The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

In a cabin that he enters during his flight, Christmas "sees negro dishes, negro food," and feels the presence of "flight and abrupt consternation" (335). From these details we can construct the blacks who live in the cabin, but in fact they never appear except as the "long, limber black hands" that put the food in front of him. And they are only heard in the "wails of terror and distress" that Christmas "hears without hearing them" (335). As he eats, Christmas registers their fear and calls himself "their brother" (335).

This "gaunt, leatherhard woman" recognizes Joe Christmas when he comes to her door for food; when he asks "what day this is," she tells him it is Tuesday, and threatens to call her man if he doesn't go away (332).

On the fourth day of his flight Christmas smells breakfast cooking at a farm house, but waits to approach it until he sees "the men" of the farm finish eating and "go to the field" (332).

An elder of the Negro church that Joe Christmas invades, Vines tells one of the parishioners to ride for the sheriff and tell him "'just what you seen'" (324).

It's not clear how many people are in the "negro church" that Christmas enters during his flight across the county, but "the congregation" includes the women who "shriek" at his abrupt entrance (one of whom identifies him as "the devil!" 322), the "deacons" who go up to him and try to talk with him (323), and the "men" who, believing that Christmas is white, hold back Pappy Thompson's grandson Roz to keep him from attacking Christmas after he has struck the seventy-year-old man down (323).