Hait's House (Location Key)

Mrs. Hait's house is one of several residences in Yoknapatawpha that burn down. Unlike most of the others, it's a lower class residence, not a mansion, and while the others are lit on fire by Yankee soldiers or members of one or another of Faulkner's dysfunctional families, Hait's is burned down by a mule. At the beginning of the episode in both "Mule in the Yard" and The Town, the house stands on the edge of town near the railroad tracks. It is a "little wooden house painted the same color that the railroad company used on its stations and boxcars" (243). Beside the kitchen door is "the wooden lid of the cellar stairs" (244), "wooden steps at the back door" that lead to "the wooden planks" which form a path to the "wooden shed in the corner of the back yard" where the cow lives (244). That repeated adjective 'wooden' gives us a clue to how completely the house is consumed by the fire. Afterwards all that's left are "two blackened chimneys" and the "still-intact cowshed," into which Mrs. Hait moves (257). Mrs. Hait does get even with the mule.