convicted. There is a Jackson, Tennessee, that appears in Light in August, but it is more likely that Nat went to Jackson, Mississippi, the state capital that would be about 160 miles from Yoknapatawpha. (When Faulkner revised this story as part of Go Down, Moses he changed Jackson to Vicksburg, 68.)
Submitted by tmtowner@utdall... on Thu, 2016-07-14 14:40
The conductor on the log-train that runs to and from Hoke’s sawmill and commissary knows the news of the area and speaks with Boon about Lion and Old Ben.
These "grandchildren" are either Lucas' grandchildren, or his great-grandchildren by a daughter other than Nat - the narrative's phrasing, "he had one daughter with grandchildren," is ambiguous (214). Neither the daughter nor the grandchildren appear, and no other details about them, or about Lucas' larger family, are given in this short story. (When Faulkner revised the story into the "Fire and the Hearth" chapter of Go Down, Moses, the phrase "one daughter with grandchildren" was omitted.)
Lucas Beauchamp has at least one child besides Nat, though the story's only reference to her is ambiguous. According to the narrator, it is known that Lucas has "one daughter with grandchildren" (214). Since this is mentioned in context with Lucas' age, it's possible that the "grandchildren" are his daughter's, making Lucas himself a great-grandfather, but no other details or family members are mentioned - and it's more likely that the phrase means Lucas himself has a daughter and grandchildren, which is the way we've chosen to interpret it.
Lucas Beauchamp compares George Wilkins favorably as a son-in-law to "the other buck niggers in that neighborhood" (213), terms that refer to other eligible young black males who live on or near the Edmonds plantation. The vicious insult that, for good reasons, we now hear in that term would not have been felt or meant by Lucas.
The people whom Lucas Beauchamp thinks of as "his old regular customers," the "established clientele" for the moonshine whiskey he makes, are not described (213-14). It can safely be assumed that they are all male. And given the way moonshine is bought and consumed throughout Faulkner's fiction, it is probably safe to assume they are of both races and from various levels of Yoknapatawpha society.
Zach Edmonds - "Carothers Edmonds's father" (214) - has been dead for twenty years at the time of this story. In Go Down, Moses, where his name is spelled "Zack," his place in the long, complicated history of the McCaslin-Edmonds family is fully developed. In this text the only suggestion of the prominent place the family occupies in Yoknapatawpha history and society is Lucas' evocation of "Old Zach Edmonds' time thirty or forty years ago," when a gentleman like Judge Gowan came to the plantation the Edmonds family owns to "stay for weeks during the quail season" (222).
Carothers "Roth" Edmonds is the white man who owns the land that Lucas and George work as share-croppers. The narrative notes that Roth inherited the estate from his father (214), but does not go into any further details. In Faulkner's ultimate version of this story, in Go Down, Moses, the Edmonds' family history, and the way in which the Beauchamps are entangled in it, is a major thematic and moral element, but the published short story omits all hint of those complexities.
Like Lucas Beauchamp, George Wilkins is a tenant farmer on the Edmonds plantation. Although Lucas clearly has no enthusiasm for him as an in-law, George and Lucas' daughter Nat may be married when the story begins, or get married before it ends. In any case, what occasions the story is his decision - again like Lucas - to set up a moonshine still to sell illegal whiskey. He wears his "ruined Panama hat" rakishly (219), but seems to be no match for either his father-in-law or his wife.
Lucas' wife is not given a first name in this story. In Go Down, Moses Faulkner gives her two: Molly and Mollie. In this text she mainly scolds her husband in a dialect so thick ("What you gwine dis time er night?" 213) that it recalls the minstrel stage.
