General Store in Jefferson (Location Key)

The store in "Retreat" where Bayard and Ringo stop to buy a bag of salt is on the Square in Jefferson, since Buck McCaslin comes "hobbling across the square" to address the boys (20, 46). It's fun to speculate whether Faulkner imagined that this is the store in town that belongs to Goodhue Coldfield in Absalom! - the story and the novel were written at the same point in Faulkner's career; Coldfield opened his store in 1828, so it would have been 'there' in 1863 when the story takes place. There weren't a lot of stores in Jefferson at that early date in the town history and there are a lot of echoes between Absalom! and the Unvanquished stories - each has a Rosa, each has a man shot or shot at at the gate of a plantation, and so on. But Coldfield had probably already locked up the store and nailed himself into the attic of his house by the time Ringo and Bayard got to town. Perhaps Faulkner thought of that as he was writing "Retreat."