Buddy MacCallum

Character Key Number: 
71
Display Name: 
Buddy MacCallum
Sort Name: 
MacCallum, Buddy
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?: 
Yes
Biography: 

The youngest of the sons in the MacCallum|McCallum family is Buddy. He first appears in Flags in the Dust as a kind of foil to Bayard Sartoris: both have served in World War I - Buddy has a combat medal to show how well he fought - but Buddy is not a member of any 'lost generation.' He returns to Yoknapatawpha, resumes his place in the yeoman family (though he doesn't display the medal, in deference to his un-reconstructed ex-Confederate father who refuses to believe his son fought in a "Yankee" army, 342), and continues his life as a countryman and avid hunter. The only one of the father's sons not named after a Confederate hero (Buddy's given name is Virginius too), Buddy is the MacCallum whom his brothers are counting on to marry someday and perpetuate the family name. That name changes in the fictions Faulkner wrote after 1940, when he revised 'MacCallum' into 'McCallum,' but Buddy does marry, appearing with his twin sons in "The Tall Men" and a son in The Town. He doesn't appear in person in Intruder in the Dust, but there the "German Luger" pistol that he brought home from the First World War plays a key role in the detective plot.