Jefferson Hardware Store in The Town (Location)

This is the local hardware store where people can buy, among other things, an axe (13). When Jefferson's hardware store first appears in the fictions, it is owned by a man named Earl. In later fictions, however, Faulkner identifies the owner as Isaac McCaslin, explaining in The Mansion that Earl runs the store for Ike. But that does not clear up the intertextual discrepancies: Ike McCaslin is best known as the boy and old man in hunting stories like "The Old People," "The Bear" and "Delta Autumn." In those fictions, which span Ike's life from boyhood to old age, he is a carpenter who owns no property at all. The decision to contradict that biography by transforming Ike into a merchant remains perplexing.