One of the original three white settlers in Yoknapatawpha, the men "who had ridden horseback into the county before its boundaries had ever been surveyed and located and named" (73). Younger son of a Huguenot aristocrat, he owned thousands of acres along the Yoknapatawpha River before the Civil War. An amateur painter, an "elegante" and a "dilettante," he is the "Frenchman" after whom Frenchman's Bend is named.
Mr. Lilley tells Gavin on the Sunday Lucas is brought into the jail that he won't wait for a lynch mob in the Square because "my wife aint feeling good tonight" (47).
A "countryman" who only moved to Jefferson within the year, Mr. Lilley owns "a small shabby side street grocery whose customers were mostly Negroes" (46). He tells Gavin that if a lynch party needs any help, to let him know.
This "boy," as both Edmunds and the narrator call him, is referred to at one point as "Edmunds' boy," a loaded phrase in the larger cultural context of Faulkner's world but which in the immediate narrative context means 'the boy that Edmunds mentioned' rather than defining either a family relationship or the dynamic of an interracial relationship. Lucas provides us with his first name, at least, when calls him "Joe" (7). He is the son of one of the tenant farmers on Edmunds' plantation (4, 5, etc.).
"One of the best woodsmen, the finest shot, and the best deer-hunter in the county" (50), Will Legate stands guard at the jail with a "double barrelled shotgun" to protect Lucas Beauchamp from a possible lynching (51). He is not a deputy, however, but a farmer, "who lived on a small farm two miles from town" (50).
The Mallisons hire men at two different points in the novel to drive Mrs. Mallison. This driver takes her and her son Chick out to the Mallison farm. Drivers in the Yoknapatawpha fictions are typically black, but by not identifying this one as a Negro, the brief description of him - "a man from the garage" (70) - suggests he is more likely to be white.
Buddy McCallum brought the "German Luger" with which Vinson Gowrie is shot "home from France in 1919" (175). Buddy's experience in World War I is described in Flags in the Dust (1929), where his family's name is spelled MacCallum.
When Sheriff Hampton goes out to investigate Vinson Gowrie's grave, he takes along two Negro prisoners from the jail to do the digging. Both are dressed in "blue jumpers and the soiled black-ringed convict pants which the street gangs wore" (136; in this context "street gangs" are chain gangs or convict work gangs). The narrative makes no effort to distinguish these "two Negroes," as they are repeatedly called (154, 156, 157, etc.). Both are equally anxious about their task, especially when Vinson's father appears.