Beat Nine (Location Key)

Like real Mississippi counties, Yoknapatawpha is divided into administrative districts called "beats." In all but one of Faulkner's fictions, five is the highest number assigned to any beat. The Mansion, however, refers to the section "way up" in Yoknapatawpha where the Nub Gowrie makes his moonshine as "Beat Nine" (67). In Intruder in the Dust (1948), Nub lives in Beat Four, in the county's northeast. Faulkner may have decided to re-number this area because in the movie version of Intruder in the Dust (1949), the area is referred to as 'Beat Nine' - or he may just have forgotten what he'd called it before.