Miss Reba mentions "Jackie" as the woman in her brothel she tells to lock the door during the day after the adventurers leave for Parsham (196). Jackie may be a prostitute, or may be black.
Lucius describes the (white) passengers who ride on the "Special," the major train that runs between Memphis and New York, as "the rich women in diamonds and the men with dollar cigars" (194). He mentions the "Jimcrow" cars in which "Negroes travelled" (194), but does not describe those passengers at all. ("Jimcrow," usually written Jim Crow, is a synonym for the Southern system of racial segregation.)
Among the well-known sportsmen who come to Parsham every winter for the "National Trials" of pedigree bird dogs, Lucius mentions four names. Two are identifiable as real men (Horace Lytle and Paul Rainey). This icon represents "George Peyton," whom Lucius says is, like Lytle, "as magical among bird dog people" as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb are to baseball fans (189). This pairing suggests that like Lytle, Peyton is a real person; in fact, a dog handler named George Payton was active at least during the 1920s, once handling Pearl Momoney at the National Bird Dog Championship.
"Mr Jim Avant from Hickory Flat,” one of the four well-known dog breeders and trainers mentioned in The Reivers, is almost certainly intended to be J.M. (James Monroe) Avent was a well-known owner and trainer of pedigreed bird dogs. He co-established the National Bird Dog Championship and in 1930. Time magazine called him the "most celebrated of contemporary handlers," citing too his nickname the "Fox of Hickory Valley," his home in Tennessee. Faulkner either misremembered or misspelled his name in this novel, and he also relocated hi m - perhaps on purpose.
The "fat iron-gray woman in pince-nez" who opens the door at the Parsham doctor's house might be his sister, but since he mentions his marriage a few pages later it seems more likely that she is his wife (185).
The country doctor whom Lucius sees in Parsham is "an iron-gray man" at least sixty years old (185). His white shirt and black coat are both unclean, and he "smells like something [that] isn't just alcohol" (185). According to Butch, it's ether. Doctors used ether as an anesthetic, but it was also ab-used as an addictive drug. For all his shortcomings, the narrative treats this doctor - and his 35-year-old memory of a visit to a Memphis brothel - kindly.
